Out of many, one.
Tucker Carlson is in the news, just in time for the 28th annual Greater Medford Multicultural Fair.
Carlson is the most popular opinion host on Fox News. He says that White Americans are victims of a "Great Replacement" policy, one intended "to change the racial mix of this country, that's the reason, to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here and drastically increase the proportion of American newly arrived here from the Third World."
He describes immigrants as making America less its real self, therefore taking something from him.
Everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it, ‘Ooh, the white replacement theory.’
No, no, no, this is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand-new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American, guaranteed at birth, is one man, one vote. And they are diluting it.
Meanwhile, in Medford, done virtually because of COVID, we will have a Facebook version of the traditional September gathering of people and booths. It will be broadcast on Facebook beginning at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time. In Facebook, go to "Medford Multicultural Fair."
The Fair is an affirmation of variety and diversity. The live events in prior years are feel-good events of people together. The gathering has a subtext. These people are Americans. Americans come in varieties. Variety adds to America. It doesn't dilute it.
Much of today’s political buzz says that immigration and borders--not budgets and infrastructure--are the issues that will determine America's political future. Trump thrived in the GOP primary and 2016 general election with a message that Carlson has adopted:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
I will relate a conversation I had with a man about my age, and like me, White, married, and financially comfortable in retirement. He is a conservative Republican who voted for Trump. The dialog went about like this:
HIM: "Some new people bought the house next door. They are both doctors, nice people. They are young. Have kids. They are a bi-racial couple, like you and Debra. The kids are mixed-race, like Dillon. She looks Vietnamese and he is, well, American, you know, like us."
ME: "You mean he has European heritage."
HIM: "Yeah, regular American. White."
ME: " I probably wouldn't normally put it the way you did. Your neighbors are both Americans. I said "European" extraction because that’s what we are, in contrast to the wife, of Vietnamese extraction. My Debra is American. The doctor whose heritage is Vietnamese is American. American isn't a race or ethnicity. American doesn't mean White. There are all sorts of races here.”
HIM: “Hmm. [pause.] Yeah. Of course. I guess I sort of assumed---well, you know, American is White. It was just something in the back of my mind, but yeah, I get it. American isn't a race. Right.”
That topic of conversation doesn't always go so smoothly, but he is a smart guy, and he got the point even if a media diet of Fox News obscures it. Real Americans come from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities.
I am part of that American story in my marriage to a woman of Chinese ethnicity, and a son who is a mixture of the two of us. America is a country consisting mostly of immigrants. From my fathers' side, the first Sage came from Wales to Middletown Connecticut in the 1600s, David Dudley Sage. From my mother's side, I am the grandson of the two members of the "huddled masses" who came to Ellis Island from Greece in the great immigration period of the first decade of the 20th Century, Panos and Chrisoula Kostarelos. They became Americans. I, too, am an American. So is Debra, so is Dillon.