So Sad to be White in America Today? Huh?

 

The replacement theorists, led by people like Tucker Carlson and other White supremacists – many of them violent or training for future violence – tell you how discriminated against they are, how White Americans are subsidizing minorities in everything from rent to education. They tell you they need guns to protect themselves against rising minority people of color. Many of the recent spate of red state gun-enabling legislation, such as the absurd “stand your ground” laws, are aimed at making it easier for Whites to kill minorities in clearly avoidable circumstances.

But who really fears being assaulted in the United States? What are the crime statistics? “According to a new study from Pew Research, 90% of Asian Americans worry that they might be threatened or attacked because of their ethnicity. Of the 90% of who worry, one-third have changed their daily routine and schedule out of fear of an attack. By comparison, about 32% of Black Americans worry about being attacked because of their race or identity, 14% of Hispanic Americans, and only 4% of white Americans.” FastCompany.com, May 27th. Culturally, Asians are less likely to report an assault than average, so the numbers might not remotely reflect the issue.

Indeed, that Pew Research Report (released May 9th based on a poll taken in April), tells us: “While roughly two-thirds of Asian adults say violence against Asian Americans is increasing, fewer than half of White (44%), Black (35%) and Hispanic (33%) adults say the same.” Why the disparity? As FastCompany.com reports, 2020-21 showed a 2,000 percent increase in assaults against Asians over past years, rather directly tied to blame against “China” for COVID that was a constant theme during the Trump presidency. Unfortunately, that vestigial hatred seems to have lingered, becoming more solidly embedded in replacement theory lore. That any Americans feel violence against them is bad enough, but with a 2,000 percent increase in actual assaults, Asian Americans have a point.

What is most troubling is the increasing acceptance of racism (and related ethnic, religious and gender biases) as a legitimate all-American beliefs. While this feature remains a minority view, it is often expressed in conservative states where those biased White minorities have disproportionate representation, whether by voting restrictions, gerrymandering or targeted control over specific government bodies (like local school districts). Rural states with few major urban centers also have clearly greater power – with two US Senators per state without regard to population – than heavily populated urban states. Suppression of acknowledging true disadvantage and continued discrimination is now embraced in the spate of red state “culture wars,” where historically vetted facts and current proof of continued discrimination are prevented, censored (from public schools to libraries under statutory “anti-CRT” limitations) or purposely ignored.

Here's the statistical reality and according to our recent Census: African Americans account for a mere 12.1% of our population, Hispanic or Latino, 18.7% and Asian, a mere 5.9%. The United States is still overwhelmingly White (57%). What is troubling is the rising legitimization of racism, the acceptance that racism is not contrary to American values (diversity is the enemy of replacement theorists), the use of social and mass media further to legitimize racism and the open acceptance of violent racial attacks as the new normal. These tenets are profoundly un-American. While younger and better educated demographics reflect a greater tolerance for individual differences, those pockets of overt and sometimes dangerous bigotry have begun to combine and speak through their elected representatives.

A February 21, 2019 study by the Public Religion Research Institute] (PRRI) and The Atlantic expresses the changes, which have only amplified since the pandemic hit: “In terms of both geography and culture, America is largely sorted by political identity. In a representative, random survey of slightly more than 1,000 people taken in December (2018), PRRI and The Atlantic found that just under a quarter of Americans say they seldom or never interact with people who don’t share their partisan affiliation. Black and Hispanic people were more likely than whites to describe their lives this way, although education made a big difference among whites: 27 percent of non-college-educated whites said they seldom or never encounter people from a different political party, compared with just 6 percent of college-educated whites.

“Even those Americans who regularly encounter political diversity don’t necessarily choose it, however. Democrats, independents, and Republicans seem to mingle most in spaces where people don’t have much of an option about being there. According to the survey, roughly three-quarters of Americans’ interactions with people from another political party happen at work. Other spheres of life are significantly more politically divided: Less than half of respondents said they encounter political differences among their friends. Only 39 percent said they see political diversity within their families, and vanishingly few people said they encounter ideological diversity at religious services or community meetings. Traditionally, researchers have seen these spaces as places where people can build strong relationships and practice the habits of democracy. The PRRI/Atlantic findings add to growing evidence that these institutions are becoming weaker—or, at the very least, more segregated by identity. ‘If you’re thinking from a participatory democracy model, you would hope to see these numbers much higher,’ said Robert P. Jones, the CEO of PRRI.”

From a more global perspective, looking at personal freedom and representational democracy in 2022, the non-profit Freedom House, which analyzes the underlying metrics, finds the United States slip-sliding away from its purported tolerance of diversity, individuals’ rights to be themselves and true representative democracy: “Despite the United States' reputation as the freest country in the world, Freedom House gives the U.S. a score of 83/100 — which means the country doesn’t even make the top 50… While Americans enjoy plenty of basic rights, accusations of government corruption and election fraud, growing economic inequality and controversial policies on immigrants and asylum seekers have dropped the country's ranking… Freedom House says gerrymandering and voting restrictions have also impinged on the rights of U.S. citizens.” We can and must do better!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I cringe at the usurpation of the word “patriot” by bigots, the demeaning epitome of true Judeo-Christian values disparaged as “woke,” and the general rising suggestion that the only correct vision of America is as a White Christian nation.