Given that the Southern colonies had a fairly large number of loyalists during the American Revolution, I understand that scenarios exploring what would have happened had the Deep South stayed British after the war are fairly common. However, the focus of this thread is to discuss what the demographic situation of a British Deep South would be like come 2018.
For the purposes of this scenario, let's say that...
1) Upon independence, the British Deep South (anybody have a better name for this country?) consists of OTL Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina. What would be the border states (North Carolina, Tennessee) IOTL go to the United States, and this British dominion doesn't extend further west than the Mississippi River. The addition of Spanish Florida is optional, though. Also assume that most or all of OTL Canada goes to the United States as a result of, or shortly after, the Revolutionary War.
2) The historical broadstrokes for the British Deep South are essentially the same as the OTL Commonwealth realms - slowly gaining autonomy over the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries until, no later than the early-to-mid 20th century, it is effectively and independent country. In certain aspects socioeconomic/cultural aspects, though, strong comparisons could probably also be made to the Caribbean, Latin America, and South Africa.
So again, what does this country look like in 2018? Specifically...
- African-Americans were a majority of the population of most of the Deep South until well until into the 20th century. Assuming emancipation happens in the British empire around the same time as OTL, is there any reason to believe that the African-American population would decline in this area, as it did IOTL? Or would this be a majority African-American, or at least plurality African-American, county by 2018?
- What about the white population? Shorn from the rest of the United States, would this area be an attractive destination for European immigrants? Such as it does get European immigration, where would it likely come from, aside from the British Isles? Would there be less of a presence of lower-class Scots-Irish communities in the Appalachian part of this country? If whites don't comprise a majority or plurality of the population, would they largely leave the country after independence, as was the case with many European colonies where settlers and their descendants were not a majority, or would they largely stay, as was the case with South Africa?
- What about the Native American population? This area had a large Native American population, including Cherokee, Creek, Choctaws, and others before they were largely removed from their land by the United States government in the early 19th century and forced to move west. Depending on how much immigration there is to the Deep South here, would the British government be inclined to remove them from their land, or would this country have a very large Native American population in the present day.
- After emancipation, many British colonies in the Caribbean imported large numbers of South Asian workers, leading to a large South Asian diaspora community in that part of the world today, especially in Guyana. Would the Deep South likely have a significant South Asian population in this timeline's 2018?
- Presuming Florida is indeed incorporated, how large would the Latin American community be for this country? Would Cubans, Mexicans, and others largely prefer to move to the United States, or would the Deep South have a fairly large Hispanic population?