Hey, intolerant white guy. How are ya? I ask because, honestly, you seem off. The pleats in your khakis are askew. Your crew cut is slightly overgrown and the tiki torch you carry, well…it’s a tiki torch. You look like an idiot. But you’re angry, you say? I see. Your beady eyes do look a little red. If I’m being honest, I have to say it’s not just anger I see there. In fact, anger is a secondary emotion. You’ve probably read that before in your emotional intelligence studies. Oh no? Well, it means that anger only masks another feeling. In your case, it’s fear. Because the one thing that is glaringly obvious about all of you assholes, I’m sorry, white supremacists, is that y’all are scared shitless.
I’ve heard it’s economic insecurity that has you worked up. That you’ve been laid off, been struggling to find a job in a changing technological environment. That does seem scary. I could say that’s a baseless fear. That you’ll find something. You’ll get back on your feet. But that would be a lie. Because the truth is, you SHOULD be worried. You’re a dinosaur. And it sounds like, based on your creepy chanting, you know who’s doing the replacing.
Well, white man carrying a firearm to protect you from your own peaceable assembly or suburban bear attacks or whatever else you espouse for needing your assault rifle, I feel like it is only fair to shoot you straight given the amount of passion you clearly feel on the topic so here it is: I am a Jew and I am going to replace you.
I am going to be better educated, better spoken, better trained, and even better dressed (though that is a fetching polo you wear). I am going to work harder and smarter and better. I am going to be the open mind that welcomes new people and new ideas and new technologies and innovations that will continue to make you irrelevant. They will make you, wait for it — replaceable. And while you are falling victim to your own ignorance and intolerance and misplaced anger that is actually just an outward expression of your frustration at the pathetic series of events that you call your life, I will grow stronger and smarter and faster and use the fuel of your backyard bug lights, I am sorry, manly KKK torches, to propel me.
I am the American-born daughter of a Japanese immigrant and a Romanian Jewish refugee who were harassed and spit at on their honeymoon. I am the people who survived camps on both ends of the ocean. I was a child called names by a grown man just like you. (But maybe he feared I would take his job, too.) I am the granddaughter of Josef, who outlasted forced labour and false charges and lived out his daughters’ childhoods in prison until he could escape and bring his family to safety in America. Safety from men just like you. I am the granddaughter of Etty, a Jewish woman in a society that didn’t welcome such things, raising her daughters alone but resisting in her small ways. “No, you don’t have to wear the red tie of communism to school today. WE are not communists.”
Your rhetoric is frightening. Your anger is frightening. Your president is frightening. But you do not frighten me. You fuel me.
You are the lesson I teach my kids about what it means to NOT be a man — to be the mouse that only emerges in the darkest of hours in the darkest of times under the darkest of leadership. You took off your hood but you hide your face in a sea of men who look just like you. You hide your fear in your anger.
You are afraid.
You are afraid. And you should be. I am the Jew that will replace you. And I am not alone. With me comes all of the Jews before me who have faced and conquered many mightier than you. With us comes all of those you’ve oppressed. All of those you still oppress. And we will replace you.
I have heard love conquers hate. Maybe that’s true. I do not love you. I hate you. But that hatred will not stunt me as it has you. That hatred will not drive me into dark corners as it has you. That hatred will not be the excuse for my inadequacies as it has yours.
Because those that you have silenced, those that you have oppressed, those that you have hated, have only become stronger, more resilient, better.
So keep your chants. Keep your torches. Keep your president. But your time with him is numbered, too.
Because we will replace you.
