What Charlottesville Illuminated: The Core Assumption at the Heart of the “You will not replace us” Chant is Disturbingly Widespread

Friends,

As educators, we know that history is not just about the past—it’s about how we understand the present and imagine the future. That’s why I want to highlight this important collection from Politico Magazine, published one year after the violent white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Taking place during the first year of the Trump administration, Charlottesville marked what many at the time understood as a turning point in America’s confrontation with racism, political extremism, and white nationalist ideology.

Today, we know more. What once seemed like a fringe movement has since revealed itself as a powerful political force, shaping everything from school policy to immigration law to the discourse around American identity. As such, it remains vital that we revisit where we were then—so we can better understand how we got here.

Among the 16 essays in this reflective series, the one by Heather McGhee stands out for its substantive focus on white replacement theory (WRT), a once-fringe conspiracy now openly trafficked in mainstream political discourse. McGhee’s piece is essential reading. She reminds us that the violence on display in Charlottesville—the torch-lit march, the deadly car attack—was not simply about hate, but about fear: specifically, the widespread belief among many white Americans that racial progress for others necessarily comes at their expense.

“You will not replace us” was more than a chant. It reflected a zero-sum worldview—a racialized anxiety reinforced by political messaging, media narratives, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. McGhee draws on research showing that when white Americans are reminded of the country’s shifting demographics, they often move toward more conservative policy positions, regardless of their prior affiliations.

But what McGhee so powerfully articulates is that these beliefs do not only live at the margins. They are sustained by what she calls “America’s myth of innocence”—our national tendency to celebrate our founding ideals while avoiding the hard truths about how white supremacy has long been baked into our systems, including those we teach and work within.

Her call to action is clear: we must craft a new national narrative—one grounded in truth, accountability, and a vision of shared prosperity. As educators, we are uniquely positioned to contribute to this effort. In our classrooms, our scholarship, and our institutional leadership, we must resist the normalization of white grievance politics and instead model what it means to build a multiracial democracy rooted in justice and inclusion.

Cultivating an open mind about what it truly means to live in a multi-ethnic, multiracial democracy—something we are rapidly moving toward—is not just important; it's essential. Research shows that so-called "traditional masculinity," especially as promoted by the alt-right and the manosphere, often sabotages the very relationships and family structures it claims to defend. These ideologies glorify hostility, entitlement, and emotional detachment—traits that ultimately undermine intimacy, stability, and long-term well-being. 

In fact, studies have found that men who engage in nurturing fatherhood experience significant biological changes, including lower testosterone levels, suggesting that emotional investment—not dominance—supports reproductive and relational success (e.g. Gettler et al., 2011). Put simply, it’s in men’s best interest to evolve as WRT doesn't contribute to biological-species reproduction and survival. Don't take it from me. Read the research for yourselves.

I do see this beginning to happen in my circles, but more must be done, beginning in our homes and families. I invite you to read McGhee’s piece closely. Let it affirm the urgency of our work—and the power of education to help shape an America that truly belongs to us all.

—Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Gettler LT, McDade TW, Feranil AB, Kuzawa CW. (2011). Longitudinal evidence that fatherhood decreases testosterone in human males Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2011;108(39):16194–16199. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1105403108

What Charlottesville Changed, by POLITICO Magazine: 

We asked 16 of the most thoughtful people we know to describe the impact of the violence—and how we should think about it a year later





The core assumption at the heart of the “You will not replace us” chant is disturbingly widespread’
Heather McGhee is a distinguished senior fellow and former president of Demos and Demos Action.

The white supremacist violence in Charlottesville—the menacing, torchlit march to the Robert E. Lee statue and the armed and ultimately murderous rally the next day—was alarming for what it revealed not just about the torch-bearers, but about us. The neo-Nazis chanted “You will not replace us,” claiming a continuity between their white tribal allegiances and the monuments to Confederate icons threatened with removal. But while their violence may have marked them as fringe, the core assumption at the heart of their chant is disturbingly widespread.

A landmark study published in 2014 by psychologists Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson found that white people’s anxiety about a changing America is politically determinative: “making the changing national racial demographics salient led White Americans (regardless of political affiliation) to endorse conservative policy positions more strongly.”

The pundit class assumed that when Trump revealed his sympathies for white supremacists and Nazis—groups which, he said, included some “very fine people”—it would mark a line past which accountability would soon follow. It hasn’t. And that’s in part because stoking racial division and a sense of white grievance has become the core political strategy of Trump’s Republican Party.

You see this acutely in the thousands of anti-immigrant campaign ads GOP candidates have paid for this election cycle—ads like one run by Troy Balderson, the Ohio Republican who won a special election last week, which promised to “stop illegals from taking our jobs.” It draws on the same logic of “you will not replace us”—a belief which researchers have found is widespread among white people (but not among black people): that we live in a zero-sum game of racial competition. When people of color progress, it necessarily comes at white people’s expense.

The people to whom this Trumpian message appeals don’t see themselves as hateful; they see themselves as law-abiding Americans looking out for their own. That’s nothing new: America has always had a material investment in the myth of our innocence, in championing our founding words and not our founding deeds.

There is no better example of this mythmaking than the flourishing of monuments to America’s traitors, who brought millions to war to defend a system that enriched a few at the expense and enslavement of many. In Charlottesville and 1,728 other places across the country, Confederate monuments teach not history but a subtle moral lesson that America will not just tolerate white supremacists, but find ways to justify their cause as one of noble self-preservation.

A year after Charlottesville, it’s time to replace the statues and tell the truth about America. The truth is, the South flourished economically after the civil rights movement unleashed the contributions of her black citizens. The truth is, new immigrants disproportionately create jobs and enrich communities. The truth is, America’s multiracial future is coming, and there don’t have to be two sides—we can make an America for all of us.