I think there was a smaller migration of African Americans to the same areas as they did in OTL, with a particular cross cultural hub in Oklahoma. And yeah, I agree about the lack of a huge push for complete assimilation of European immigrants. For instance the upper midwest would remain a strongly German speaking area without the WWs causing Germanphobia. Might even see a creole tongue come out of Minnesota's Iron Range (similar to Hawaiian Pidgin)
Malê Rising
- Thread starter Jonathan Edelstein
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I think there was a smaller migration of African Americans to the same areas as they did in OTL, with a particular cross cultural hub in Oklahoma. And yeah, I agree about the lack of a huge push for complete assimilation of European immigrants. For instance the upper midwest would remain a strongly German speaking area without the WWs causing Germanphobia. Might even see a creole tongue come out of Minnesota's Iron Range (similar to Hawaiian Pidgin)
May I just say that amongst all the cool things this TL has done, a German-American Creole in the Mid-West would be perhaps the most Alternative! DO IT
And I would suppose that there has been no EQA1921 Also; this America is going to be alot more multicultural.
A lot less German influence in the Iron Range. The region had immigrants largely from Eastern Europe, Jews, Italians, and Finns. The mining companies wanted it that way to to keep them divided by nationality and language wise; bares a much more European dominated version of Hawaiian sugar plantations. If it probably wasn't for the English-only push, it wouldn't be surprising for such a grouping to develop a surviving creole.
LOTs of Ojibway up there too (comparatively), so they could add to it too.
German would more than likely remain a distinct language, developing it's own American dialect, and more of pidgin like Spanglish. None the less German would really color English use in the region.
PS: Since the Iron Range wasn't settled by immigrants until the later part of the 19th century, there could easily be a chance it was populated quite differently than OTL.
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Yeah, I remember the migration to Tulsa being discussed. I'm sure there will be black communities in the north, but I don't think you'd see anything like the large black urban communities which developed in almost every northern industrial city IOTL.
That actually makes me wonder about how common the existence of "sundown towns" are ITTL. I read an excellent book on it some years back. Basically following the Civil War, blacks moved to the north, but mostly did not move to urban areas. They moved to rural areas and/or small towns, since they were from rural areas to begin with, and that was where they felt most comfortable. Most every rural town in the lower Midwest had a few black families. But as the "racial nadir" gained steam in the late 19th/early 20th century, they were systematically expelled from these small towns, until they ended up forced into black neighborhoods in major cities, only to later be drowned out/forgotten following the Great Migration. It was basically the same historical pattern that forced the Chinese into Chinatowns.
ITTL, things didn't get quite as bad in the north regarding racism. I think it's been established the Exodusters were more successful, for example. So I would presume many small towns in the north retain minor black populations. Of course, this is not going to be stable indefinitely - presuming they've now lived up north for 80 years. Many communities have likely died out through attrition or intermarriage, but it's probably not considered unusual across most of the U.S. by this time to have a black family or two in your community.
Edit: As to the question of linguistic diversity, I just don't think that it will survive in the face of public education and the growth of radio (it's taken off by now, right?) since the passive cultural forces of assimilation are if anything stronger motivations to adopt the hegemonic culture than active government policy. Unless you see actual bilingual movements for education and media gain popularity - and I just don't see how that would be a butterfly of the POD.
Yeah, I doubt the population would be large enough to be stable unlike the recent influx of Latin@s to rural towns (I've been to towns where it's over 50% Mexican and Central American immigrants now). Some towns might be quite visably inter-racially mixed if enough moved.
German had a very strong push, with newspapers and community organizations. Wisconsin for instance is quite thoroughly populated by German immigrant groups, and if not for the WWs they might have clung onto the language longer if not even keeping a healthy enough population of speakers well into the modern day. So the precedent's there, but it could go either way. All depends on what Jonathan wants.
Beat me to it, damn.
She's correct here. German was especially strong in much of Wisconsin, and IIRC the Tavern League and a lot of churches conducted meetings in German until well into the late 50s despite assimilation pressure. Here, where the pressure of the World Wars does not exist, I would expect a few areas are going to be very German in a way comparable to more Hispanic areas in OTL Southwest. There's enough of other immigrant groups and a large portion of the original settlers were New Englanders, though, so I'd expect that English would still overcome German as the first language of most people in Wisconsin.
Of course, that's dependent on a lot of factors. As I said, one of the primary conflicts of early state history was the German-Yankee divide, which bled over into a lot of issues, and especially intertwined with rual vs. urban issues. There are two local issues in particular which will affect how strong German remains in this TL: the Bennett Law and, to a lesser extent, prohibition and temperance leagues.
The Bennett Law was passed in the late 1880's, IIRC, and for several years and was marketed as an educational reform to hold private schools more accountable, which it did, but also to speed Americanization by requiring English instruction at all private schools. The Yankees were for it, the Germans against it. It was eventually repealed, but it still forced the schools to establish English-language instruction which it was difficult to remove after several years of inertia. If there are enough butterflies, it is possible that this version of the Bennett law does not pass and a milder one focused on content being instructed rather than language may take its place and put German and many of the other minority languages on a better footing. Considering the Bennett Law controversy occurred simultaneously with the increase in pressure by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to enforce English only government schools on the reservations, there could be some effects there as well, depending on the result.
