Why They Aren’t Assimilating

In 1973, Wilbur Zelinsky published The Cultural Geography of the United States, a landmark work that has gone on to lay the groundwork for other books examining the different nations that make up the United States, such as Joel Garreau’s The Nine Nations of North America and Colin Woodward’s American Nations. In his book, Zelinsky puts forth what he calls the Doctrine of First Effective Settlement, which states that whatever culture first settles a given geographic area will form the foundation of whatever culture that area has. Even as new cultures move in, they will not displace the initial culture. The only exception is if the prior culture is completely wiped out, as in the case of the American Indians.

As an overall framework, the theory has quite a bit of explaining power. New England was founded by people who thought they were on a mission from God to remake the world, and despite the massive influx of Irish, Portuguese, Italians, and others who were decidedly not from English Puritan stock and a massive secularization of the culture, New England (and the areas of the North such as the upper Midwest that were initially settled by New Englanders) still has this component of its culture. Likewise, New York was settled by Dutchmen who saw commerce as society’s highest goal. Today, around 0.2% of the greater New York area are of Dutch descent, but that aspect of their culture is still alive and well – immigrant wave after immigrant wave simply adopted this mindset. There is a reason Yankee behavior in 1860 and the Yankee behavior in 2021 are almost identical, despite the vast genetic difference between the average Yankee of 1860 and the average Yankee of 2021. And, going back in history, the barbarians that tore down the Roman Empire were Latinized, speaking a language derived from Latin, having Roman derived legal systems, and traditionally being Roman Catholic.

But to look at the state of Dixie in 2021, the theory has more limitations. Northern Virginia and Maryland were once part of the Tidewater culture of Dixie, similar to eastern parts of both Virginia and North Carolina, until an influx of Yankees turned those once beautiful areas into something akin to modern New Jersey. Why is it those areas turned into shades of New Jersey, rather than the new immigrants becoming more like the native Tidewater culture? It would be one thing if the problem was unique to Northern Virginia and Maryland, perhaps a special function of being so close to the Imperial Capital, but this same phenomenon can be seen throughout other parts of Dixie – South Florida, Atlanta, Piedmont North Carolina, and so forth.

Part of this is that, unlike the North, Dixie was never a “nation of immigrants.” Genetically, Dixie remains as it was in 1776 – an Anglo-Celtic nation. While the North, especially outside the Dutch and German settled Middle Colonies, was also Anglo-Celtic, it ceased to be so, at least on a genetic level, long ago. Thus, the North is better at assimilating immigrants because they had more practice. Dixie, much like Europe, never had that massive influx of immigrants early in her history, and therefore never developed a process to assimilate them.

Again, I think there is a lot of truth here – never in Dixie’s history have we received this many immigrants, coming mainly from both the North and Latin America. But still, the challenge here is that while Dixie is not a “nation of immigrants,” it is not true that Dixie literally received zero immigrants that were not Anglo-Celtic. We did and we managed to assimilate them – i.e., the Germans in the Carolinas, the French in Louisiana, and the Spanish in Florida and Texas and others. Even after the War of Northern Aggression, which saw the true formation of Dixian identity, we were still able to assimilate the immigrants we did receive, such as the Italians in New Orleans and the Slavs in Birmingham.

Now, part of this issue is a simple numbers game. The amount of French, Spanish, Germans, Italians, and Slavs that immigrated to Dixie were tiny compared to the Anglo-Celtic core. So, they were more easily assimilated. By contrast, the current influx of immigrants is much, much larger, making them far harder to assimilate. But, I think there is also something larger going on here which brings up a limitation of Zelinsky’s thesis – the Doctrine of First Effective Settlement does not work if the incoming culture sees itself as culturally superior and in need of their civilizing influence. We can see this in history. While the barbarians who torn down the Roman Empire were Latinized, the Romans were not the first settlers in the regions they conquered. And, it is not as if those nations were completely destroyed either, but when the Romans invaded, they saw themselves as being culturally superior and were more easily able to import their culture, eventually supplanting what was there before. This is also why Latin culture never replaced Greek culture in the eastern half of the Roman Empire. The Romans simply admired the Greeks too much.

This, I think, strikes at the very heart of the problem. The Yankees moving into Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, Florida, etc. have been conditioned to think of Dixie as a backwards land of racism, illiteracy, religious fundamentalism, etc. and their superior culture needs to transform it. This is why rather than moving here and actually trying to fit in, as past immigrants might have done, they loudly and proudly announce that they are moving here to transform our land. If being a Dixian is bad, no one will want to be one and those that move here will not try to assimilate. But even this will go only so far, hence the promotion of a parallel black culture since the 1970s that has gone into overdrive since the 1990s. There has, of course, long been a separate black culture in Dixie, one that has some similarities to Dixian culture, but still remains distinct.

Prior to the 1970s, this culture was not promoted or idealized, so new immigrants to Dixie, be they Italian, French, Slavic, etc. would assimilate to the dominate Dixian culture. This is why whatever aspects of Dixian culture that cannot be completely demonized, such as the music and food, are presented as being actually African in origin, despite the strong Anglo-Celtic influences also present. So, while past immigrants may have had a Dixian culture for them to admire, and thus assimilate into, new immigrants have been told that Dixian culture is evil but black culture is good. This is, at the core of it, why the children and grandchildren of Latin American immigrants to Dixie tend to “act black,” unless they are actively rightwing (and more often than not, Dissident Right).

The mantra that “America is a nation of immigrants” does not apply to Dixie and any honest historian (including anti-Dixie liberals like Colin Woodward) knows this. Genetically, we remain Anglo-Celtic outside of the major cities the Yankees have colonized. There is a reason why, up until the 1990s, almost every white male in Dixie could have joined the Sons of Confederate Veterans – we did not get a massive influx of immigrants as did the North. This is a large part of the problem of why Dixie is being transformed by immigration. Like Europe, we did not develop a culture designed for mass assimilation. Still, we did receive some immigration, as relativity minor as it may have been, even after the War, and we were able to assimilate them.

But, this is no longer the case and at the root of that is not immigration itself, or even the basic question over whether or not Dixie is “a nation of immigrants or not,” but rather an issue of 1) a particular type of immigrant that sees themselves as being cultural warriors to destroy an inferior, backwards culture and 2) the increased promotion of black culture, disingenuous or not. These are the forces, along with the number of immigrants, that is transforming Dixie and this is why new immigrants, unlike the French, Germans, Italians, and Slavs before them, are not assimilating.

– By Harmonica