Fear Mongering, Resource Scarcity, and Replacement Theory
"Replacement Theory” (RT), the media affectation on the right, claims there's a conspiracy on the part of liberals and the left to expand the base of blacks and "people of color"---through open border migration---to gain voting advantages. This has allegedly weakened the white voting base, already weakened by the decline in the white birth rate.
This media has been successful in convincing many of the veracity of this “plot,” but these have been mostly a selective group of followers. A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted between the 19th and 22nd of May revealed that only 36% of Fox News viewers, for example, ever heard of RT. In fact, just 40% of American adults in the same poll said they had heard of it. And further, it found that only 34% of Americans believe in the underlying idea behind RT. Are these media elite the real conspirators?
Forget “conspiracy” for the moment, but census figures reveal we’ve been evolving into a darker society for some time. As of the last one, 61.6% of the population were categorized as white. This was down from 87.7% in 1970. Immigration policies in place since the early 1960s have been largely responsible. The mostly white European immigration ceased, primarily due to the stabilization of conditions in these home countries, and that from Asia, Africa and South America increased. Those with a darker pigment flooded in to fill the category of “people of color” which has become a fixed label in the recent censuses. So, the 38.4% in the recent census that are non-white includes 12.4% blacks and 26% “people of color.”
And the Democratic Party’s position on race and ethnicity since the mid-1970s has been inflected toward “diversity” as well, as Walter Benn Michaels has shown (The Trouble with Diversity, 2006). This has involved efforts to liberally absorb as many blacks and “people of color” as possible into the system under the mantle of inclusiveness. This has mainly been a demographic initiative, intended to expand the numbers of the previously excluded in the belief, a false one according to Michaels, that equality and social justice would follow the greater quantitative absorption. This initiative by the Democrats can hardly be tainted with conspiracy. They were merely translating a certain vision from the Civil Rights legacy into policy.
These changes are consistent with America’s origins as a country that welcomes migrants wanting to become legal immigrants and offers current citizens the opportunity to access the American Dream.
Some of the elite on the right no doubt truly fear retaliation from the expanding pool of darker citizens, perhaps wanting a return to “separate but equal.” But the fears on the part of many, especially in the Republican Party, that these new voting units who will allegedly replace whites and deliver the Democratic agenda whole, or in part, are surely unfounded. According to the AP, a “political shift is beginning to take hold across the US as tens of thousands of swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party’s gains in recent years are becoming Republicans” (Steve Peoples and Aaron Kessler, “More Than One Million Voters Switch to GOP,” 6/27/22). This shift is especially marked among suburban voters, but includes working class whites, Hispanics, blacks, Asians, as well as other ethnic groups.
And since many who’ve migrated from these new target countries to occupy the “people of color” category are educated and have significant financial means, it’s likely they will gravitate toward the Republicans.
Nevertheless, the drumbeat of fear-stoking continues, and it’s apparently effective. Who wants to relinquish their existence to someone else? The more often the replacement claims repeat, the stronger this fear can become, provoking a defensiveness on the part of those who imagine they’re being replaced.
This drumbeat is reinforced by some voices in what Michele Goldberg calls the “diversity, equity, and inclusion industry.” This “industry,” she suggests, has become “heavy handed” in dictating the terms for executing the anti-racist agenda and inadvertently advances the “right-wing narrative that progressive newspeak is colonizing every aspect of American life” (“The Absurd Side of the Social Justice Industry,” New York Times, 11/15/2021).
The object of her critique is not the anti-racist movement broadly construed, but the strain of it captured by the recent popularity of “Critical Race Theory” (CRT). The latter has become synonymous with the former in the minds of many, what motors the race narrative of the Biden Democrats among others. Many feel its execution has been too aggressive, alienating long-time supporters of the anti-racist movement that germinated from the Civil Rights Movement. Plus, the focus of CRT is primarily cultural. Diversity and skin color are the dominant categories through which social justice can now be secured.