As far as prohibition, well, I don't think anybody's surprised when I say Wisconsin's always had drinking problems, right? Before prohibition, the saying was that every town in Wisconsin had a church, a school, and a brewery. Usually, the latter was founded by German immigrants, brewing in the traditional method. Many towns were built around these breweries, and the breweries funded and sponsored youth organizations, church groups, sports clubs, and newspapers for the German areas. As a result, the Germans argued it was an important part of their culture, many prominent Yankees pointed to the health and behavioral issues that resulted, Germans argued it was the saloon culture of the cities that made those problems, etc. Needless to say, it was complicated and because it was tied into the cultural war over Americanization, tended to get very heated.
Now, based on the rest of this TL, I'll make a couple of guesses. I don't think the Bennett Law will pass at its OTL form. I think that some form of Education Reform bill will pass to centralize expectations, but the different political climate might mean that the requirement for English-language instruction is not part of the deal. I'd still expect a lot of the schools to adopt it anyway, but there will be areas where they refuse and stick to German-language (or other language. Stevens Point will likely have a small Polish community hanging on, for example) instruction. Without the additional stigma of the OTL World Wars, those hold-outs will have a much easier time keeping the language. Without having such a cultural siege mentality, I'd expect many Germans will not be as opposed to reform regarding alcohol. There will be moderate laws passed to deal with drinking in excess, but prohibition won't get far in Wisconsin, if only because of the strong commercial ties. Since I'm also assuming White Flight's not an issue in this universe, I'd expect Milwaukee's going to have one of the largest German-speaking populations of any major American city. German should persist most strongly in Milwaukee and rural areas in central and northern Wisconsin, but I would expect some passing familiarity would be pretty common throughout the state.
Forgive my long-winded talk. I couldn't stop myself.
Now I want to see a Herero from SWA come to Milwaukee for work and be influenced by good old German-speaking Milwaukee's Sewer Socialism. Get on it Jon!
Well, I was talking about general social and cultural trends that might change due to the altered course of Slovakia (and Hungary, and Austria) of TTL's 20th century.
The OTL Žilina case occured in the winter of 1918/1919, when Czechoslovakia was still relatively amorphous and Slovak territory remained disputed, especially after the brief rise of the Hungarian Soviet Republic. Before Czech and Slovak intelligentsia reached most corners of the country, it took a few months of post-war "mopping up" to maintain order, mainly due to Cz. Legionaire and Entente troops being forced to clash with invading HSR soldiers for several weeks (with most of the invasion forces occupying the central south and the east). The status of Pressburg as a potential future capital still wasn't fully sorted out, and with Žilina being one of the few bigger and easily rail-accessible cities on undisputed territory, it became a natural spur-of-the-moment choice for the seat of the Ministry with Full Power for the Governance of Slovakia. If it wasn't only a provisional measure for a governmental institution, you could have called a civilian junta of sorts, made up of mostly ethnic Slovak Czechoslovak bureaucrats.
As an extention of the fledgling government being set up in Prague, the ministry (department) lasted for only a few months, and when Pressburg officially became the capital, all temporary government institutions were moved there and broken up into a proper basic framework of national governing institutions, including some basic ministries/departments for Slovakia. Naturally, the situation with local national government kept evolving later throughout the 1920s, and unfortunately, some of the institutions that would have made perfect sence were chucked out when the government decided to favour Prague-based centralism around the middle of that decade.
If you can find a good translation of minister Vavro Šrobár's diary entry on his arrival to Žilina, read it. Outside of getting a first-hand account on what the situation felt like in those first early Czechoslovak months (when the country was still in post-war borderline chaos and had barely solidified yet into even a basic new administrative network), you might also get a good chuckle out of it (Šrobár was a bit grumpy over how barely anyone in Žilina had a clue he and the rest of the government deputies/emmisaries have arrived - news travelled slow, and with the collapse of A-H, the situation was still far from clear and organised).
Oh, given the POD of your TL and what developments we've seen, Rusyns might only be starting to reach the modern era of their national emancipation. In OTL, they had it rocky in the last 200
Also, by Slovak standards, Greek Catholics are one of the biggest minority churches, especially in the east, and are not really tied to specific nationalities (even if most of them tend to be Slovaks and Rusyns). Now, Orthodox Christians are really more in the minority, even in the northeast, where they usually flourish.
Erm, I don't think the Little Danube is all that navigable. That's part of the reason why I've mentioned the lower, southern sections of the Váh and much of the Bodrog as the two most navigable rivers. Maybe some small-scale, shallow draft cargo boats could also be used on parts of the Morava, and Hron, but other than that, the riverine fleet will have a lot less options than in OTL. If relations with ATL Hungary and Austria will be benevolent enough, the two countries might allow some larger trade ships onto the Danube. Due to the loss of domestic access to said river, I can't see domestically owned river-and-sea-going merchantmen to be a thing, unlike in the OTL 20th century (where they used the Danube to sail all the way to the Black Sea, and then go delivering cargo to Mediterranean ports).
My thoughts exactly. I also wonder where the ATL airports will be set up and how many of them will be in the country.
Is 40 kms from the OTL southeastern border enough ?
Well, I went to school with a Krasniewski (spelled the American way) who was a pretty good football player.
All right. We have a deal.
Just drop me a PM whenever you'd need advice on some very specific details.I'll just add a few more cents involving linguistic diversity.
