Immigration In Buffalo & Texas
A book I recently read makes a point about Buffalo, New York in the early 20th century that may have relevance to the immigration debate in Texas and in America today.
The book is Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography by David S. Brown. Richard Hofstadter was a political scientist and author who lived between 1916 and 1970. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning Age Of Reform.
Hofstadter grew up in Buffalo.
As Eastern European immigrants moved into Buffalo in the first third of the 20th-century, the old WASP establishment of that city knew its days of political power were numbered.
The response of the Buffalo establishment was not to work out a transfer of power or a sharing of power with the newcomers.
Instead, as Brown quotes a Buffalo historian—“the WASP gentry strove consciously to define and to strengthen their identity and their legacies as the bearers of a noble, yet clearly threatened, New England Tradition.”
Anglo voters in my state of Texas realize that a big demographic switch is on the way. Already Anglos are a minority of all Texans.
The response of many Anglo voters in Texas so-far has been to support immigrant-bashing and right-wing candidates such as our terrible Senator John Cornyn.
These voters may figure that once power is lost to a coalition involving immigrants, that it may not return in their lifetimes. This is what the old-line residents of Buffalo understood nearly 100 years ago.
This reason as much as any other is an obstacle to reasonable discussion and progress on immigration issues.
