Former MSNBC host Joy Reid sparked controversy after claiming that the Roman Empire collapsed due to a lack of diversity and warning that the United States could face a similar fate if it doesn’t fully embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
During a live Substack podcast appearance alongside commentator Wajahat Ali, Reid criticized major U.S. corporations for retreating from DEI initiatives, tying the trend to broader social and political shifts under the Trump administration.
“If you take that away and try to distill us just down to white folks, we’ll be like Europe — an aging, slowly dying former empire,” Reid said. “The Roman Empire didn’t survive because it didn’t have enough strength in its diversity. It suppressed its diversity, and it died. If the U.S. wants to be the Roman Empire, keep voting the way you voting, y’all.”
Joy Reid claims the US will be ‘slowly dying and aging’ like the ‘Roman Empire’ if diversity isn’t pushed
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— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 28, 2025
She also pointed to demographic trends, noting that Generation Alpha, those born after 2010, is already majority nonwhite, predicting that the U.S. will no longer have a white majority by 2045.
“We are essentially a Latin American country, and we’re going to look more like Latin American countries. … Most people will be brown, and the majority will not be white,” she added.
Reid’s comments quickly drew criticism, particularly from conservatives and historians.
Writing for the Spectator, David Sypher Jr. pushed back on her historical claims in a piece titled “No, Joy Reid: Rome didn’t fall due to a lack of ‘diversity.’”
Sypher argued that far from being homogenous, the Roman Empire was among the most diverse civilizations in history.
“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,” he wrote.
He attributed the empire’s fall not to ethnic makeup but to deep-seated issues like political corruption, unsustainable taxation, collapsing civic values, low birthrates, and overreliance on slave labor.
“No diversity mandate could have reversed a cultural rot that reached the very soul of Roman society,” Sypher argued.
He also noted that Europe’s modern-day crisis is similarly rooted not in racial composition but in demographic decline and a loss of civilizational confidence. Fertility rates across Europe have fallen well below replacement levels, raising concerns about future economic and cultural sustainability.
Other netizens were quick to challenge Reid’s historical analysis, calling it both inaccurate and misleading.
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“This claim is not only hilarious, but completely historically inaccurate, as the empire was multi-ethnic—including North Africans, Middle Easterners, and Europeans,” one user wrote on X. “Its decline resulted from economic instability, military overextension, and invasions, not racial composition.”
Another added, “The fall of the Roman Empire was not about race—it was the result of military overreach, economic decline, corruption, and invasions by various groups (like the Huns, Vandals, and Visigoths), none of whom can be tied to a singular ‘racial’ cause.”