Trading Places

The problem with coming to the conclusion that a particular viewpoint is unintelligent or nonsensical is that it’s then a simple matter to not bother with understanding why it might not be so. I’m going to quote here at length, as I sometimes do, because I would like to present an argument in as much of its context as I can, without simply resorting to asking all of you to read the complete Prindle Post column.

In any event, Nicholas Kreuder is seeking to explain why “replacement theory” is, at its core racist, with the goal being to offer up an explanation that avoids falling back on simply labeling any wrongthink about race with the pejorative.

Some fear “replacement” for a different reason, claiming that changing demographics will result in new majorities exacting revenge. The idea being that, after white citizens become a political minority, the new political majority will engage in retributive measures for past injustices.

This view of the dangers of “replacement” indicates that a majority can use our political institutions in ways that unjustly harm minorities. In fact, it seems to even acknowledge that this has occurred. So, why leave that system intact? The far better response would be to reform or maybe even replace current systems that allow a majority to perpetuate injustices against a minority.

And we now see clearly why fear of “replacement” stems from racism. Being afraid of changing demographics requires denying that all citizens of a nation deserve an equal say in how it is run. It means conceiving of a particular culture as superior to another. And, ultimately, it involves thinking our institutions ought to be designed in ways that allow a majority to commit injustices against a minority. In these ways, the person who fears “replacement” endorses a hierarchical worldview where some deserve to count for more, are superior to, and deserve power over, others. It is only through this lens that a change in racial and ethnic demographics can be worrisome.
Nicholas Kreuder “Why Some Fear ‘Replacement’”

I’m going to start with the third paragraph, and work from there. There is nothing about a fear of changing demographics that “requires denying that all citizens of a nation deserve an equal say in how it is run.” In point of fact, it can be an absolute commitment to the ideal that provokes such a fear. Here is where the two sentences of the first paragraph quoted become important. The fact that a believe may be nakedly self-serving does not make it insincerely held, and if one honestly believes in the idea that once Black, Hispanic and/or Native Americans become the majority, they are going to set about recreating the injustices of the past, only with themselves reaping the benefits at the expense of White (and possibly Asian) Americans it is not at all necessary that one believe that “institutions ought to be designed in ways that allow a majority to commit injustices against a minority.” Likewise, simply reforming or replacing the legal framework that allows for same is not foolproof. White police officers, attorneys, judges and juries were quite capable of ignoring the law when it suited them to do so; why would anyone think that it couldn’t occur to others to do the same?

There is more to racism than the idea that one group of people counts for more, are superior to, and deserve power over others by dint of the color of their skin or the nation their distant ancestors were born on. The idea that others believe in the ideologies of racial superiority due to the color of their skin also qualifies. Culturally speaking, Americans have very short historical memories, and sometimes lack them entirely. When I was in high school, classmates would piously inform me that racism had died at the end of the Civil Rights movement; even though that end was just coming about when we were born. Combine this with the American myth that all babies are born equally impoverished, and it’s easy to understand the conclusion that as grievous as the crimes of the pre-Civil Rights era may have been, they were no longer relevant to anyone’s day-to-day life.

And people who understand themselves to be innocent (and not even the unwitting beneficiaries) of past injustices don’t see retribution as justified. Instead, they see it as hateful, and a repeat of the wrongs that had been perpetrated in the past. In other words, for those people who see Black anger as unjustified, that anger becomes little more than a self-serving cover for an expectation of inequality.

Whatever racism exists in the minds of those who believe in Replacement Theory need not be due to a feeling that they deserve to be superior. It can also be an understanding that they are the only ones who don’t feel that they deserve to be superior. There is a sense in which Replacement Theory rests on the idea that only those threatened with replacement are enlightened enough to not wish unwarranted harm upon their fellow men.

In the end, it doesn’t matter whether Replacement Theory is racist or not. It is corrosive, and that is bad enough. The heroic stories of an America gone by where everyone was united in a common project of liberty and justice for all are misremembrances at best and outright fabrications at worst. I would like to think that admitting to that would go at least some way in allowing people to set aside their grudges and resentments, but that’s likely asking more than can be delivered. Instead, I suspect that it will take a lifting of the sense of pervasive and unjust poverty that people carry around with them for things to change. But I’m not confident in that happening, either.

In the end, it’s easy to understand “Why some fear ‘replacement’.” Numbers are a bulwark against disappearance and political power means safety, plain and simple. It doesn’t take a particularly astute understanding of history to realize the bad things that have happened to disfavored groups that were too small to prevent others from victimizing them. There may be an element of racism in the idea that those not like the self lack a commitment to ideals of justice and equality. But it’s just as easily an understanding (correct or not) of human nature.