Former MSNBC host Joy Reid recently delivered a peculiar history lesson to her social media audience. In her mind a reproach to Donald Trump, Reid warned that the Roman Empire “died because it wasn’t diverse enough,” implying that sticking with “just white folks” leads to inevitable civilizational decline. If history were written by cable news soundbites, we might soon learn that Napoleon lost Waterloo because he lacked a DEI department.
In reality, Rome didn’t fall because of a lack of diversity. Nor is Europe today crumbling because of too many white people. Societies fail for many reasons, but skin color has never been one of them. If anything, Europe’s slow-motion collapse is a story not of racial homogeneity, but of something far less fashionable to discuss: falling birthrates, loss of communal purpose and the gradual abandonment of shared civilizational values.
First, a minor historical correction. The Roman Empire was one of the most diverse political entities the world has ever seen. By the time of its collapse, Rome’s legions were filled with soldiers from Gaul, North Africa, the Middle East and the Germanic frontiers. Emperors like Septimius Severus hailed from modern-day Libya. Latin itself evolved through contact with a mosaic of cultures across three continents. Rome’s problem wasn’t that it had too few ethnicities; it was that it could no longer sustain the political and economic structures that once made its diversity an asset rather than a vulnerability.
The real fall of Rome had less to do with racial composition and more to do with internal decay: political corruption, unsustainable taxation, overreliance on slave labor, plummeting birthrates among Roman citizens and the weakening of civic and military virtues. By the time the barbarian tribes breached the imperial borders, Rome was already hollowed out from within. No diversity mandate could have reversed a cultural rot that reached the very soul of Roman society.
If anything, Europe today faces a strikingly similar threat – but not the one Joy Reid imagines. The continent’s crisis is demographic, not demographic in the way the left likes to frame it, but demographic in the most elemental sense: Europeans aren’t having enough children to replace themselves.
According to Eurostat, the fertility rate across the European Union has fallen to 1.38 children per woman – well below the replacement level of 2.1. Italy and Spain, two of the cradles of Western civilization, have seen birthrates plummet to historic lows. Even Germany, after years of absorbing migrants, faces a looming population decline without substantial new immigration. Immigration may delay the inevitable, but it cannot fully compensate for a population unwilling or unable to sustain itself through family formation.
This isn’t merely an economic inconvenience. It’s a profound civilizational warning sign. A society that no longer believes in its future enough to create and nurture the next generation has already, at some level, chosen decline. It is not diversity, or the lack of it, that births civilizations – it is faith, family and freedom. When those foundational values erode, the color of one’s skin becomes an irrelevant footnote.
Joy Reid’s mistake – and it’s a popular one among America’s race-obsessed commentariat – is to conflate ethnic diversity with cultural vitality. Diversity can enrich a society, of course. But it is not a panacea and it cannot replace the harder work of cultivating virtue, purpose and cohesion. A nation can be multi-ethnic and still vibrant, or it can be multi-ethnic and still decline. What matters most is whether people share enough common values to sustain the long and often difficult project of self-governance and civilization building.
America, for instance, has long been more racially diverse than Europe, yet it too now faces a declining birthrate and growing internal division. Diversity did not inoculate us against cultural decay. Strong families, faith in the future and a belief in common ideals once did.
This is the real danger of Reid’s narrative. It tempts us to believe that demographic engineering – importing new populations, reconfiguring society by skin color – can save a civilization that has lost faith in itself. It shifts the focus from personal and communal responsibility onto a superficial politics of identity. Worse, it implies that one racial group is inherently tied to decline, and others to renewal – a dangerously reductionist and divisive idea that history warns us against.
If we truly care about the fate of Western civilization – or any civilization – we should focus less on the hues in the census charts and more on the health of the cradle. We should ask: are families being supported? Are communities fostering belonging and meaning? Are young people being encouraged to hope, to build, to raise the next generation?
Rome wasn’t undone by a lack of diversity. It was undone by a loss of vigor, virtue and vision. If we want to avoid its fate, we would do well to focus less on racial counting and more on cultural renewal.
If the West is to survive, it will be because it remembers who it is – not because it manages to check every diversity box. Civilizations are not saved by slogans or skin color. They are saved by the quiet, daily work of building families, forging communities and passing down values strong enough to endure.
Joy Reid might find that history lesson less glamorous – but far closer to the truth.
While you're at it, ask today's Brits.
