This story has four parts; an uproar on the campus of Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, GA; the French origins of the theory; how it infiltrated the Trump White administration and American foreign policy, and finally, a mass shooter in Buffalo, NY targeting Black people because of what he read about Great Replacement.
Georgia Southern University began its life in 1906 as the First District Agricultural & Mechanical School, which as was the norm at that time was only open to white students. It’s about an hour northwest of Savannah, GA, and a part of the University of Georgia system. The school now has about 20,000 students including campuses in Hinesville, GA, and Savannah, GA. It is reported to have a “sizable black population and “medium” diversity.
Apparently, a novel called, “Make Your Home Among Strangers,” by Jennine Capó Crucet is required reading for some first-year students and they were fortunate enough to have the author come to the school for a reading and signing. The book is about the experiences of a first-generation Cuban American woman struggling to navigate a mostly white elite college.
Ms. Crucet also spoke about the reality of white privilege. In response, several white students held a book burning. They also flooded Crucet’s Twitter account with pictures of torn pages from the book and thinly veiled threats. A second event with the author, an Associate Professor at the University of Nebraska, was canceled at her request out of safety concerns. Many minority students told her the experience helped them identify with the protagonist in the book. She responded:
“To think of those students watching as a group of their peers burned that story — effectively erasing them on the campus they are expected to think of as a safe space — feels devastating.”
That was the beginning of the story, not the ending. Days afterward, in the class where the book was required reading. An angry white student, Charles Robertson, gave a PowerPoint presentation outlining the Great Replacement Theory which is popular among white supremacists who are concerned about the falling birth rates among white women. From that, they extrapolate that they will ultimately be replaced by minorities and it will ultimately lead to not only the gradual replacement but the extinction of white people by people of color. Robertson said the immigration policies of Western countries were designed to strategically populate European countries with nonwhite immigrants from the developing countries to compensate for declining white birth rates.
This created an uproar among the minority students but Mr. Robertson had no reason to be concerned. The school firmly backed his First Amendment Rights and those of the students who burned the books and threatened the author. A statement by the University read:
“While it is difficult to hear presentations with which we vehemently disagree, we must uphold the Constitution of the United States. It is even more reason why we at Georgia Southern University must continue our unwavering commitment to equity and inclusion.”
Needless to say, no arrests were made, the minority students feared the white students who supported the Great Replacement Theory would only be emboldened by their success.”
“Now they feel very comfortable, very brave to do something worse. The administration should do something before something else happens.” — Daniela Rodriguez — Savannah Undocumented Youth Alliance
At this point, I decided to research the Great Replacement Theory to see if this was really a thing that kept some white people lying awake at night? Apparently, the theory is of French origin. The author Renaud Camus (not to be confused with the Nobel-Prize winning French-Algerian Albert Camus) wrote two books in 2010 and 2011 which outlined his theory. Camus was concerned about the French being replaced by primarily Africans (he was especially concerned about Muslims). I would remind Camus of the French conscription policy which brought hundreds of thousands of Africans to France against their will to fight their wars and run their factories.
“A people was here, stable, had been occupying the same territory for fifteen or twenty centuries. And suddenly, very quickly, in one or two generations, one or several other peoples substitute themselves for him. He is replaced, it is not him anymore.”
His theory has been expounded upon and adopted by white supremacists around the world, gaining particular popularity in the United States. On a hunch, I Googled, White House Advisor “Stephen Miller and Great Replacement Theory,” and guess what? The person who is shaping America’s immigration policy under President Donald Trump is a full-on advocate of the Great Replacement Theory. A series of his e-mails show him promoting this and multiple other theories and you can look back at our government policies including family separation and caging of immigrant children and understand where they come from.
I don’t know where on the slippery slope we are when it comes to white supremacy and white nationalism? I submit when it’s being presented in our colleges in a powerpoint presentation and is the basis for our immigration policy. We’re well along the way. There is a movement to have Stephen Miller ousted from the White House based on his racist views. Those requests have to date been ignored. Maybe it’s time more people spoke up?
What the constant repetition of the Great Replacement Theory lead to was someone picking up multiple guns and heading into a grocery store looking to kill Black people. The 18-year-old gunman researched the area and scouted the location to ensure he would find Black people to kill. There came a point where he turned his gun on a white cashier, then lowered his gun and apologized, and moved on to hunt Black people.
The Great Replacement Theory has escaped the darkest corners of the Internet and has hit the mainstream, advocated by Tucker Carlson and others at Fox News. It’s time to shut them down by legal means such as boycotting. To do otherwise is to support the advance of the theory and future mass shootings.
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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