IOTL, there really have only been two groups which have been very successful in avoiding linguistic assimilation over generations in the U.S.: the Amish (and some similar Mennonite communities) and the Haredi Jewish groups in New York. While otherwise very different, what these groups share is a distinct tribal religious status, endogamous marriage, external cultural signifiers which show them to be an "other," and opting out of public education.
All other linguistic minorities have entered into rapid/ nearterminal decline. This includes not only immigrant groups (even modern Latinos drop Spanish by the third generation), but "old-line" groups which maintained their language in the U.S. for centuries, like the Old Spanish of northern New Mexico, Cajuns, Northern New England Acadians, and the non-Amish Pennsylvania Dutch (or any number of Native American languages, for that matter. All of the latter went into terminal decline at roughly the same time - around 1920 or so - basically when the U.S. had a well-established national media and "off the grid" rural areas started to vanish.
The problem I see with German surviving in Wisconsin is there's relatively little really separating the mainstream of German-Americans from Yankees. Even if they were numerically dominant, the hegemonic effects of mass American culture would mean that if their children became bilingual (which is highly likely) their children's children would be English-speaking only. The only thing which could halt this would be if state government was taken over by German speakers, and a German hegemony was established before there was substantial language shift.
Also, compared to OTL, there is probably somewhat less German migration. Keep in mind that Germany ITTL united earlier, was more liberal, and is far more powerful economically. Austria-Hungary was still somewhat of a mess, however, so it may be there is just as many German-speakers, but they're more from Austria and points east and less from Germany than IOTL.
IOTL, there really have only been two groups which have been very successful in avoiding linguistic assimilation over generations in the U.S.: the Amish (and some similar Mennonite communities) and the Haredi Jewish groups in New York. While otherwise very different, what these groups share is a distinct tribal religious status, endogamous marriage, external cultural signifiers which show them to be an "other," and opting out of public education.
All other linguistic minorities have entered into rapid/ nearterminal decline. This includes not only immigrant groups (even modern Latinos drop Spanish by the third generation), but "old-line" groups which maintained their language in the U.S. for centuries, like the Old Spanish of northern New Mexico, Cajuns, Northern New England Acadians, and the non-Amish Pennsylvania Dutch (or any number of Native American languages, for that matter. All of the latter went into terminal decline at roughly the same time - around 1920 or so - basically when the U.S. had a well-established national media and "off the grid" rural areas started to vanish.
The problem I see with German surviving in Wisconsin is there's relatively little really separating the mainstream of German-Americans from Yankees. Even if they were numerically dominant, the hegemonic effects of mass American culture would mean that if their children became bilingual (which is highly likely) their children's children would be English-speaking only. The only thing which could halt this would be if state government was taken over by German speakers, and a German hegemony was established before there was substantial language shift.
Also, compared to OTL, there is probably somewhat less German migration. Keep in mind that Germany ITTL united earlier, was more liberal, and is far more powerful economically. Austria-Hungary was still somewhat of a mess, however, so it may be there is just as many German-speakers, but they're more from Austria and points east and less from Germany than IOTL.
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But there's plenty of people who are bilingual and maintain bilingualism. There's vast swaths of the world that speak more than one language, consistently and for centuries. I can understand it's probably weird to only mono-linguists. In Mexico many of family speak Mixtec and Spanish (and us in the States have added English to this), including those who live in Oaxaca City. A big part of the reason Cajun and Creole French faded was because of a high push for English-only and discrimination against non-English speakers. My Mohawk side of the family maintained fluency in our language and English, and even a lesser degree French, long before the boarding schools beat and raped our language out of us.
For the midwest German speakers, this just means they live in a bilingual society. And again, without the WWs stigmatizing the language and identity, it could really stick around and form an identity of its own. Like Jord said, it was a pretty close call in OTL.
First off, you'll notice that I said most private schools will increase English language instruction as time goes on, and English will still be the dominant language throughout the state. And, yes, the spread of mass communication will have a homogenization effect on the US culture that will increase English in minority groups.
That said, like othyrsyde mentions, while it seems strange from a monolingual and near monocultural OTL American perspective, it's not actually that implausible. You'll notice that the 1920's was also the time of the Emergency Quota act and an increase in anti-immigration movements, which only increased as isolationism, the Red Scare, and the Great Depression made immigrants more suspect in the eyes of the population. Yet, despite all that and the additional pressure from being at war with Germany twice(including demanding the renaming of Sauerkraut to "Liberty Cabbage" and other such stupidities), German as a professional language did not die out for another generation afterwards in many areas. Once again, the Tavern League of Wisconsin had meetings in German through the 50s, and I could still bring a recording from my old Catholic church in the 60s where the priests were speaking in German for the meeting. These were older speakers, yes, but it still persisted in areas despite the pressure to assimilate.
