By Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo
My dear white people,
I trust this letter finds you well, though I imagine it must be difficult to relax these days, with the terrifying prospect of “replacement” looming over your heads. It isn’t every day that someone from the so-called global south—where colonial “benevolence” left us development problems as souvenirs—pauses to reflect on the struggles of the global north, the same folks who generously consume the lion’s share of the world’s resources. But since some of you seem genuinely confused about the nature of existence, allow me a few minutes to help. After all, we share the same planet and—shocking as it may sound—the same humanity.
Let me begin with empathy. It is never easy to feel displaced in lands you “discovered” and claimed as your own. Every species resists extinction. Even trees, when felled, manage a form of defiance. So yes, your panic makes sense. The survival instinct is universal.
And I understand your fears better than you might think. My kinship lies with the Indigenous—Aboriginal Australians, Native Americans, enslaved Africans, and others erased, displaced, or shipped across oceans in chains. Their suffering has made me keenly aware of what keeps you awake at night. Only a madman ignores the figure with a machete behind him. A professional head-hunter like you already knows how that scene ends.
I would hate to see you six centuries from now, huddled in tiny corners of Australia, France, Britain, or the United States, peering nervously at “aliens” dominating lands you nobly built with your bare hands. Imagine the horror of having 90 to 95 percent of America’s white population vanish—just as British colonialists wiped out the Aborigines of Australia, or hunted the Tasmanians like animals in the 1820s and 1830s. Damn those British!
By the time those atrocities took place, of course, your European cousins had already set sail for the Americas. By the 1600s, they had wiped out an estimated 55 million Indigenous people through wars, forced labour, disease, and removal acts.
But being the generous people your forefathers were, when they realized they were running short of Indigenous labour, they turned to Africa. Over 12.5 million Africans were dragged across the Atlantic, forced into slavery, and worked to the bone to build your wealth. Or, as today’s nationalists like to put it, your forefathers gave enslaved Africans a “better life” in the plantations.
What a tragedy, then, to imagine white people—less than 600 years after Columbus—facing replacement themselves! Surely no one wants to see white children herded into residential schools, white culture reduced to folklore exhibits, or white populations confined to reservations. Civilization itself would collapse.
Surely, after centuries of minding your own business—colonizing continents, extracting resources, enlightening “dark” peoples—you deserve better. Replacement cannot be the thanks you get from those of us who, as you often remind us, brought nothing to the table: no labor, no resources, not even a spark of intelligence.
The White House, the railroads, the Congress—you built them all with your sweat and genius. Meanwhile, your European cousins brought “light” to the Dark Continent: discovering rivers and mountains no native had noticed, showing us how to mine our gold, build our houses, and wear jewellery properly. You turned wasted cocoa into chocolate, uranium into nuclear power, copper into civilization-powering wires.
And the thanks you get? A coordinated drive to replace you—from Ukraine to Argentina, Israel to Germany. Outrageous! Uncharitable! Together, we must stop this madness.
Your “little skirmishes” (which historians rudely call World Wars) were unfortunate. But was it fair that afterward, the “coloured people” you were still grooming in the arts of democracy kicked you out at your lowest point? And look at what happened: Nigeria to India, Vietnam to Mozambique—chaos as soon as you packed up and went home. Clearly, they needed you. Clearly, they still do.
Had you remained in charge, you might have kept order the old-fashioned way: chopping off hands, starving millions, enslaving the disobedient—as King Leopold II of Belgium did to 10 million Congolese. Or as Winston Churchill did, diverting grain during World War II while four million Indians starved.
Long before Hitler built concentration camps in Europe, German colonialists perfected them in Namibia, exterminating the Herero and Nama peoples between 1904 and 1908. The British, too, set up camps during the Anglo-Boer War, where tens of thousands of Boer and Black South Africans died.
So please, don’t feel guilty. Don’t despair. I come bearing solutions.
In Nigeria, we created something called national character—think of it as supercharged affirmative action. Applied in the U.S., it would guarantee white representation everywhere: no more Dominican monopolies in baseball, no Black dominance in sports or rap. Balance restored.
We also have the catchment area system, ensuring locals get admitted with lower thresholds. Imagine Harvard reserving slots for the descendants of Massachusetts’ noble settlers, shielding them from high-achieving Asian or African kids. You already have legacy admissions, but this would be broader, stronger, foolproof. Trust me—it worked for us.
So take heart. No one will replace you.
Let me end with reassurance. The only replacement we should truly fear is the extinction of humanity itself. And if that happens, it won’t be because of immigrants or “coloured” people. It will be because of our collective short-sightedness—our disregard for the environment, our addiction to weapons of mass destruction, our inhumanity to one another, usually fuelled by greed. If we change our ways, we can restore dignity everywhere.
It starts with you. And I know you understand why.
Until then, rest assured: civilization has never dared exist without you. It never has. And it will not start today, or tomorrow.
Yours truly,
Rudolf Okonkwo
A grateful child of the “Dark Continent.”
Rudolf Ogoo Okonkwo teaches Post-Colonial African History, Afrodiasporic Literature, and African Folktales at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. His latest book is “A Kiss That Never Was.”