The Democratic Party’s focus from the heyday of the Civil Rights Movement to the mid-1970s was on the integration of equality and social justice with the greater absorption of bodies. The evolution away from a strong left diversity, committed to equalizing the races and ethnicities across the spectrum of culture, politics, economics, and society, to a mildly liberal “diversity,” mostly committed to a top-down demographic inclusion, is consistent with the Party’s shift away from a strong representation of the lower and working classes since the 1970s. This helps explain the Party’s recent welcoming of wealthy and educated migrants of color and their inclusion in the “people of color” category together with indigenous blacks and other non-white ethnicities.
CRT surfaces in academia when the strong left diversity expires in the 1970s, remaining relatively dormant until the racialization of public discourse heats up in recent years, especially after the killing of George Floyd.
Voices from this “industry” now strongly suggest if not directly assert, for example, that the real source of this defensiveness comes from inherent beliefs in superiority. Whites do not merely want to avoid being replaced since they’ve always wanted to be on top of blacks and “people of color.” In fact, they’re not considered victims at all. And, of course, the alleged link to white nationalism approximates the truth for more and more when perps like the Buffalo and El Paso mass-shooters act through the authority of “manifestoes” that espouse it.
And they unfortunately pump up the right’s fantasies by promoting the idea---whenever there’s an atrocity involving a black or person of color---that the pool of white nationalists is rapidly increasing. But the tragic fact, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks white nationalists and their group affiliations, is that the “the number of white nationalist groups continues to decline after their numbers peaked at 155 in 2019. Many nationwide networks have contracted or entirely fallen apart.” This of course doesn’t defuse the threat. They’re also becoming mainstream, “trying to harness the grievances of Trump supporters into an openly ethnonationalist political movement---one they hope will become the core of the Republican Party” (“White Nationalist,” 3/9/2022). This visibility could possibly lead to greater control over extremist elements, or to an amplification of their power.
But much of the coverage in some liberal media outlets reinforces these tendencies. Through their repetition coverage and glaring omissions, they insinuate that most mass shootings are racially motivated when in fact a small percentage are (though the right is responsible for most of the political violence). They’ve avoided an evaluation of the 2020 riots that would expose the claims they were fully executed by blacks, a position held by many on the right, especially white nationalists. They’ve highlighted acts of violence against blacks by whites while mostly avoiding acts of violence against whites by blacks, or blacks against blacks, thus stoking the fears of many that a racial war could be imminent.
Does a skewed barrage of media reporting on whites committing violence against blacks, for example, incite existing or potential white supremacists?
In this polarized climate, deranged copycat killers surely lie in wait, pushed to perform by the sudden uptick in linguistic bravado from all extremes, perhaps believing the media-spawned alarmism about the pervasiveness of white nationalists and thus feeling comfortable now to join the ranks. Many may see the “evidence” on the TV screens showing a preponderance of black ad images as proof positive---thanks to segments of the right-wing media---that we’re in the throes of a black supremacy movement (Though a clear distortion: the mass of unseen, victimized blacks are no better off now than before George Floyd).
The sad truth is, according to the census data, that black violent crime is four times that of whites when adjusted for population differences. And this multiple is much higher when compared to other protected ethnic groups. Plus, the prevalent profiling narrative, that white cops target blacks, isn’t supported by independent peer reviewed research (Charles Menifield, Geiguen Shin, and Logan Strother, “Do White Law Enforcement Officers Target Minority Suspects?” Public Administration Review, January/February 2019). This is not to suggest such targeting doesn’t exist. Given the extent of crime in the black community, and the surplus of white cops in the system (70% are white), clashes are inevitable, but they can’t be easily reduced to racism.
Given the significant deficits that slavery has left among the black population, a narrative that attempts to balance the books makes a degree of sense in these polarized times. And, of course, the Biden administration, indebted to the black vote in South Carolina for propelling it to the Democratic nomination, has reinforced this historical correction. The census data doesn’t fully reflect these issues, especially the aftereffects from slavery that have never been excised from the communities and continue to spawn crime, and the institutional prejudices against blacks that mark them from an early age.
But the cause of anti-racism would be best served if the full factual stories were factored into an open discussion about these very real deficits. We need greater access to a more diverse and inclusive media. The claims of RT on the right and the “diversity, equity and inclusion industry” on the left, mutually invested narratives contrived by elite interests, inadvertently advance each other’s causes, the resulting media saturation blocking needed debates on racism.