The difference here is that the pressure to assimilate is not as strong ITTL, though I'm sure there still are some. One of the largest monoculturalists of our history was Teddy Roosevelt, who used the bully pulpit of the presidency to advance the agenda of Americanization, but here he's a very different man. The world in general is more open to racial and cultural differences, with South Carolina being one of the primary examples as the prominent minority of Muslims and Gullah have a lot of influence. Another thing that has been quite present in this TL is the conscious idea that linguistic and cultural rights do not contradict national participation. The political parties have evolved to a more multi-polar system, rather than a big tent which demands Americanization on both ends, as it was IOTL during these times. The Catholic Church of this world is explicitly anti-nationalist, which could mean that many German Catholics actively resist becoming assimilated wholesale by the Protestant Yankee culture around them, as was another OTL cultural divide between Germans and Yankees, especially as relatively more immigrants after the POD will be from Catholic German areas than Protestant ones. We've also been told that there will not be an Emergency Quota act to provide a couple decades of digestion and assimilation. Without the World Wars to cause a backlash against German language and culture, the areas where it is already established will persist, through sheer institutional inertia, even as their children speak English more and more. Again, in Wisconsin, German breweries were some of the primary investors and sponsors of churches, youth organizations, sports clubs, private schools for rural areas, and German newspapers. They didn't completely control the state government, but German culture and language did control many towns and municipalities for most of the state's early existence. It took all of the things I mentioned, plus Prohibition driving most of the breweries out of that business and unable to fund those community activities and services, to break that influence to the extent of OTL.
True, most will speak English as their primary language. True, for many people their understanding of German will be on what we would call a "high school Spanish" level. But at the end of the day, I think it's very likely that German will persist as an important cultural part of Wisconsin and the upper midwest and continue to be a major language in certain areas. Sure, in some areas it might just mean having signs in German and English, but in others it will be actually heard and used consistently in daily life.
Back in the 2000 census, German was the plurality of reported main ancestry here, nearly hitting 50% of the entire population, and it was even higher before that. At statehood, over one third of Wisconsin's population spoke a language other than English as their main language. Most of those immigrants of the past came before or around statehood, in the early 1800s, and were unaffected by butterflies. Afterwards, there would still political refugees from the southern german countries and poor Germans from the north that wanted higher paying jobs or better land ITTL. Plus, there were doubtless some that fled the absolutely brutal costs of the Great War or the Hungarian wars to the United States. I don't think there will be that much less immigration, and those kind of numbers without the same all-encompassing push for the melting pot of assimilation means that ITTL, German will be stronger here.
This analogy depends on just how bad discrimination against Catholics in Ulster was in the late 19th and through the 20th century.
I do not have the impression that Protestant hotheads could literally get away with murder in Ulster, for instance. Or anyway I imagine they did from time to time, depending on circumstances--say there was a street fight, an Ulster jury might be outrageously lenient and forbearing in considering "extenuating circumstances" and perhaps judges might issue amazingly mild sentences for whatever that jury found an upstanding young Protestant actually guilty of. Or a death might go strangely unexplained, with the authorities failing to find evidence leading to accusing anyone in particular.
But it would have to be very extreme to match the routine realities African-Americans faced OTL in the Jim Crow era. Did Ulster have local legislation on the books that systematically surrounded Catholics with the sort of web of legal disabilities and presumptive liabilities that were normal in the US South? Could Catholics not vote in Parliamentary and other elections, provided they met the same conditions that other Britons had to meet? (Of course fewer of them would do so, being on the average poorer--but eventually Britain had universal adult suffrage, and not long before then most men could meet the minimal requirements. Once, simply being Catholic would exclude them, but that ended long before the 20th century began, did it not?) I really would be surprised if the degree of violence Catholics had to fear in Ulster came anywhere near what white Southerners could inflict on any African, on the flimsiest pretext with the most whimsical standards of "proof" of "guilt," with near-perfect impunity.
So I'm thrashing around a lot because I am not absolutely sure it never approached the terroristic levels normal in Dixie for a century and more; certainly in Ireland's historical past the trials of the Irish were at times comparably severe.
But not, I think, during the Troubles or for generations before them. I am not belittling the grievances of the Catholic majority, so much as drawing attention to the appalling depths the USA sank to.
And we are told, precisely because ITTL African-Americans had in certain times and places demonstrated they would fight for their rights and could win, that aspects of TTL Jim Crow were actually worse than OTL!
So, I'd think that comparing the unrest Jonathan is describing in Alabama in the 1920s to the Troubles is a way of greatly understating the severity of the crisis!
To be sure there are aspects of it that do bear comparison--OTL there would have been no likelihood that whatever measures whites took to quell the black side of such insurrection would have been questioned by many white Americans even outside the South, and a very good chance that even if the southern white power structure found itself overwhelmed that they'd get help from the rest of the country putting the blacks back in their place--perhaps with some moralizing about a need for somehow improving relations after the black threat was properly and thoroughly ended, moralizing that in the end would come to nothing. Therefore, OTL, though from time to time there were riots (and most if not every "race riot" I've ever heard of in the USA, at least before WWII, comes down to a bunch of rowdy white people attacking blacks, not the other way round) by and large there was no visible stirring of revolutionary violence among African-Americans no matter how awful Jim Crow discriminations and outrages got--because they could do the math and reflect that in a nation where they were outnumbered, overall, 10 to one, such attempts could have just one outcome.
