Replacement Theory

It is not hard to find all kinds of articles and essays on the philosophy and history of replacement theory, or great replacement theory. In brief, over the course of the last 150 years, various versions of the fear that immigrants are being brought into "white" western countries to replace the majority white folks has permeated various European countries and America.

I often tell my wife, that, in general, there is always a tincture of truth in every conspiracy theory. Is there voter fraud? Undoubtedly, there are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of votes that are cast by someone not eligible to vote. But millions of votes "changed" by foreign interests or computer hackers? While I am not naive enough to think that the democratic party might include some cheaters, I don't believe they are smart enough to allow just enough GOP candidates on down ballots to win, while altering the one name at the top for president. Massive voter fraud is not a thing, it is a lie created by a man who is such a loser that he can't accept losing.

Often, it is the obvious answer that is correct, and in this case, just as in 2016, more Americans voted for the democratic presidential ticket, in 2020, enough of those who had voted for Trump in 2016, witnessed his incompetence, and decided they couldn't give him another chance, but still preferred local, state and federal GOP candidates over their democratic counterparts.

And, by the way, when a candidate for any office tells you that mail-in votes are suspect and in-person votes can be altered, he/she is casting doubt on democracy as a whole. Casting doubt on our institutions, whether it be elections, the Justice Department, the FBI, the free press, etc, is page one in the wannabe dictator playbook. 

Acceptance and gracious congratulations when a candidate loses along with the peaceful transfer of power to the winning candidate, is one of the primary characteristics of a democracy. Denial of an election loss almost 2 full years after the election, is the mark of a autocrat who will destroy everything to stay in power. 

But I digress.

As far as I can tell, there is an ongoing demographic shift, one that will, in fact, create an America in which the white majority will be less than 50% of the population. Of course, this is not the first time that the native people of the United States feared an influx of immigrants. I was talking about this with my son last weekend, and he reminded me that in the early 20th century, the same sort of fears were prevalent in reference to the great immigration wave that changed America's demographics. At that time, there were many critics of the peoples coming from Europe, especially those with swarthy complexions. Those darker whites, along with the other Europeans who brought over their strange foods, cultures, music, language, etc, were thought of as invaders by many "native" Americans of the time, who could trace their lineage to the Pilgrims. Those nativists thought that their idea of America would be changed forever by these European immigrants, their culture lost into a morass of new ideas and traditions. 

The fact that those very Pilgrims were immigrants themselves only 200 years in the past, seemed lost on them. Not to mention that the actual natives of North America, a myriad of tribes that had existed on this continent for centuries, were systematically pushed further and further west, victims of a manifest destiny that justified stealing their homelands and decimating their populations.

If anyone has the right to talk about replacement theory, it might be the Native American population!

And now, the voices of the children and grandchildren of those very immigrants who were castigated as foreigners who would alter America forever, sing the same song about today's immigrants. Except that when "white" was eventually redefined to include those with off white complexions, we now hear the quiet part being said out loud by racist commentators who have no problem calling people from south of our border rapists and criminals, or dehumanizing those from s*ithole countries, countries that just happen to have darker people.

We all know that change is hard, and societal change even harder as that kind of change can take a generation or more. Just as the Italian, Irish, German, French, Swede, etc immigrants of the early 20th century were eventually accepted by most Americans as Americans by the middle of the 20th century, today's immigrants will be similarly accepted by our grandchildren. 

After all, very few people get upset today if their child is dating or marrying outside their particular ancestry once we become a 2nd or 3rd generation American family. Similarly, I feel confident that our grandchildren will have a similar perspective about a 2nd or 3rd generation American with ancestry from one of the countries that we now label as the source of today's invaders. 

Curiously, when importing slaves was at its zenith, resulting in many white landowners owning far more black slaves as there were white family members, there was little concern about the danger of replacing whites with other races, mostly since those slaves were powerless, without rights. Makes one think that control is the real issue here, or as I have said in the past, the fear that a white minority might be treated as horribly as the white majority treated those non-white peoples.

America is only 250 years old. We are inhabited by a mishmash of cultures, traditions, religion and race, philosophy and perspective. Some might say, we are great because of our diversity. So, when you hear people bashing diversity, advocating for a white nationalist agenda, or just seem to enjoy creating divisiveness by telling you which "others" are to blame for our troubles, in effect, they are saying that they don't like America. Or certainly, not the America that was built in great part by people who themselves or whose parents were not born here.  

What is truly ironic, is that now that we have mapped the human genome, we know that almost every person alive today has some small percentage of African ancestry in their DNA. 

In reality, skin color is just a matter of degree. One could even say, we are all black, just some of us are a lighter shade, or we are all white, just some of us are a darker shade. 

In the end, wouldn't it be great if we noticed skin color with the same attention as we notice handedness?