The Great Replacement

The Great Replacement Myth

No excuse for violence

Not content with promoting bans on the teaching of critical race theory to students who are not ever taught about it, the white supremacists among us are now floating the latest conspiracy theory, The Great Replacement. 

Meant to stoke white peoples’ fears of people of color, TGR claims, without any empirical support, that immigration policies which allow people of color to enter the country are designed to replace whites with those immigrants thus bringing about the end of the white race. 

The replacement theory, first advanced in Europe to try and stem the tide of African immigrants, has been brought here and promoted by some fringe GOP politicians and their mouthpieces on Fox News. It has become a guiding light for white supremacists here and used by those who use violence against people with different skin color to justify their actions. 

Guess what folks, white people are not being replaced because of the color of their skin. Some are being replaced by people of all different skin tones who believe that people are just that, people. As we intermingle with people from other places, interracial marriages and births have taken place and will continue to blend us all into what we have always been, just human beings. 

The notion that any one group of humans is superior to all others, especially one based on skin color, is just plain wrong. We are all the same inside. Some are better educated, more empathetic, more open to new ideas, and more willing to work to better the human condition than others, but that does not make them superior, just better people. 

We need to stop thinking in terms of race or skin color. These are artificial constructs designed to divide us from one another. We all inhabit the same planet. We need to come together to keep it habitable and safe for all of us, not just some of us. The outliers who continue to think only about themselves cannot prevail in the quest to make the world a better place. 

Surely, we are a planet divided by geography and political systems. People in different areas of the globe have approached how to govern in vastly different ways. Those differences are transitory. Witness the fall of the Soviet Union as a recent example. Governments with different rules can work together to achieve common goals. Witness the United Nations. These transitory systems do not define us or make one group superior to others. We all are just human beings trying to survive and take care of each other. 

Our political system is divided as well. The current divisions are stoked by these conspiracy theories which demonize others who think and look differently. That needs to stop. Our grand experiment in democracy will not survive if the conspiracies are allowed to fester unchallenged. 

The ongoing gun violence in this country is but a manifestation of those divisions and the permission the conspiracies provide to use violence to fix our problems. How long can our society survive if anyone is allowed to walk into a school and open fire, killing children and their teachers? 

At least our political system provides a path towards a solution to the problem of gun violence. We can elect legislative representatives who will enact laws regulating firearms to effectively keep them out of the hands of those prone to violence against others. We can elect legislative representatives who will pass laws providing mental health treatment programs with adequate funding to help those suffering from the delusion that others are out to replace them. We can elect legislative representatives who will honor educators and the work they do by passing laws making schools safer places with adequate resources to perform the sacred duties entrusted to them. We can elect legislative representatives who will pass laws enabling effective enforcement of these laws. 

With the epidemic of gun violence supported by conspiracy theories abroad in the land, we can choose to do something about the problem or choose to do nothing and watch the cycle repeat as it has far too often. 

It is up to us.