ITTL on the other hand, African-Americans have more confidence, or anyway hope, that they can fight it out with their oppressors without necessarily and automatically turning every white person in the nation against them; there are a substantial number of whites who can be counted on to at least sit on the sidelines, if not actively take their side. So too I suppose that even though most Britons must have supported the basic principles of law and order, by no means did an overwhelming majority believe the Orange side of the Ulster fight was purely and simply in the right--for everyone who blamed the Catholics for the violence, someone else would blame the Protestants, and most Britons were rather paralyzed in the face of the mutual hatred of both sides for each other and rather wishing they'd just stop it. I suppose the fact that Ulster's Protestant majority opted to remain in the UK and thus supported the Kingdom tipped the balance of favor somewhat their way. But not enough for the British nation to come down wholeheartedly and unambiguously on the Catholics, without at least trying for some balance in reproaching and even punishing Protestant excesses as well.
So in that way, ITTL the struggle against Jim Crow in the US South in the early 20th century is more like the Troubles than OTL, anyway. But the sheer magnitude of the violence is probably worse, and the stakes, including the potential for even worse disorder, are even higher.
And another difference between the situation of Irish Catholics and African-Americans is, after the formation of the Irish Free State anyway, Catholics could always leave Ulster; they'd still be refugees, but in a country ruled by their kinsmen of their own faith. ITTL to be sure, southern African-Americans do have a few better alternatives for emigration out of Dixie, or even completely out of the USA, than OTL. But nothing like the option Ulster Catholics had.
There's some fascinating discussion going on here. Due to the number of comments, I hope you don't mind if I respond generally.
The South as Northern Ireland: There's certainly a rough parallel, in that a local majority which previously enjoyed unquestioned official support is now fighting the aspirations of an oppressed minority. The federal government is quite a bit more conflicted about which side to support, though; if anything, federal law now favors the rights of the African-Americans, albeit not condoning either side's terrorism. Also, the African-Americans aren't fighting to join another nation, meaning that people outside the South don't see supporting the whites as synonymous with protecting the integrity of the country.
TTL certainly has its analogues of William F. Buckley: there are plenty of columnists arguing that the violence proves that the blacks were savages all along. But the white violence also gets media play, and with the South Carolina Rising as part of the national mythology, there's more tolerance overall for African-Americans who stand up for their rights. So it's likely that the federal government will be neutral on the African-Americans' side, suppressing terrorism but also enforcing the civil rights laws.
There's plenty of room for missteps, false starts and bad political decisions, though, especially during election years.
BTW, Northern Ireland is also TTL's Northern Ireland, which we'll see more of on the next visit to Europe.
The Knights of the Yellowhammer are named after Alabama's state bird (as the Camellia primaries, TTL's version of Jaybird primaries, are named after its state flower). They're an Alabama-specific group, although they have alliances with similar militias in the other Jim Crow states.
Immigration to the United States: As eschaton has correctly guessed, there was no quota legislation in TTL. Immigration restrictions were a consensus position by the 1920s in OTL; in TTL, they're much more contentious, and while there's been some restrictive legislation (e.g., requiring a sponsor or financial bond for some immigrants), there's been no attempt to exclude entire categories of people.
Part of the reason for this, though, is that there's been less immigration overall. European immigration was cut off during the Great War, and afterward, many of the people who might otherwise have come to America were slain on the battlefield. There were also more choices for potential emigrants from eastern and southern Europe: France and Germany were looking for industrial labor, Jews could go to the Ottoman Empire, Catholics to Brazil, Italians and Spaniards to the Southern Cone.
With fewer people coming in, the more hysterical forms of nativism never caught on to the extent they did in OTL, and while there was indeed an influx of migration from Britain during the Imperial period, British immigrants wouldn't drive nativists into a frenzy. So the same slower-but-steady pace of immigration that existed in TTL's 1890s through 1910s will continue through the 1920s and beyond.
The Chinese Exclusion Act didn't happen: under the Republican administrations of the post-Civil War era, the need for labor trumped xenophobia. Several cities and states did impose restrictions on Asians, though, and that's one of the things at issue now that the civil rights era has begun.
The Great Migration: As discussed in post 3365, it did happen, albeit not quite to the extent of OTL. Jim Crow was still a push factor - a worse one than OTL, in the states where it existed - and there was still the pull factor of jobs in the industrial North. The economic growth of the postwar years did draw many African-Americans to northern cities (and the somewhat slower pace of immigration meant that there were jobs for them).
The "sundown towns" did happen, but as with Jim Crow, the pattern was much more uneven than OTL. Some Northern state governments and county sheriffs stood up for African-Americans in small towns while others let the townsfolk push them to the cities. Local conditions, including the amount of competition for jobs and the makeup of the white community, were important factors. In 1930, it's fairly common for small towns in Michigan or Wisconsin to have a few African-American families, less so in Pennsylvania.
German in Wisconsin: It seems to me that language survival requires either a local majority or a culturally isolated minority, such that the language is useful in daily life. It also helps if the national and local governments either support the language or at least don't actively oppose it.
The Wisconsin Germans would seem to have both of those. Without the post-WWI wave of nativism and assimilationism that occurred in OTL, and with most Americans having positive views of Germany, there wouldn't be anyone trying to force English on the Germans, and town or county offices might even be bilingual. And this is a period when people moved around a lot less than today, so the need to learn English to communicate with the wider world wouldn't be as great. Many people would spend their whole lives in towns where they could speak German to the neighbors, read the German papers and watch German movies at the local cinema.
