People who hold to the Great Replacement Theorythat Jews and Liberals are stirring up People of Color to overthrow White people fill us with so much scorn that, in demonizing them for demonizing us, we become part of the problem. In our increasingly diverse and multi-cultural America, can we find the trust we need to work together?
One of the pleasures of retirement is having an hour to sit down with the New York Times and a cup of coffee first thing in the morning. Sadly, the apocalyptically bad news we have been treated to lately leaves me shaken with horror at the evil loose in the world rather than well-informed and ready to start my day.
I know, I know, even the Good Grey Lady adheres to the journalistic precept that if it bleeds, it leads. Nevertheless, I find it hard to deal with my feelings after she greets me every single day with headlines screaming MURDER! MAYHEM! PANDEMIC! SPECIES EXTINCTION! MONKEYPOX!
As my fellow New York Times readers can attest, the murder and mayhem motif often pervades an entire issue of the paper.
That is why on May 16, the Monday after an especially horrific weekend massacre of Black shoppers by an 18-year-old under the influence of Replacement Theory, my gloom was (ever so slightly) lifted by two other articles in the issue, one about Scorn and the other about Trust.
Replacement theory is an illogical medley of eugenics, race hatred, and White supremacy that has been pervasive in America from slavery times to the present.
After the First World War, Black veterans (many still in uniform) were brutally tortured and lynched simply for having served in the army. Whites feared that having been trained to fight, they would unite to overthrow White civilization.
Between the wars, all attempts at anti-lynching legislation were fiercely resisted by Congress, with President Roosevelt consistently withholding his support because he needed to placate White southern Democrats. It wasnt until this year, on March 29, that the Emmet Till Antilynching Act, named for a 14-year-old brutally murdered in 1955, was finally signed into law.
American aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, an America Firster and Nazi sympathizer, was an enthusiastic supporter of the eugenics theory that considers genetics an indicator of human worth, with the White race inherently superior to all others.
Hitler was encouraged by the idea that Race mingling and immigration were undermining the Aryan race; he used eugenics as an anti-Semitic dog-whistle to persuade German citizens that Jews were plotting to replace them.
Replacement theory feeds on the long-held philosophy of Western dualism which accepts an existential polarity in all phenomena. The statement underpinning the notion of replacement if People of Color gain something, Whites will automatically lose it is a fallacy because it derives from a win/lose dualism rather than win/win assumption.
Its corollary that power always means power/over and never power/with arouses fear among Whites that, if you let Black and Brown people win elections, they will inevitably treat White people with the same kind of viciousness that White people have historically inflicted on them.
You can understand why, having listened to Republican Senators and Representatives and neo-fascist pundits like Tucker Carlson raving about Replacement Theory, I want to heap my (elite, liberal) scorn upon them all.
When I read Anglican Priest Tish Harrison Warrens editorial that America has a Scorn Problem in the same issue, I realized that my loathing for Republicans and their allies was part of the problem.
Rev. Warren writes about a toxic form of polarization characterized by a basic abhorrence for their opponents an othering in which a group conceives of its opponents as wholly alien in every way. Shes right: if I consider Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson abhorrent as a human being, I am complicit in the polarization, and hence deterioration of American democracy: Too often we find people with different opinions not just wrong, but bad, with the result that this hatred toward our opponents and the accompanying habit of moralism is destroying us as a people.
Though my feelings about Tucker Carlson arise from my most deeply held moral values, in scorning him and his values, am I knocking myself off my own higher moral ground?
One of my basic principles is to honor the dignity and worth of every individual, which has to include Republican Party members and the people they stir up.
To honor anyone, I must understand them: in this case, I need to figure out what are they so angry about? The angry people I know are often reacting to some kind of unconscious fear or grief. Or, as Black American writer James Baldwin puts it in The Fire Next Time, I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
I am so intensively introspective (I have kept a diary since I was 8 years old and have benefited from 30 years of talk therapy) that it is hard for me to accept the fact that most people entirely avoid probing the sources of their emotions; they feel vague emanations of resentment and anguish, but they do not know why these emotions set them off.
As psychoanalyst Carl Jung puts it, If we remember that there are many people who understand nothing at all about themselves, we shall be less surprised at the realization that there are also people who are utterly unaware of their actual conflicts. (quoted from New Paths in Psychology)
What are adherents to American neo-fascism, White Supremacy, and conspiracy theories like QAnon and Replacement so afraid of?
