Thanks for this thoughtful reply! I've spent a long time of my youth travelling around the nation on greyhound busses, hitchhiking, and sneaking on to freight trains. Also I have lived for many months in Southern Oregon, Portland, Oregon, Middle Tennessee, the Zuni Mts of New Mexico, New Orleans, and Oakland. I grew up in eastern Massachusetts and spent a few years living in western Massachusetts. I've travelled extensively as well.
Part of the reason that I emphasize the large nonwhite population in the United States is that I has shocked to travel through and live in places which were majority or near majority nonwhite. As I remember it, hitchhiking through rural Georgia and North Carolina, there was huge black populations. Also I remember there being enormous Hispanic populations in largely rural areas: for instance, in western Massachusetts and also all throughout Oregon. I spent a night in a hidden migrant labor camp located in blackberry thicket east of Portland and filled with Latin Americans and I bought tamales from Lupita who made her living selling home cooked goods in the tiny hamlet of Wolf Creek.
From my travels I must disagree with your assessment of whiteness. To my mind the different European ethnicities create different sorts of white cultures. For instance, I come from a region of populated largely by ethnic Catholics, the Irish and Italians. Next in number are probably those of British descent, then those of Jewish descent, lastly those of various Asian descent. I'm olive skin and Semitic featured. In the Northeast no one gives me a second look, but when I travelled through the Midwest from about Chicago to the banks of the Missouri I feared for my life: people gave me these eerie death stares in which I could sense they projected race hatred on to me. Of course, they had no idea of my ancestry. That said, I wasn't "white" to them and I doubt an Italian or a Greek would have been "white" to them, either. I'm not sure how much this would translate into national politics, but my own experiences do emphasize the importance of a more granular understanding of whiteness, at least for someone who is off-white like myself.
As for the major point in the edit, fair enough! I found a better map from the census which looks at simple majorities with the counties and white ethnic identities are compressed into just white. I think that the map shows an interesting picture in which in addition to the Hispanic majorities of some regions, there are black majorities in some rural counties in crucially strategically important areas, especially the along the banks of the Mississippi from Memphis all the way down to New Roads, Louisiana.
Also we see in that same map Asian majorities in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as Hispanic majorities in much of the southwest. Point being, along with simple demography there's also the possibility in case of serious strife of the intervention by hostile foreign nations, i.e. PLA peacekeeping forces in California; the Mexican Army in regions of Aztlan; and any number of nations might find it in their interest to help establish a new nation in the lower third of the Mississippi.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2022-08-01 04:49 pm (UTC)Part of the reason that I emphasize the large nonwhite population in the United States is that I has shocked to travel through and live in places which were majority or near majority nonwhite. As I remember it, hitchhiking through rural Georgia and North Carolina, there was huge black populations. Also I remember there being enormous Hispanic populations in largely rural areas: for instance, in western Massachusetts and also all throughout Oregon. I spent a night in a hidden migrant labor camp located in blackberry thicket east of Portland and filled with Latin Americans and I bought tamales from Lupita who made her living selling home cooked goods in the tiny hamlet of Wolf Creek.
From my travels I must disagree with your assessment of whiteness. To my mind the different European ethnicities create different sorts of white cultures. For instance, I come from a region of populated largely by ethnic Catholics, the Irish and Italians. Next in number are probably those of British descent, then those of Jewish descent, lastly those of various Asian descent. I'm olive skin and Semitic featured. In the Northeast no one gives me a second look, but when I travelled through the Midwest from about Chicago to the banks of the Missouri I feared for my life: people gave me these eerie death stares in which I could sense they projected race hatred on to me. Of course, they had no idea of my ancestry. That said, I wasn't "white" to them and I doubt an Italian or a Greek would have been "white" to them, either. I'm not sure how much this would translate into national politics, but my own experiences do emphasize the importance of a more granular understanding of whiteness, at least for someone who is off-white like myself.
As for the major point in the edit, fair enough! I found a better map from the census which looks at simple majorities with the counties and white ethnic identities are compressed into just white. I think that the map shows an interesting picture in which in addition to the Hispanic majorities of some regions, there are black majorities in some rural counties in crucially strategically important areas, especially the along the banks of the Mississippi from Memphis all the way down to New Roads, Louisiana.
Also we see in that same map Asian majorities in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as Hispanic majorities in much of the southwest. Point being, along with simple demography there's also the possibility in case of serious strife of the intervention by hostile foreign nations, i.e. PLA peacekeeping forces in California; the Mexican Army in regions of Aztlan; and any number of nations might find it in their interest to help establish a new nation in the lower third of the Mississippi.