Atlantic: Trump Can't Reverse the Decline of White Christian America

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

As Crabcake pointed out, see Italians and Irish people who were at one time seen as non-White and their Catholic religion that the "'White' conservative Christians WASPs" found totally unacceptable make its way into the mainstream with ease.

That is not true. Italians and Irish were always considered white, even if discriminated against. During segregation they could use white facilities. They weren't banned from marrying WASPs under anti-miscenigation laws. The Census didn't have any separate categories for them. The idea that just because some ethnicities faced discrimination at some point automatically means they weren't considered white is absurd.

But there isn't a separate category for Hispanics on the census (or so I've heard) and yet popular consensus places them in a sort of halfway house between white and not white. With the fact that Hispanics will presumably assimilate and lose their Spanish language roots, while intermarrying significantly I somehow doubt that whiter Hispanics will be excluded with white category given time.

That is accurate but that would include an economic integration that would put whiter Hispanics on the same economic par with whites. This is an overlooked aspect of earlier redefinitions of white. The Irish and Italians and Eastern Europeans became richer, and thus, they intermarried more easily with the older Protestant groups and became interchangeable with them.

The problem is the economic transition right now. Latinos are not anywhere near whites in terms of assets and wealth, thus why they continue to be seen as "apart" and more Democratic. A very crude example that speaks to this economic view - we don't think of Latino bankers, we think of the guys who line up doing construction work. We don't have that vision of the average white, who we imagine to be a professional.

That will change, of course, but ...

I'm talking out of my ass here, but might we attribute this to the fact that the Hispanic population continues to grow, whereas certain European groups filtered in either at lower rates, or during more specifically defined periods?

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

I'm talking out of my ass here, but might we attribute this to the fact that the Hispanic population continues to grow, whereas certain European groups filtered in either at lower rates, or during more specifically defined periods?

That's a good question, I'll need to do research and find the answer and actually need to do some general research. But offhand, Latino growth is now happening through birthrates, not immigration, if that's what you mean by "filtered through"?

Not exactly, but that would still contribute to the "supply/demand" problem (the idea being that there are a significantly greater amount of Hispanics as a portion of the population than there ever were of, say, Italians or Poles).

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This period coincides both with the immense restriction on immigration from 1924 to 1965, and also the New Deal. (I think it should also be mentioned that the Great Migration, I believe, occurred during this time, which would not have made your average second generation Sicilian the lowest man on the totem pole in Cleveland or Detroit ~1930) The point being that there are multiple reasons one might posit that they successfully immigrated into the middle/upper-working class; they were thus poised to be responsive to the same campaign tactics that would attract any well-integrated person in those classes ~1970. This is all speculation, of course.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

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Not really grasping what you're saying here still. Are you saying there are a lot more Latinos vis a vis relative to the jobs that would be normally available to first generation immigrants compared to these earlier migrations?

I just wanted to be clear.

Basically put. That, combined with the fact that it would be harder to both economically and culturally absorb 14% of the country as compared to a smaller amount.

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Right, I broadly agree even if I place a strong premium on economic factors.

And, well, just a last thought, because I wanted to say it. The New Deal might have pushed these people towards the Republican Party by promoting a full employment and wage growth based set of Keynesian policies that enabled them to leave the cities and become Republicans in the suburbs by the 1970s. I agree of course with you that there could have been a lot of factors into the migration of this particular group politically.

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Absolutely. Once you granted someone a middle class existence, they absorbed middle class values, ironically making them more predisposed toward Republicanism (not saying I believe this definitely happened, but that it seems plausible). This of course brings into question the long-term viability of both left-wing and right-wing coalitions.