White Replacement Theory: A Challenge for America

Individual psychology—the patterning of thoughts, feelings, and actions that seem deeply our own—intertwines inevitably with collective psychology, the habits of a society. In much the same way, who we are now—the present-time impulses and perceptions that course within us—do not separate easily from who we have been. Human sentiments, public and private, have a momentum that is difficult to stop. The past informs and energizes. In that light, consider the following.

On May 14, an 18-year-old gunman shot 13 people at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. Ten of them died. The gunman, who had driven 200 miles to the crime scene, was white. The people he killed, chosen because of their race, were Black.

We have become familiar—surely too familiar—with killings of this sort. Recall the murder of 13 Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2018 and the slaughter of 23 persons, most of whom were Hispanic, in El Paso, Texas, in 2019. Events like this are sometimes just outbursts of disturbed individuals. In the above cases, they were also hate crimes, intended to eliminate purportedly foreign—and, thus, problematic—people. Pathology and ideology combined.

Note that this is not exclusively an American problem. In a 180-page manifesto published prior to the shooting, the Buffalo gunman drew inspiration from the writings of a killer of 51 Muslims at two mosques in New Zealand. Indeed, in this age of global destabilization, economic insecurity, media diatribes, and sophisticated weapons, most countries can offer examples of such homemade terrorism.

Replacement Theory

Common to these assaults is the belief that certain groups in society, typically those who have been dominant, are now threatened by other groups, marked out as different on terms of race, religion, nationality, and ethnicity. These “others,” some claim, are replacing the dominant group and its way of life through immigration, intermarriage, integration of workplaces and schools, and diverse cultural expressions. Just not shifts in population, these changes result from the machinations of politically affiliated groups, who feel their own power will expand through the rise of previously disenfranchised groups. Such are the tenets of replacement theory.

Others can write about the connection of replacement theory to the white supremacy movement. Instead, this essay reminds readers about the role of “outsiders” and “foreigners” in the building of this nation. Be clear: We are a nation of immigrants who have long dealt with markings of “us” and “them.” Saying this does not minimize the challenges of current times. If history teaches anything, it is that people in every generation must be vigilant regarding the dangers of intergroup conflict and oppression.

"The New Colossus"

In that context, recall here the poem placed near the base of our Statue of Liberty. Titled “The New Colossus,” those verses contrast our monument with another, the similarly sized Colossus of Rhodes, which guarded entry to the Aegean Sea. One of the so-called seven wonders of the ancient world, it arose around 280 BC to commemorate a victory of Rhodes over Cyprus. A representation of the sun-god Helios, the statue collapsed from an earthquake a half-century later and was never rebuilt.

With those images in mind, Emma Lazarus, daughter of a prominent Jewish family whose ancestors had come to New York in the 17th century, began her work:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles.

“From her beacon hand,” Lazarus continues, “glows world-wide welcome.” Ancient lands, she tells us, should keep their “storied pomp.” Instead, our statue (“with silent lips”) proclaims:

Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these, the tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Note that the poet’s contribution, completed in 1883, was part of an American effort to raise money for the base of the statue, ultimately erected in 1886. The poem, cast in bronze, was mounted on a plaque inside the entryway in 1903. Lazarus herself did not witness that event. She died 16 years before, at 38.

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No one would argue that government policies, regarding immigration or any other issue, correspond neatly with the ideals of inspired poems, anthems, and speeches. But Lazarus’s imagery–like the statue itself–remains a powerful symbol of this country’s expansive spirit. Recall that the construction was a joint venture of the United States and France, which not only celebrated their historic friendship but also reanimated their joint commitment to Enlightenment ideals. Consider, too, that the welcoming posture of a goddess (the Roman Libertas) replaces Rhodes's menacing male Colossus. Although facing Europe, Liberty bids welcome to all. Indeed, she seems to be stepping forward to emphasize that commitment.

Idealism of this sort is all the more important because of the history of intergroup conflict that has characterized this continent. Most of us know now that the land the Europeans came to was not some verdant wilderness but a humanly settled world. Some estimates put the indigenous population of the Western Hemisphere at five million. The treatment of Native Americans—with its stages of negotiation, conflict, removal, and subordination—its many definitions of genocide.

Ponder also the treatment of Africans, so many brought here in chains beginning in 1619. Four centuries bear witness to the struggles of an enslaved people for freedom, economic stability, and public respect. We who are older remember well that long-segregated world with its divisions, insults, threats, and curtailments. Would anyone claim that African-Americans today have achieved parity with whites?

Add to this the discrimination faced by Asian-Americans. Laws banned Chinese immigrants in 1882, and for the next 60 years! Others from Asia found themselves excluded through a series of laws and policies between 1907 and 1934. Japanese-Americans, declared an “enemy race” during World War II, were taken from their homes on the West Coast and interned in concentration camps.

Nearly half of all US immigration is now from the Western Hemisphere. People from Mexico in particular (about 25 percent of the total immigrant population) have been encouraged to cross those borders when labor was in short supply, and then removed forcibly, at various times in our history. Many of them are part of the more than 10 million unauthorized immigrants currently living here. Because they work at employment that most natives choose to avoid, it is difficult to imagine, as a popular film has it, “a day without Mexicans.”

One may believe that intergroup conflict has centered on the division between those with European backgrounds, and those ancestors came from other continents. But this is not the case. The European settlers brought their prejudices with them. The Irish, in particular, suffered discrimination during the 19th century. Of special note are the so-called Quota Acts of the 1920s, which dramatically reduced the number of immigrants from countries in the South and East of Europe, such as the Italians, Greeks, and Czechs. During the 19th and early 20th century, there was widespread fear of Catholics and of Jews. Such people, some argued, were not like “us”: they threatened democracy. Then, as today, various political parties, appealing especially to people in small towns and rural areas, garnered support by their opposition to immigrants.

Many Americans have ancestors who came here fairly recently—that is, during the great wave of European immigration at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. (This author includes himself in that mix.) How odd then for such people to denounce others for being “foreign” or “un-American”? Especially curious is the rejection of African-Americans (whose ancestry here is commonly older than that of most whites and who, like most other Americans, express mixtures of various populations).

It is the essence of minority status to be “put down” (subordination) and “put back” (marginalization). People who resist subordination commonly are asked to leave. What minority group has not had its right to citizenship challenged, has not been told to “go back to where you came from”? Apart from the Native Americans, who came thousands of years ago, the rest of us would say that our ancestors once came from “there.” Now we come from “here.”

Building an Inclusive America

It is not helpful to demonize any group of people, such as the set of white Americans who fear that demographic and social changes are turning “us” into “them.” Quite the opposite, the challenge is to build an inclusive America that supports people of every description and welcomes their contributions to the common good.

Reformation of individual psychology is not enough. People must acknowledge who they have been and what they can become, collectively. Such is Liberty’s challenge.