There would certainly be a pull toward English as more kids went to college and as mass media increased its reach, and the kids who moved away would probably lose the language. For those who stay in heavily German areas, though, the spread of mass culture might simply result in people learning both. Even in OTL, there are counties in Maine and parishes in Louisiana where more than a quarter of the population speaks French as a mother tongue, and German might be at least that prevalent in parts of the Upper Midwest. As others have said, English would become the primary language of education, and as the world became more globalized, there would be very few monolingual German-speakers, but if German is a part of the local media and civic culture, I don't see why it couldn't last.
I wonder if there's enough of a critical mass of Scandinavian-language speakers in the same region. There would certainly be at least as much French along the Canadian border and in Louisiana as there is in OTL.
Petike, your village is in Slovakia in TTL, so you can rest easy. And the Abacar family reunion: India, 1932, a reception in honor of Sarah's ninetieth birthday...
The South as Northern Ireland: There's certainly a rough parallel, in that a local majority which previously enjoyed unquestioned official support is now fighting the aspirations of an oppressed minority. The federal government is quite a bit more conflicted about which side to support, though; if anything, federal law now favors the rights of the African-Americans, albeit not condoning either side's terrorism. Also, the African-Americans aren't fighting to join another nation, meaning that people outside the South don't see supporting the whites as synonymous with protecting the integrity of the country.
TTL certainly has its analogues of William F. Buckley: there are plenty of columnists arguing that the violence proves that the blacks were savages all along. But the white violence also gets media play, and with the South Carolina Rising as part of the national mythology, there's more tolerance overall for African-Americans who stand up for their rights. So it's likely that the federal government will be neutral on the African-Americans' side, suppressing terrorism but also enforcing the civil rights laws.
There's plenty of room for missteps, false starts and bad political decisions, though, especially during election years.
BTW, Northern Ireland is also TTL's Northern Ireland, which we'll see more of on the next visit to Europe.
The Knights of the Yellowhammer are named after Alabama's state bird (as the Camellia primaries, TTL's version of Jaybird primaries, are named after its state flower). They're an Alabama-specific group, although they have alliances with similar militias in the other Jim Crow states.
Immigration to the United States: As eschaton has correctly guessed, there was no quota legislation in TTL. Immigration restrictions were a consensus position by the 1920s in OTL; in TTL, they're much more contentious, and while there's been some restrictive legislation (e.g., requiring a sponsor or financial bond for some immigrants), there's been no attempt to exclude entire categories of people.
Part of the reason for this, though, is that there's been less immigration overall. European immigration was cut off during the Great War, and afterward, many of the people who might otherwise have come to America were slain on the battlefield. There were also more choices for potential emigrants from eastern and southern Europe: France and Germany were looking for industrial labor, Jews could go to the Ottoman Empire, Catholics to Brazil, Italians and Spaniards to the Southern Cone.
With fewer people coming in, the more hysterical forms of nativism never caught on to the extent they did in OTL, and while there was indeed an influx of migration from Britain during the Imperial period, British immigrants wouldn't drive nativists into a frenzy. So the same slower-but-steady pace of immigration that existed in TTL's 1890s through 1910s will continue through the 1920s and beyond.
The Chinese Exclusion Act didn't happen: under the Republican administrations of the post-Civil War era, the need for labor trumped xenophobia. Several cities and states did impose restrictions on Asians, though, and that's one of the things at issue now that the civil rights era has begun.
The Great Migration: As discussed in post 3365, it did happen, albeit not quite to the extent of OTL. Jim Crow was still a push factor - a worse one than OTL, in the states where it existed - and there was still the pull factor of jobs in the industrial North. The economic growth of the postwar years did draw many African-Americans to northern cities (and the somewhat slower pace of immigration meant that there were jobs for them).
The "sundown towns" did happen, but as with Jim Crow, the pattern was much more uneven than OTL. Some Northern state governments and county sheriffs stood up for African-Americans in small towns while others let the townsfolk push them to the cities. Local conditions, including the amount of competition for jobs and the makeup of the white community, were important factors. In 1930, it's fairly common for small towns in Michigan or Wisconsin to have a few African-American families, less so in Pennsylvania.
German in Wisconsin: It seems to me that language survival requires either a local majority or a culturally isolated minority, such that the language is useful in daily life. It also helps if the national and local governments either support the language or at least don't actively oppose it.
The Wisconsin Germans would seem to have both of those. Without the post-WWI wave of nativism and assimilationism that occurred in OTL, and with most Americans having positive views of Germany, there wouldn't be anyone trying to force English on the Germans, and town or county offices might even be bilingual. And this is a period when people moved around a lot less than today, so the need to learn English to communicate with the wider world wouldn't be as great. Many people would spend their whole lives in towns where they could speak German to the neighbors, read the German papers and watch German movies at the local cinema.
There would certainly be a pull toward English as more kids went to college and as mass media increased its reach, and the kids who moved away would probably lose the language. For those who stay in heavily German areas, though, the spread of mass culture might simply result in people learning both. Even in OTL, there are counties in Maine and parishes in Louisiana where more than a quarter of the population speaks French as a mother tongue, and German might be at least that prevalent in parts of the Upper Midwest. As others have said, English would become the primary language of education, and as the world became more globalized, there would be very few monolingual German-speakers, but if German is a part of the local media and civic culture, I don't see why it couldn't last.
