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Notes -
I’m totally in agreement with you there- had southern Louisiana not been part of the United States, or had the United States been significantly poorer or lacking in assimilation pressure or simply not been very good at knitting the various regions together, rural southern Louisiana would still be predominately speaking a French patois. At the same time, it does bear pointing out that it was government policy to force the Cajuns to speak English and not French continuously from the end of the civil war, and attempts based solely on the stick failed while offering higher paying jobs working for Texan companies(which were familiar with the difficulties caused by management and employees not sharing a language) succeeded. No doubt the stick could have been much harsher(for the Indians it was), but still, the stick didn’t work except to clean up a few holdouts living deep in the swamps.
Realistically, this is a classic case of the economic benefits of assimilating leading to assimilation, and it’s a shame that’s not how it tends to be viewed, because the process of economic benefits causing assimilation is, well, how the whole GAE globohomo thing probably works. Taiwan doesn’t really care about gay rights, they care about the GAE liking them uncritically enough to hand over military aid with no strings attached, and gay rights are the way to make sure that happens.
I didn’t think you were trying to cast Cajuns as an Oppressed Minority (TM), I just thought it was worth pointing out. And then started a flame war because apparently someone didn’t believe that subsistence farmers are capable of believing spurious things when they’re expert consensus.
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