\u201cReplacement Theory\u201d is the idea that those \u201cliberal, progressive, socialist Democrats\u201d (like me) want to bring People of Color into the United States in order to replace those \u201coriginal\u201d white people living here now. By bringing in People of Color, either legally or illegally across the southern border, \u201cthem Democrats\u201d are trying to \u201cwin\u201d, because Peoples of Color will vote for them instead of Republicans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cReplacement Theory\u201d is being pushed by the right-wing media, particularly Tucker Carlson on Fox News. <\/em> It amplifies the whole \u201cthreat at the border\u201d routine, the idea that thousands, perhaps millions of Central Americans are poised to overrun the United States, taking all the jobs, and then \u201coutvoting\u201d the \u201coriginal white\u201d Americans. It might seem laughable, like the non-existent \u201cmigrant caravans\u201d that showed up only during elections, but it became deadly serious last weekend in Buffalo, New York. Ten people of color were shot down in the grocery store for being \u201creplacements\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Just because: unless you can claim to be a Native American, there \u201cain\u2019t no\u201d original white Americans. We are all descended from migrants: mine came from Alsace, France in the 1870\u2019s (they were Jewish, too), and London England in 1946. So the very idea of being an \u201coriginal white\u201d American doesn\u2019t really work. And if there\u2019s some sub-definition of \u201coriginal\u201d, like someone who immigrated in the early 1800\u2019s, well that would disqualify most white Americans today as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And \u201cReplacement Theory\u201d is coupled with more \u201ctraditional\u201d anti-Semitism.\u00a0\u00a0People of Color are at the border, but Jews are somehow orchestrating this.\u00a0\u00a0That\u2019s how we ended up with Charlottesville and the Nazi-like torchlight march of sports-shirt and khaki clad men yelling \u201cJews will not replace us\u201d, or the \u201cCamp Auschwitz\u201d T-Shirt at the Insurrection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So here\u2019s a Government teacher doing simple math.\u00a0\u00a0This sounds like one of those \u201ctheorems\u201d I vaguely remember from junior year geometry. (What I really remember is my teacher, Mr. Parker, dipping his fingers in the chalk tray, then licking them clean).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course there\u2019s one major flaw in the logic between \u2018D\u2019 and \u2018E\u2019. Migrants, legal or illegal, are not citizens of the United States. They can\u2019t vote. (Of course, then you throw in the \u201cBig Lie\u201d of election fraud, saying that migrants are voting to \u201cfix\u201d that problem).<\/p>\n\n\n\n A, B, and C are definitely valid. Most migrants (legal or illegal) do take jobs that don\u2019t pay as well. But the unemployment rate in the United States is just over three percent, as low as it\u2019s been for years. And there\u2019s an obvious shortage of workers at the lowest wage levels. In restaurants, the lawn service industry and other low-wage service jobs, you constantly hear the refrain, \u201cThere\u2019s not enough workers, no one wants to work\u201d. But if that were true, why would the unemployment rate be so low?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And, by the way, if you need more workers \u2013 there\u2019s thousands waiting right across the Southern border, ready to come to America to fulfill their dreams. American citizens aren\u2019t being \u201creplaced\u201d on the job market. There is a labor shortage in the United States, which has allowed many Americans to take better paying jobs. Where\u2019s the kid flipping burgers for $10\/hour at McDonalds now? She\u2019s at Amazon, making $17\/hour \u201cfulfilling\u201d orders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So what\u2019s really going on that causing people, particularly white males, to fall for this \u201cReplacement Theory\u201d nonsense? There are two root causes to this. The first is the loss of white \u201centitlement\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n White entitlement was the \u201cAmerican Way\u201d through the mid-1960\u2019s. White boys got into college, white men got the management jobs, white men were Mayors and Congressmen and Governors. It wasn\u2019t just People of Color who were denied the opportunities, it was most women as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then things began to change.\u00a0\u00a0The Civil Rights movement drew attention to the fact that Black people were denied educational opportunities because of their race and the women\u2019s right\u2019s movement made the same claim.\u00a0\u00a0So instead of white men getting ninety percent of the enrollment in colleges and jobs in business, the \u201copportunity pool\u201d was divvied up among different categories.\u00a0\u00a0Now white men (and boys)\u00a0\u00a0competed with Black men and boys, and white women and girls, and all the other categories of human backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And for some of those white men, it just wasn\u2019t \u201cfair\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0Their fathers and their older brothers got their \u201cticket\u201d (schools, jobs) so much easier.\u00a0\u00a0And instead of rising to the competition, some just took the loss, and looked to blame someone else.\u00a0\u00a0They placed that blame on the someone else that \u201creplaced\u201d them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The second cause is a false sense of history. This is American education\u2019s fault to some extent. A traditional high school history can make it seem like there were only white men influencing the course of the United States since the Mayflower landed at Plymouth (but not on the \u201crock\u201d). That\u2019s not a valid premise: women, People of Color, Jews, Native Americans all played a vital role in American development. But if you\u2019re not taught that, there\u2019s no reason for you to think differently. And that creates another false sense of entitlement, as if \u201cwhite men\u201d were the only ones who earned the right to be \u201cAmericans\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s what makes the current nonsense over \u201cCritical Race Theory\u201d so dangerous. It\u2019s being used to literally \u201cwhite-wash\u201d school curriculums, so that the \u201cwhite man\u2019s place\u201d in American history is secured. It simply prolongs the false sense of \u201centitlement\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n America is changing. Within the next decade, the majority of the United States will not be \u201cwhite\u201d. White people will still be the biggest racial group, but they will no longer be more than fifty percent. We, the People of the United States, are becoming more diverse. We are Black, we are Asian, we are Pacific Islanders, we are Latino, we are Hispanic, we are Islamic, we are Jewish, and we are White. And like a lot of our kids today, many of us are mixes of many of those races and cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that truth can\u2019t be changed. It can only be denied, by those who are trying to keep old, unfair, and undemocratic ways alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To get people to believe propaganda, you get a \u201cbelievable\u201d lie, and you tell it over and over again with absolute sincerity.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s what the Nazi\u2019s did so effectively in Germany, it\u2019s what Orwell wrote about in\u00a01984,\u00a0<\/em>and it\u2019s what Putin\u2019s trying to do in Russia now about his disaster in Ukraine.\u00a0\u00a0 The United States is not immune to big lies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n We are living in an age of Big Lies today. There\u2019s the named \u201cBig Lie\u201d, that the election of 2020 was somehow stolen by the Democrats. More than thirty million Americans BELIEVE that it\u2019s true. There\u2019s the \u201cBig Lie\u201d of the so-called Critical Race Theory crisis. There\u2019s this Big Lie\u201d of Replacement Theory. And there\u2019s the old lies of anti-Semitism \u2013 that\u2019s somehow Jews really run the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n All of these would be laughable if they didn\u2019t have such serious consequences for America. Democracy depends on an educated electorate. It\u2019s why the Founding Fathers provided for public education even before the Constitution was written. But educated means understanding reality, not seeing things through the prism of lies. If we allow those lies to replace the truth, the loss of our Democracy may be the true \u201creplacement\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Theorem One<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Theorem Two<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Entitlement<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
History<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
A Truth<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Big Lies<\/h3>\n\n\n\n