With the historical shift in the American White population from majority to minority, White people fear a loss of power which they are convinced will lead to racial subjugation (see my Impakter article on The Tyranny of Merit).
What are they grieving? They are grieving not only power and supremacy but normativity, the security of knowing that it is your norms and values, not anybody elses, that determine civic and cultural life. Amid such existential polarization, how can we enact our commonality?
Had I not come across a third article in my paper, my morning read might have left me completely demoralized. Damien Cave, in his analysis of Australian vs. American Covid death rates, suggests that our American problem is one of trust: simply put, we dont trust each other, our science, or our institutions.
When the pandemic began,76 percent of Australianssaid they trusted the health care system (compared witharound 34 percentof Americans), and 93 percent of Australiansreportedbeing able to get support in times of crisis from people living outside their household.
Former President Donald Trump and his party insisted that science could not be trusted: forget about covid, forget about masks and vaccinations -inject your intestines with bleach and you would be just fine.
Worst of all, Trump cast aside a detailed plan for just such a pandemic that had been painstakingly assembled by the Obama administration because President Obama was a bi-racial liberal with an elitist education, which made everything he did and said a lie.
Although I have no doubt that the profit-based and poorly organized health system in the United States contributed significantly to the different effects Covid had on our population, Damien argues that it is their belief in the common good that saved so many Australians and that its lack in America sent over one million Americans to their unnecessary deaths.
When Australians are asked why they accepted the countrys many lockdowns, its once-closed international and state borders, its quarantine rules, and then its vaccine mandates for certain professions or restaurants and large events, they tend to voice a version of the same response: Its not just about me. (italics mine)
Australians ability to act on each others behalf is admirable, but our diversity puts America in a somewhat different position. While we are a fully multi-cultural people, Australia has a larger (and stable) component ( 76%) that identifies as White or European; moreover, it is only beginning to experience now the impact of immigration they have long resisted. Until recently their relatively homogenous culture and disregard for its aboriginal legacy has no doubt made it easier for Australians to hold values in common than for Americans that have a far more diverse society.
According to the 2020 census, the United States is now 57.3% White, with the rest Hispanic, Black, Asian, and Native American. The trend is towards even greater minority population, likely to outnumber Whites in the next decade.
The good news amid this pronounced population shift is that our civic culture our Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Rule of Law, provides a basis for consensus in diversity.
Perennially endangered by our narrow-minded tribalism and hyper-individualism, we have historically contracted for a pluralistic, big-tent democracy. Nonetheless, there is no question that the scorn we need to transcend and the trust we need to develop will be a much more complex and difficult achievement than in a country like Australia.
In our scorn-ridden nation riven by partisan and tribal enmity, how can we possibly effect a common good? The first thing is to recognize that, not just morally but tactically, scorn doesnt work: it merely leads to more divisiveness, less consensus, and paralytic inaction.
The non-violent strategy developed by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King remains an effective tool for social change. Though known as passive resistance, non-violence is a tough-minded strategy that requires courage, persistence, and tactical wiliness.
In the Civil Rights Movement, the non-violence practiced by huge marches of men, women, and children attacked by police with fire hoses and dogs had a tremendous appeal to the conscience of the rest of the country, as we watched the whole thing on television.
In our present situation, verbal non-violence (which we could also term verbal non-scorning) is effective in conversing with people you (violently) disagree with. Respectful and open-minded bipartisan dialogue is a key tactic in an environmental organization I work with, the Citizens Climate Lobby. (see my Impakter article, Making Political Sausage).
One of the most delightful moments in my life as a political activist was watching our Conservative Republican Congressman open up during more than two years of conversation until, eventually, he did what we (respectfully) asked.
This shift from scorn to trust is extremely difficult to achieve and requires lots of practice, which is why organizations like Braver Angels have devised ways to get people who would ordinarily express nothing but scorn towards each other into debates and discussions based on respect for their mutual humanity. Here is what they teach:
A few days after the May 16 issue of the New York Times, there was a front-page article about an out-and-out diversity miracle.
In Scarred by a Racist Past, a Georgia County Booms, Jonathan Weisman describes Forsyth County, which has a long history of lynching and intimidating Blacks: The people who drove Forsyths Black residents from their homes and farms had no name for their hatred, no Great Replacement or White Genocide theories, but the notion that other races were plotting to replace the white inhabitants took murderous form more than a century ago.