I wonder if there's enough of a critical mass of Scandinavian-language speakers in the same region. There would certainly be at least as much French along the Canadian border and in Louisiana as there is in OTL.
Petike, your village is in Slovakia in TTL, so you can rest easy. And the Abacar family reunion: India, 1932, a reception in honor of Sarah's ninetieth birthday...
If that exists anywhere it's likely to be in Minnesota, they've got one of the largest Danish American communities OTL as far as I know. Although Minnesota is more likely to be an incredibly multilingual state given how English, Lakota, and most of the Nordic languages have footholds there in certain parts of the state. St Louis could probably actually be seen as a real melting pot ITTL.
Bilingualism tends to be strong when one or more of the following conditions are met;
1. State support/mandating the learning and knowing of a specific second language (Canada, India, some other places).
2. Closed groups, that is groups who specifically remain closed off and only have to do with others like themselves to maintain their culture (aforementioned Amish and certain Jewish communities).
3. Lack of a dominant language, that is places in which there is no single native language spoken by a majority and/or large plurality of people that results in the need for a second Lingua Franca.
Now, in the United States all of the groups that have maintained their own language have been a case of the second reason and some addtionally (Amerindian groups) have the first as well.
There's more Norwegians, Swedes, and Finns than Danes in Minnesota. Finnish has a strong probability to hold on since the northern rural parts of the state were strongly settled by Finns. And as I mentioned earlier, the Iron Range, along Lake Superior, wasn't settled by Europeans until the late 19th century resulting in a huge polygot of groups from eastern and southern Europe, including a significant population of Jews and again Finns. But given the different demographic trends of TTL, it's not as likely to be settled in the same manner. As a result of the Great War and immigrants going to other places, you might get more far flung immigration from Asia, Africa, Latin America, or part of the smaller migration of African Americans out of the south. It could even result in the local Ojibway entering the work force with a need for miners, adding different shade to unionization.
And speaking of indigenous Minnesotans, you're confusing Lakota with Dakota, which are two different dialects. The Dakota are more of a woodland people since only the western edge of the state is plains. And the Ojibway by far are the most influential and largest Native American group in Minnesota.
Sounds about right. I don't dispute English will gain dominance, and there's enough of a movement for centralized education standards in the region to support that even without the assimilationist standpoint of OTL, but there should be plenty of towns that speak German a lot of their daily lives. If even a quarter of the OTL German speaking population's able to keep a culture alive around it, that's still a little past 10 percent of the population in a lot of states up here.
To give a good example, coming from a Swiss immigrant family, I grew up going to New Glarus in southern Wisconsin a lot where I heard and occasionally spoke some High German or Swiss German here and there, especially on cultural festival days. It wasn't much, but without as much assimilation pressure, I figure the local Wilhelm Tell performances would still be in German like when I was a kid. IIRC, they only finally put an end to the German performances a year or so ago, after all.
This is one area I'm not as knowledgeable about. From a Wisconsin perspective, there are a few communities that were majority Scandinavian, particularly along the Mississippi and up north but with a few down south too, so it's possible in very rural regions here. The highest concentrations I can recall should be in Minnesota and North Dakota for Norwegians(right along the border between the two and Canada, IIRC) and the relatively large Finnish community up in the Upper Peninsula on the shore of Lake Superior (mostly west of Marquette to the Wisconsin border). Those areas are mostly farmers and other rural communities, so given the right circumstances a few isolated places should be able to hold on.
A very quick search with the University of Wisconsin(here: http://csumc.wisc.edu/?q=node/226), shows that there are some areas in Wisconsin and Minnesota where Norwegian still persists at around 40% comprehension currently, though there doesn't seem to be much detailed information there. I'll keep looking.
I seen a documentary on that not to long ago, about the persistence of Norwegian identity and language in Minnesota. It was pretty fascinating.
I think to say that racism is "not as bad" in the North ITTL is not at all to say that a generic average representative Northerner has somewhat more moderate views; it is more to say that the argument between hard-line racists and people with a more inclusive vision has not been silenced by the sweeping triumph of the former. I would guess that as you say, the initial phase of the southern blacks settling here and there in the north went as OTL. But then, the factions and movements that dampened what enthusiasm there was among Northerners for the welfare of African-Americans had more mixed success. OTL and presumably here, abolitionism before the Civil War had considerable traction in the north, especially the old Northwest aka "Midwest" today--but motives were mixed. Some had high-flown moral reasons, others merely saw slaveowners as dangerous competition for free labor and free-soiler settlement opportunities in the West. Few however knew any African-Americans; many western settlers hoped to opt out of the whole slavery/abolition issue by simply forbidding African-descended people from settling in their territories at all.
The Civil War changed things though; some white northerners resented the freed slaves and the abolitionists for stirring up trouble that cost them so much, but others, who had the experience of leading black soldiers or seeing slavery up close and then seeing what it meant to its primary victims to see it abolished at last, came to appreciate African-Americans as people and fellow citizens all the more.
ITTL, I suspect the legacy of South Carolina's self-liberation, and a bit paradoxically Lincoln finishing his second term and the absence of the imposition of sweeping Reconstruction from above by the Radical Republicans all have the effect of strengthening the position of pro-Africanism among white people. The SC example should be self-explanatory; Lincoln's avoidance of radicalism, which implies conservative Southern interests quickly regaining control of most of the South, deprives the mythmakers of the unified American White Race of much of their favorite OTL material; it is much less easy in this timeline for the Southern states to construct the myths of the glories of the antebellum days and the magnificent Lost Cause. Union armies are not kept mobilized to enforce Reconstruction for a decade--so there will be less disenchantment with the Northern noble cause.
