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.

 Check out this informative piece by Ben Chapman, 2017. 

You may be scared of the Alt-Right. I can safely say that you don’t have to be. Remember that the Alt-Right is a coalition. It doesn’t exist in and of itself, but rather as a collection of other groups too weak to function on their own.

Additionally, the Alt-Right is unorganized. Yes, they have the ability to show up to the same place and chant the same things, but when it comes to underlying goals, the Alt-Right is scattered. As long as their group remains the cultish, brash, pseudo-intellectual movement that they currently are, they will never be anything more than glorified internet trolls.

Finally, we must realize that this movement is not based on hate. As easy as it may be to ascribe Nazism, Klanism, and supremacism to hatred, this is misled. The Alt-Right is a movement based on ignorance, and it is borne out of failed educations and crumbling social structures.

With these facts in mind, and with the Alt-Right’s veil lifted, we can address the problems that lead to this plague. Supremacist ideas won’t ever disappear completely. They will always exist somewhere. But I believe that, if addressed, it one day won’t be a topic worth writing about.

According to Chapman's analysis, these folks are little more than "glorified trolls" that could have really benefited from a good education, especially Ethnic Studies.

Angela

Who Exactly Is the Alt-Right? As Told by the Alt-Right

Let’s clear this up, shall we?

by Ben Chapman

America was never a white country — here’s why it never will be

America was never a white country — here’s why it never will be

by

Joe Krulder, Ph.D., teaches history at Butte College.

History News Network
21 Aug 2017 at 09:04 ET   

Events in Charlottesville recently cascaded into domestic terrorism. Three dead and dozens wounded as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other “alt-right” members descended upon the university that Thomas Jefferson built; their purpose, it is alleged, to defend a statute a monument to the Confederate Civil War soldier, General Robert E. Lee. These radical rightists arrived from all across the United States upon the college town of Charlottesville to protect, in their words, their “white” heritage. Among the many problems, I have with so-called “white supremacists” is their purposeful mixing of “heritage” with “history,” rhetorically pining for a once proud “white” America.But history proves that America was never white.

That I need to make this statement, and worse, that some may take offense from it, shows the blurring rhetoric between what is Heritage and what is History. I’ll return to this later. For now, some History.
The first successful colonial holding in these current United States was Spanish, at St. Augustine, Florida, established 1565, four decades plus prior to Virginia’s Jamestown.

America was never white.

Speaking of Jamestown, the first Africans were brought into Virginia on a Dutch trading ship in 1619, a year before Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.
America was never white.

And nearly half of those Pilgrims could not speak English. Of the near half that couldn’t, most spoke Dutch, with a scattering of German and French. America from the get go was not an English-speaking nation. When the Puritan, William Bradford, arranged the first Indian Treaty signing in 1621, it was with Massasoit, a Pokanoket of the Wampanoag Confederacy. At this time, depending on which archeologist you ask, the native population of North America was anywhere between 8 to 20 million. English speakers? Less than a thousand.

America was never white.

And it was the Dutch who seemed ascendant, as they settled New Amsterdam and the Hudson River Valley beginning in 1625. English-speaking America was in the minority of the European languages spoken by 1670. The French were firmly in place along the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes region, and it may come as some surprise to many Americans, but Green Bay, Wisconsin was once “La Baye des Puants” which is what the French called it when they founded “The Bay of Stinks” in 1634. Spain still reigned in Florida and along the Gulf Coast. Even the Swedes set up shop along the Delaware River taking up large swaths of what is today Delaware and Pennsylvania.

And if you were around in the mid-eighteenth century, don’t ask Benjamin Franklin about the indentured Palatines. In 1751 Franklin penned, “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, Peopling of Countries, etc.” where he openly called German-speakers “swarthy” and “stupid,” that they would likely “Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them” unless there was a change to immigration policies.

Of course, one of the more famous eighteenth-century colonial wars, the French and Indian War, lasted nine years, and only after victory was secured in 1763, did English speakers become dominant among the many European powers that settled North America.

Back to Africans, according to SlaveVoyages.org, the activities of the Atlantic slave trade brought 9,507 Africans to mainland America by 1699. Over the next 75-years or a year before the United States declared its Independence, another 220,000 were brought to slave upon the American mainland. The 1790 census (the first undertaken by the United States) proved 740,054 Africans in America or 26.5% of the population just a year after the Constitution was ratified.

America was never white.

And the Revolutionary War was not white on white violence, or English speakers against Mother England. There was the famed Ethiopian Brigade, which General George Washington did his best to avoid. Yes, blacks fought on both sides of the war. And Crispus Attucks was black and he was the first to die at the Boston Massacre of 1770. Indians, too, fought in this war, forced to take sides by both British and colonial forces.

America was never white.

Even when the nation was young, and found a bargain from Napoleon to purchase all of Louisiana – yes, we gained the entire Mississippi River watershed, but since France had only just won Louisiana, a trophy for defeating Spain in Europe, and unable to hold on to Haiti in the Caribbean where slaves successfully rebelled, America received the Midwest which was filled with the indigenous mostly, and some Spaniards too.

America was never white.

Equally, the war of 1812, which once again pitted the United States against Britain, was not wholly a white on white conflict. Again, Native Americans took sides, the Shawnee chief Tecumseh had formed a large multi-tribal Confederacy and played an enormous role in ensuring that the young United States failed at taking Canada. The great United States Navy admiral, Oliver Hazard Perry, along with Daniel Dobbins, a shipmaster, built a fleet from Greenwood on Lake Erie using African Americans to build and then man the fleet. At War’s end, at the Battle of New Orleans, General Andrew Jackson’s fighting force included Choctaw Indians and freed blacks.
America was never white.

Texas, and the Mexican-American War which followed its annexation, obviously entailed the gaining of territory inhabited by Native Americans and Hispanics. When gold was all the rage in California, the world landed upon its shores. People from Europe, South America, and yes, Asia (China, in particular) descended and many remained.

America was never white.

In military history the 54th All Black Regiment of the Civil War, the 369th Infantry known as the “The Harlem Hellfighters” in World War One, and the all-Japanese 442th Infantry during the Second World War, still – to this day – remain some of the most wartime decorated units of our country’s fighting forces.

America was never white.

Which brings us to the topic of heritage and history. For this, I’ll quote famed historian David Lowenthal. Author of The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, Lowenthal remarks that heritage is not history at all: “it is not an inquiry into the past, but a celebration of it a profession of faith in a past tailored to present-day purposes.”

Monuments, under this definition, are not history. Monuments are memory-makers, celebratory edifices erected to hide History’s complexity, drown curiosity, and feed the simple in the present and in the future.

If we dig past the monuments of the Robert E. Lee’s and the Stonewall Jackson’s erected in the 1920s (Jim Crow era) or the 1950s (Civil Rights era), some in far away Arizona (Arizona achieved statehood in 1912, the Civil War ended in 1865), what we get to is a place called the past were easily traceable demographics prove a country filled with ethnicities from all over the world. What the alt-right desires are an America where whites maintain some semblance of power over anyone of color if not outright ethnic cleansing. Their rhetoric of Heritage is pure myth, a fabrication of a false past, creating memory where none existed.

America was never white, and it never will be.

Joe Krulder, Ph.D., teaches history at Butte College.

This article was originally published at History News Network