Miracle of miracles, when the diverse populations of nearby Fulton County finally overflowed into Forsyth in the 1990s, bringing not only Blacks but also Asians, Asian Indians, Hispanics (and, lately, Ukrainians), the economy boomed, leaving White Forsyth real estate saleswoman Maria Zaragoza declaring that diversity can never be bad in my book.
Diversity is inevitable, economically viable, and, if you just open your mind to how interesting other people are, profoundly moving and, actually, enjoyable. Best of all, promoting diversity engages us in promoting our basic American values lets go for it!
Editors Note: The opinions expressed here by Impakter.com columnists are their own, not those of Impakter.com In the Featured Photo:Civil Rights march on Washington, Sept. 2, 2003 Credit:U.S. National Archives
Read the rest here:
Political Polarization in America: The Way Forward? - Impakter
- Ridding the Race of His Defective Blood Eugenics in the Journal, 19061948 | NEJM - nejm.org - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- The Progressive Ideas That Fueled America's Eugenics Movement | Bradley Thomas - Foundation for Economic Education - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- Few People Know The Real Story About North Carolinas Eugenics Program - Only In Your State - March 4th, 2024 [March 4th, 2024]
- University Art Museums Become Unlikely Homes for These Portraits - The New York Times - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Real-world Influences of Frank Herbert's 'Dune' - Dune News Net - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Everything you don't know about neurodiversity The Mass Media - The Mass Media - October 23rd, 2023 [October 23rd, 2023]
- Details of Japans experiment with eugenic sterilization released - BioEdge - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Give more people with learning disabilities the chance to work ... - EurekAlert - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- 'They Cloned Tyrone' ending explained - Mashable - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Failing Learning Disabled People: The Contradictions of 1945 ... - Byline Times - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- What happened during Marc Tessier-Lavigne's tenure as Stanford ... - Palo Alto Online - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Planned Parenthood: 'Virginity is a social construct' - The Christian Institute - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Is evolutionary biology racist? Why Evolution Is True - Why Evolution Is True - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Beware the anti-democratic liberal centre - Morning Star Online - July 26th, 2023 [July 26th, 2023]
- Unveiling the dark past: eugenics and its role in legitimising racism - Epigram - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3 Has the MCU's Scariest Villain - CBR - Comic Book Resources - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Fox News in Spanish bombards viewers with right-wing propaganda - MSNBC - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- The Reproductive Movement Must Reclaim Its Radical Roots and Be ... - Literary Hub - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- 3 judges who chipped away abortion rights to hear federal abortion pill appeal - ABC News - May 18th, 2023 [May 18th, 2023]
- Eugenics: Definition, Movement & Meaning - HISTORY - HISTORY - January 22nd, 2023 [January 22nd, 2023]
- Iris flower data set - Wikipedia - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Canadas policies are a death sentence for disabled people. The country must reckon with its modern eugenics - Toronto Star - December 28th, 2022 [December 28th, 2022]
- Op-Ed: Eugenics is making a comeback. Stop it in its tracks - Los ... - November 23rd, 2022 [November 23rd, 2022]
- Eugenics, Anti-Immigration Laws Of The Past Still Resonate Today ... - November 21st, 2022 [November 21st, 2022]
- Eugenics: Its Origin and Development (1883 - Present) - Genome.gov - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- 150000 Black Women Were Forced Into the Eugenics Program - History of Yesterday - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- 20 million black babies have been aborted since Roe v. Wade. Where is the equity in that? - Washington Examiner - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- What Is a 'Healthy' Cereal, Anyway? - Lifehacker - October 15th, 2022 [October 15th, 2022]
- Eugenics and Scientific Racism - Genome.gov - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Eugenics Definition & Meaning | Dictionary.com - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The shameful support of eugenics by the Lewiston Evening Journal - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Understanding "longtermism": Why this suddenly influential philosophy ... - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- NYU Local: Women's Health: Involuntary Sterilization Then and Now - Government Accountability Project - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- A Desire to Cure, Not to Punish: Women Physicians and Eugenics in the American West, 19001930 by Jacqueline D. Antonovich - Smith College Grcourt Gate - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- In unaired portions of Tucker Carlson interview, Ye made antisemitic remarks, spoke of fake children infiltrating his home - The Hill - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Black women and reproductive freedom meet a crossroad in the fight for abortion rights - Afro American - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- The difference between race and ethnicityand why it matters - Fast Company - October 13th, 2022 [October 13th, 2022]
- Letter to the Editor Removal of Luther West's name is just - North Wind Online - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- Behind the Shield: The Power and Politics of the NFL - Boing Boing - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- I Lived In An Asylum Turned Childrens Institution, Said To Be Haunted By Its Horrifying Past. - HuffPost - October 11th, 2022 [October 11th, 2022]
