Its Not Easy To Be An Ethnic And Racial Melting Pot

America is a nation of immigrants.  The Northeast was settled by puritan's who were faced with a wave of immigration from other parts of Europe.  It took a lot of effort and struggle to make the melting pot work in the Northeast.  It worked reasonably well.  The result was Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans etc. etc.  Some of the ethnicity was retained but they were all Americans.

Michael Lind suggests that it has been a different story in the South.  Most of the immigration took place in the North.  Most of the settlers in the South came from the northern part of the UK and the South developed a unique culture.  He describes that culture in this article.  It has been a culture without a lot of hyphenated Americans.  The evangelical protestant whites in the South believed that they were the true Americans.  After the civil war, they were represented politically by the Southern wing of the Democratic Party (Dixiecrats).  The civil rights movement, led by the Democratic Party, gave the Republican Party the opportunity to turn the solid Democratic South into the solid Republican South that we have today.  The party that represented the plutocrats in the North, and farmers in the Mid West, has formed an uneasy alliance with those who still identify with the Old South.  Demographics and immigration are now threatening the culture of the Old South.  The True Americans face an uncertain future in which the white evangelical protestants will be outnumbered.  The South is becoming a melting pot, and it will not be an easy transition for the True Americans. How they deal with the transition will have a huge effect on the rest of our nation.  Politics in the US reflect regional differences more than differences between the left and the right.  The Democratic party is primarily a centrist party that contends with a Republican Party that has been pushed to the right by its transformation into a regional party.