What needs attention in these debates is how a strong left diversity from the Civil Rights era can be politically re-engineered. This could deliver the resources to address the epidemic of inequality affecting so many, especially blacks and “people of color.” A focus on correcting the plight of the yet to be placed Americans, those yet to secure stable existences and thus more likely to be seduced by the fear mongering of RT rhetoric---and mostly ignored by these interests---poses the best opportunity to divest the extremes and make real progress toward eliminating racism.
But the current structure of the economy is a sure impediment. The society of extreme inequality we’ve inherited, evident in the ever-greater share of wealth by the 1%, and which plagues all racial and ethnic groups, not just whites, bodes little hope for the future for many not securely placed. The artificial scarcity of resources for those at the bottom, driven by an economy that privileges monopolistic price-gouging and low wages, for example, is indenturing many to lives of partial slavery. This seeds toxic attitudes toward others and the conditions for hate mongering. It’s revealing that the Buffalo shooter’s “manifesto” and those of the El Paso and Christchurch shooters as well, point to resource inequality as a crucial deficit of our times (unfortunately none of them were able to reconcile this issue with the reason for killing innocent people!).
While weak on analysis and strong on hate mongering, this waving at the issue of resource inequality by these “manifesto”-shooters is indeed symptomatic of what this generation faces, according to Murtaza Hussain. More and more young people are becoming nihilistic and turning to the right in desperation because they see little hope for the future (Intercept, “Racist ‘Replacement’ Conspiracy is Undergirded by a Real Resource Scarcity,” 5/17/2022).
The tendency to blame migrants is often referenced as the result of this hopelessness, a xenophobic targeting of others for blocking the success of domestic citizens. Thumbs up or down on immigration distorts the issues, however. Many who are not blinded by right wing media understand that certain categories of workers, especially laborers, are necessary for the expansion of the economy. What many are not so excited about is the active recruitment by universities and corporations of students and professionals from other countries, and often from “people of color” ones as well. Access to the professions has been extremely competitive for some time in this country, and such recruitment initiatives, underway now for generations, frustrate parents who hope to get their children into good colleges someday and into the professions. Especially when these parents are virtual wage slaves and likely to face extreme tuition-indebtedness. These conditions can unfortunately make many believe their country has sold them out.
And underemployment, running over 20%, one of the mostly ignored national crises, certainly compounds this issue.
There was a march on Washington by the Poor People’s Campaign on June 18th that highlighted the plight of the unplaced. According to William Barber, one of its organizers, "the nation cannot ultimately expect any kind of economic stability as long as you have a constituency of over 140 million people living at the bottom---struggling at the bottom” (“Poor People’s Campaign Demands Meeting with Biden,” Kenny Stancil, Common Dreams, 6/6/2022). And these millions are made up of a disproportionate number of blacks and “people of color.”
Another impediment to divesting extremes and eliminating racism is the generalizing to groups, the failure to discriminate between the different levels of prosperity---and impoverishment---within them, a byproduct of the race narrative circulated by the “diversity, equity and inclusion industry.” This blinds us to performance outcomes that contradict the generalizations. This in no way suggests, however, that the conservative reliance on individual character is the needed antidote.
This generalizing to groups bias is reflected in the AMA’s recent updating of its language pertaining to racial equity, for example, a stated accommodation to Critical Race Theory (CRT). “People of Color” and blacks, previously identified as “vulnerable” groups, are now “oppressed” groups (A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts). It’s not that this is a false designation. Many in these groups are “oppressed.” The issue is that the AMA attributes this quality to entire groups. It also assigns the power associated with whiteness to all whites. Surely not all blacks and “people of color” are oppressed. The data shows clearly that each of these groups contains a significant upper-middle and upper class. And the millions of working-class whites in this country whose economic conditions have remained stagnant for generations will certainly flinch when told by sundry spokespeople that they’ve benefited disproportionately from their skin color!
We urgently need debates about how our scarcity-constructed economy is fomenting fear and division within and among the races, and especially how cultural languages are reinforcing these effects.