- The Evolution of Godless Practices: Eugenics, Infanticide, and Transhumanism - The Epoch Times - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Disability campaigners accuse government of 'back-door eugenics' as families struggle to survive inflation - Morning Star Online - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Fox News host predicts that clean energy will lead to eugenics - Media Matters for America - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Rockwell Kent at the Fleming: Art into hands of many, rather than the few - Rutland Herald - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Review: 'Amsterdam' is a star-filled comedy that loses its way - Star Tribune - October 8th, 2022 [October 8th, 2022]
- Pros & Cons of Eugenics | Healthfully - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- History Highlight: Proponents of eugenics, population control, and ... - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- 31 days of horror movies: 2007s Frontiers is a masterpiece of French Extremity - 1428 Elm - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Explaining Church Teaching on IVF The Torch | Boston College's Catholic Newspaper - The Torch - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- The Vaccine That Could Cure America: Reversing Roe - The Chattanoogan - October 2nd, 2022 [October 2nd, 2022]
- Takeaways from Episode 1 of The U.S. and the Holocaust - - St. Louis Jewish Light - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- Lloyd Benes: Challenging 8 arguments that support unrestricted abortion - Loveland Reporter-Herald - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- 11 Disability Rights Activists on Where the Fight for Justice Stands - Teen Vogue - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- What Ballot Initiatives Will Californians Face in the Nov. 8th Election? - California Globe - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- The U.S. and the Holocaust. Revisiting America's Role | THIRTEEN - New York Public Media - MetroFocus - September 20th, 2022 [September 20th, 2022]
- A new University of Virginia board member once brought a eugenicist to campus. Students are angry. - Higher Ed Dive - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- World Wars, Eugenics, Mass Extinctions: Would You Believe Were Talking About Splatoon? - Kotaku Australia - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Freaks Controversy Explained: Was Tod Browning's 1932 Horror Movie Exploitative Or Progressive? - /Film - September 11th, 2022 [September 11th, 2022]
- Eugenics Wars | Memory Alpha | Fandom - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Behind the Scenes: The U.S. and the Holocaust - GBH News - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- The 32 Most Anticipated TV Shows of Fall 2022 - TIME - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- BSO and GBH Host 'An Evening With Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, And Sarah Botstein' at Symphony Hall Next Month - Broadway World - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Paper: Train future psychologists to dismantle racism, injustice in society - University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- Croydons Pearson feels the pressure in MasterChef kitchen - Inside Croydon - August 30th, 2022 [August 30th, 2022]
- SCOTUS Claims Abortion Proponents Are Motivated by Eugenics and Eliminating the 'Unfit'But History Says Otherwise - Ms. Magazine - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Birth of the Abortion Industrial Complex: Eugenics Evolves - Capital Research Center - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Mendels genetic revolution and the legacy of scientific racism - Peoples Dispatch - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- When Sperm And Eggs Are Monetized, Existence Is Transactional - The Federalist - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Historian shares history of the dark ending of the diverse Malaga Island community - Press Herald - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- Why We Are Not 'In This Together' - LA Progressive - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- How Close Are We to War with China? | Guests: Rep. Chris Stewart & Eric Schmitt | 8/2/22 - The Glenn Beck Program - iHeartRadio - August 6th, 2022 [August 6th, 2022]
- STAM: Alma Adams, eugenics and radical abortion The North State Journal - North State Journal - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- Moving from Rights to Justice: Uprooting Ableism and Cultivating Disability Justice - Next City - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- Body politics: the secret history of the US anti-abortion movement - The Guardian - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- 'The View' will tap Alyssa Farah Griffin as permanent co-host following Meghan McCain exit, sources say - FOX Bangor/ABC 7 News and Stories - July 29th, 2022 [July 29th, 2022]
- There's a straight line from eugenics to 'biblical family values' to white supremacy and the anti-abortion movement - Baptist News Global - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- Viewpoint: In response to historical misuse of genetics to defend eugenics, some egalitarians call for defunding. Here's why that's not the solution -... - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- To Be or Not to Be a Mother: A Timeless Question with New Urgency - Justia Verdict - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- Another point of view - Arkansas Online - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]
- A Vasectomy Historian on Why Male Sterilization Won't Solve the Abortion Problem - MEL Magazine - July 7th, 2022 [July 7th, 2022]