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| Nelson Diaz-Marcano |
Let us speak of Replacement Theory. White Supremacy, now in its death throes, wails about their fear of being replaced. They fear their dominance has already passed (which is nonsense) and that they face an existential threat, one which is based on the idea that White is a “race” and that it may someday vanish.
So what if it did? That is a question for another time. I, for one, am not truly concerned that, for example, the works of Shakespeare will pass from this earth. There is room enough for all writing, and all people.
“We will not be replaced!” cried the Tiki Torch wielding dickheads at Charlottesville, four years ago. One of America’s most prominent white supremacists, Tucker Carlson, has been flouting the word “replacement” when discussing the advancement of voting rights for people of color. White votes are being “replaced” and “diluted”. He acknowledges and mocks the term “white replacement theory” even as he uses to promote voter suppression. We call that gaslighting.
In this play, Diaz-Marcano presents America in microcosm, a desert town called Slab City in which a reformed Nazi skinhead and his Afro-Carribean Latinx lover live on the outskirts of Western civilization, caring for their two-spirited Native and adopted child Támit. Striving to create a new future, the past returns for revenge and though there is great loss, the younger generation are able to escape and move into a New America, to be two of those the character named Roberta calls those “great people in between the stars and stripes.”
Who should I read tomorrow?
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