I began this post below before hearing the news of the horrific mass murder this weekend in Buffalo, NY. I want to preference the post with the statement by from the Children’s Defense Fund, since it so clearly states what needs to be done.
Children’s Defense Fund condemns the racist act of domestic terrorism that took the lives of 10 people and wounded three others in Buffalo this weekend. Most importantly, we see and stand beside the Masten Park neighborhood and the greater East Buffalo community who have been terrorized by this attack. We also recognize that the weight of this hate, lack of safety, and accompanying trauma is felt by Black communities, families, and children daily.
This attack is not just about a misguided 18-year-old or our country’s lack of gun control or social media’s rapid dissemination of hateful ideologies. This attack is about white supremacist thinking aligned with systematic oppression and subjugation, which has been embedded in America since its inception. Black children are told through horrific violence of the kind that took place in Buffalo, but also through the poverty they are forced to endure and the kinds of schools they are able to attend, that they are not safe and that they do not deserve an equal opportunity to thrive.
The racialized hate that occurred in Buffalo is prevalent across our nation. The weight of this hate falls disproportionately on Black children, and we will not stand for it. Children’s Defense Fund will continue working alongside children, youth, families, and communities to create a society that values all children equally.
In solidarity,
Rev. Dr. Starsky Wilson, President
& CEO, Children’s Defense Fund
Replacement Theory is not New
They say nothing is new under the sun. There are historical precedents for almost everything. For example, today’s runaway inequality replicates, in many respects, the rise of the robber barons of the late 1800s, but on steroids. So too, are the rightwing attacks on migrants from Mexico (and other persons of color) today under the guise of the so-called Replacement Theory, a terrifying rerun of racist attacks against other migrants in the early 1900s.
Some background: In the period after the Civil War, large numbers of Europeans began migrating to the US from Southern and Eastern Europe. These migrants were being driven by the same forces that are driving migration today – extreme poverty and violence in their home countries. Like today’s migrants, they sought opportunity, often not only for themselves, but for their children. Free public education was a major draw. Perhaps the only difference is that today the US is, in most cases, the main contributor to the conditions driving the current migration, particularly from Mexico and Central America.
What is also not new, is the reaction of many “native born whites” to these migrants. In the early 1900s, based on pseudo-scientific ideas about racial superiority that were later adopted by the Nazis, fears were raised that the birthright of “real” Americans (those who migrated from Anglo-Saxon countries in Northern and Western Europe), the very foundations on which the US democracy was supposedly based, was being threatened by the migrants, who should therefore not be accepted as full-fledged Americans, hence their identification as Italian-Americans, Polish-Americans, etc. Crowded in cities, living in rundown slums and taken advantage of by the political boss system, these hyphenated Americans were viewed as a threat to replace the existing order. (Aside: When they became citizens, they tended to vote for Democrats.)
The result was frequent violence against the Southern and Eastern Europeans, who were not only darker than the Anglo-Saxons, but practiced different religions (Catholicism and Judaism). These migrants came to occupy a place in the American caste system between BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) and Anglo-Saxons and were frequently targeted by the Klan and other openly racist groups.
Eventually laws were passed which set quotas on immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and reduced it to a trickle. Those laws remained in effect until the 1950s, when they were revised to allow refugees from WWII and from areas of Cold War conflict to enter the US. By that time the Eastern and Southern European migrants had been integrated into Anglo-Saxon America through the experience of 15 million young men and women (more than 10% of the population) who served together in the military in WWII. Bonded by that common experience (which was recorded in works of fiction and non-fiction from the time period), the “greatest generation” incorporated the various hyphenated Americans into the “white America”.
There was no integration of 1 million Black Americans who served in segregated units during the war. Instead, the color line was reinforced and the division between whites and nonwhites was enhanced. What’s important to note here is that these racial caste divisions are socially defined. There are no defining biological differences between races other than skin color and even that depends on environment. I used to comment to my best friend in high school, whose parents came from Belgium, that by the end of summer, he was as dark skinned as many Blacks. And in other countries with a significant population of descendants from Africa (for example Brazil), individuals who would be classified as Black in the US, are classified as white.
My point here is that what is socially defined can be changed by society. The example of what changed as a result of WWII, because of integration, can be duplicated, but it must not be duplicated by erasing the culture and history of any of the various peoples! (More on this in future posts)
One more note. Perhaps you’ve noticed that I used the term migrants instead of immigrants. That’s because the term immigration implies that national borders are sacrosanct. But borders change, usually as a result of war. One only has to look at what happened after WWI, and WWII and the end of the Cold War. How does this relate to the current migrations across the southern borders of the US? These borders were established when the US seized ½ of all the territory of Mexico after the Mexican American War, a war that, I might add, was instigated by the US. So, I guess we should understand the migration from Mexico as a reclamation by the migrants of what was historically part of their country, Mexico.
Welcome home compañeros!
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