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James Arthur's avatar

I am favorably impressed by this piece. I have relevant observations of life in the South in the 50s and 60s and how the “War on Poverty” guaranteed the outcome we see today. Think I will read some more of your stuff.

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ssri's avatar

I am finding your more recent set of posts exploring some of these social science aspects very interesting, especially as you still have a direct or indirect link back to your core progress supporting factors.

My own experience sort of confirms your comments on social homogenization after 1940. As a child in the 50s/60s, I moved from the midwest to the NE, then to the NW, and to the South for HS, before returning to the midwest for college. My perception in these widely distant locations was that everything was pretty much the same, in general. As a child with a nonreligious upbringing, I also perceived the various religious groups as just one overall set of believers and was pretty ignorant of the interpretive differences that might have exercised members of one group vs. another. I had Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish friends in HS.

I knew Germans were a major element of American citizenry from Revolutionary times, but was surprised by just how large and impactful that "national" or ethnic group was across so much of the country, rather than just more localized influence in PA, IL, MO, and TX. Plus my parents (and thus I) were of German heritage, with 3 of 4 grandparents US citizens by 1890 or so. And the religious mixing was personal, as my mother was raised Catholic and my father Methodist. But I never asked them how they managed to get together across that divide :-).

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