This is a general thing, but in the spirit of much of the other conversation here recently, I think it will have play due to the greater relevance of locality ITTL. That is, I suppose that despite the factors above, racism based on the solidarity of the "white race" against others will indeed gain currency here and there--but not quite everywhere. In some of those Midwestern and northwestern settlements where southern African-Americans migrated to, they will be cast out as per OTL, but in others, they will integrate more strongly into their communities--and in still others, maybe only a few, some of the outcasts of the more intolerant towns will be welcomed in by both white and black locals. I suppose that instead of all of them going to urban ghettoes, there might arise some largely-black rural towns, and many others where they are respected community members.
These towns might not, I fear probably won't, be a majority of the towns nor hold a majority of any state's residents. But the point here is, the pro-African argument, uttered by both white and black voices, will not go silent. The Redeemers and Klansmen and their ilk will be able to attempt to rewrite history as per OTL, but not everyone will forget that these are lies.
Now on the other hand you mention that the African element of many of these towns would be forgotten through, among other things, intermarriage. I suspect that intermarriage will happen, but I don't think ITTL that the "One Drop Rule" of OTL USA will be swept away. If someone in one of these more welcoming towns (and cities, why not?) is known to be descended, even only distantly and in a small degree, from someone African, then they will be seen as "black." Intermarriage will not dilute the perception of African presence, it will inflate it!
The difference would be, in some of these towns, and hence to a small degree everywhere in the nation, being black will be more respectable. That is to say, in some of them it would be quite respectable (at least, being seen as one of "our black folk" as opposed to more dubious outsiders). Something approximating actual social equality might evolve here and there--but I don't think Americans will stop seeing racial distinctions. They just might stop fearing them.
And elsewhere, they won't stop fearing, not at all. We have seen Woodrow Wilson as a stand-in representative of white fear--and indeed, reading the latest installment about the Troubles of Alabama, I can understand his panic a lot better now!
Another factor at work is the lesser degree of ethnic homogenization we've been arguing about. The identity of being a "white" person in the OTL USA, particularly in the 20th century, is almost the opposite of a positive embrace of one's actual ancestors. The actual descendants of John Adams or other Revolutionary patriots might make something of that, but the vast majority of today's "white" people have no ancestors who were involved in the American Revolution, or even were on the wrong side of it (as Britons who had not yet emigrated, for instance!) Most can't even count as much as half their ancestry from Britain; as observed by another comment here and noted quite some time ago by demographic scholarship, the single largest European source of ancestry of "white" Americans is German.
OTL, to claim, and to be accepted as, a "white" American is mainly to disavow and forget the actual details of one's actual ancestry, or at any rate to prove to all challengers that one's Italianness, or Polish roots, or Swedish or Slovakian origins are all beside the point, that one is first of all a generic "American." And this proof is accomplished in large part by hatred and disavowal and proof of no ties to certain outsider groups--"foreigners" in general and African-Americans and Indians in particular. (Unless the Indians are effectively dead! If "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," as the OTL Western movies tended to assert, then dead Indians are good--claiming a bit of ancestry from some native people who are long gone, or at any rate made completely irrelevant as a distinct people, from one's own neighborhood adds a spicy cachet, and also is a way of claiming entitlement to the land.
)All these factors and tendencies are still in play ITTL, but they are offset. In particular if the nation is more notably a patchwork of multiple local ethnicities, then American identity is much less a matter of claiming a curiously blended and homogenized but still distinct racial identity, and more a matter of acceptance of the American revolutionary tradition, claiming to have answered the clarion call of the Spirit of '76 to all humanity and joined the ranks in terms of a voluntary compact.
In that light, there are few people more American in the United States than the African-Americans!
ITTL, more of them will be immigrants after the Civil War, and their specifically recent African or Caribbean origins will be more likely to be noticed and remembered, but still, most African-American ancestry will be from people who were here long before most "white" people came over, and that fact might be noted as relevant by more non-African people. Any questions about whether they have adopted the revolutionary compact would be settled by their role in the Civil War. More of the white friends and admirers they won in that conflict will remain allies. And the attempt to Other the Africans in the course of blending the diverse-origined "hyphenated Americans" into a forgetful white mass will be resisted by those who won't accept those terms for whiteness. If the USA doesn't enter geopolitics as a partisan power, then the question of "who is aligned with the Enemy" does not arise, if no particular foreign power becomes a designated Foe.
Meanwhile, what opportunity American entrepreneurs do find overseas will be on the margins of empire, and in the gaps between them. African trade is both more lucrative and more important than OTL, and distinctly African-Americans are key players in tapping into it. Independent India opens up doors of opportunity--very distant ones, and to a people who don't have a lot wealth per capita--but there are lots of them! There aren't lots of Filipinos in comparison, but they too, and the self-liberating peoples of Indonesia, and the wavering allegiance of Zanzibar to Britain are more examples of places where small and distant opportunities beckon here and there; the best entree to such trade opportunities would be Americans familiar with the various cultures--but Americans of any hyphenated background at all can sell.