Thoughts relating to Bob Bultman's prediction of Door County's future
Bob Bultman touched on an interesting anticipation in his 2021 panel remarks:
He said that as long as there are people, they will come to Door County, and that the county is turning into the suburbs of Green Bay — and he doesn't see that going any other way.
Bultman was in favor of establishing a carrying capacity for Door County tourism, which makes sense if the county must turn into suburbs eventually. If suburbanization is destiny, than anything opposing it must fail no matter what. Rather, the prudent option is to pave the way for suburbanization.
Most people’s understanding of what constitutes a suburb in Wisconsin would include, among other things, a non-Hispanic White-dominated community. There could be some minorities, but not as many as in a larger urban situation.
It would be easier to sidestep the race aspect, but it is worth addressing since it was was raised against Door County in an unpleasant manner. Following are some of the Washington post comments in June, which addressed the question of affordable housing in Door County:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/door-county-bellwether-politics/
Josette A. Maderna:
There is the crux of it. Dipping below 93 percent would be a terrifying demographic change. They rather turn their city into a ghost town.
TRock5000:
If the immigrants were white people from Sweden, there would be no objections to anything. This all boils down to race and nothing more.
Active dry yeast:
I live in Rockford, IL. Door County is literally the Cape Cod of the Midwest. It’s a small wonder why immigrants weren’t flown to Door County along with Martha’s Vineyard to find work.
Door County is a haven for the well heeled, white, upper middle class who have the money to spend on sturgeon eggs, expensive cheeses and pricey restaurants.
It is no haven for anyone looking to eek out an existence as a day laborer.
Door County is a tourist Mecca of the Midwest and people wander there to see and be seen by other White people. This place is beyond Nordic with a undercurrent of racism that belongs to anyone that can afford to live and play there. The last thing they want is affordable housing. That would go against the grain.
jzms36:
In the third paragraph they mention the hispanic population has gone up 70% and some residents are concerned about the increase. Then a few paragraphs down you read the Hispanic population is about 4% and the white population is over 90%. This county is not into diversity it seems.
These lead me to think of some of the fears which I infer have been been present in Door County:
If problems about Door County are openly known, prospective retirees will move someplace else, and eventually minorities will take over.
If abortion is restricted, Hispanics will continue to out-procreate liberal White Door Countyites, and not assimilate into choosing abortion.
Working-aged Hispanics and White retirees are not generally compatible target demographics for making a joint appeal to.
This relates to the vulnerability of expecting retiree in-migration to make up for lack of retaining children into adulthood. Retiree in-migration in recent years is inherently more brittle and less dependable than the alternative of Hispanic in-migration. Yearly cohorts of Generation X are smaller than the Baby Boom due to fewer of them being born, while in recent years more Latinos have been immigrating to the United States.
Retirees coming to Door County typically don’t raise children; maybe grandchildren under less than ideal circumstances. Meanwhile many Hispanic immigrants do. Even if no new Hispanics were to immigrate into Door County, those already settled in would continue to expand the Hispanic demographic naturally as they have children at a rate higher than the replacement rate. Door County is 3.9% Hispanic or Latino in the most recent estimate: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/doorcountywisconsin,US/PST045222
Even with legalized abortion, the total fertility rate of all Hispanic women in Door County, from 1990 to 2020, was 2.54 lifetime children per woman, compared to the total fertility rate of 1.61 children for all non-Hispanic women of all races, and also women where a record of her race was missing. These figures are calculated from Wisconsin Interactive Statistics on Health statistics from the Wisconsin Department of Health website.
With the replacement total fertility rate being 2.1 children per woman over a lifetime, the difference between these two figures means that, were conditions to remain the same, over the next generation the Hispanic community, without consideration for immigration, average age, or life expectancy, should be expected to naturally be 21% larger than the last, while the next generation of all non-Hispanics combined will naturally be 23% smaller.
In other state health website figures, a trend shows up in population figures for ages 14 and younger. The percentage of Hispanic youths in Door County increased eight-fold from 1990 to 2020, and the increase shows no sign of letting up. At the rate of increase from the most recent years available, the 14 and younger segment of Door County will be majority Hispanic just after the next century begins. From this, it seems the destiny of Door County is not to be a suburb as they are usually thought of presently. Countering Bob Bultman, why should Door County not be expected to turn into a barrio?
It follows from this that political and business decisions should be made with this in mind. Racial and demographic transitions can be made easier or harder depending on the circumstances. Instead of trying to prepare a future which pleases non-Hispanic White suburbanites from nearby metro areas, another option would be to could figure out what Latinos want when looking for a place to raise families, and then work to accommodate that. Probably many non-Hispanic families of all races want similar things, or would benefit from them anyway. It is better to work on this now rather than neglecting it and waiting until tensions arise.
Why don’t Hispanic immigrants abort their children at parity with non-Hispanic Whites? An article explaining the situation was written for the Catholic Herald in 2019 by C. C. Pecknold, “Why Hispanic immigrants are so pro-life”: https://catholicherald.co.uk/why-hispanic-immigrants-are-so-pro-life/
The article explains that Hispanic immigrants are pro-life because they are more likely to trust their families rather than the broader society, or people who claim to wear its mantle. Recent immigrants many understand from experience under which circumstances, society is worthless or deceptive, and best disregarded.
This reminds me of how one of the movies shown to cherry season migrants decades ago was “The Prodigal”. The showing was put on by local Christians who volunteered to provide entertainment. They must have picked it because it was a relatively recent Biblical film, based on the parable of the prodigal son from Luke 15.
Reportedly, migrants loved this movie, although it had been a box-office failure and was not favored by critics. I found a clip of it on YouTube:
Following the link to YouTube, the first comment is in Spanish, asking that it be dubbed with Spanish subtitles and released to a Latin American audience.
It is understandable why migrants would enjoy it. It is an escapist journey into the Roman era, a reminder that Roman (Latin) culture was really grand. Besides that, the human sacrifice scene in this clip seems inspired by past Latin American civilizations.
The protagonist, Micah, was played by Edmund Purdom, who went on to divorce three women, dying at 84 of a heart attack in Rome. Micah is a migrant, and the female lead character is a reminder against getting ensnared. It reinforces the absolute necessity of keeping your head, bucking the trend, and defying the lies bought in by the broader culture.
In light of this cultural retention, the September 20, 2023 Door County Pulse article promoting abortion, https://doorcountypulse.com/abortion-care-restored-in-wisconsin/, should not be expected to result in Hispanic immigrants killing off their next generation in order to please Door County’s suburbanizing elements.
This article is presented as a news piece rather than an editorial or opinion piece, and it has some serious problems which are worth mentioning. The phrase “reverted to an 1849 law” omits any mention that Wisconsin’s abortion law was revised multiple times before Roe v. Wade, most recently in 1955. Pro-abortion people deliberately omit this in order to try and discredit Wisconsin’s abortion law. A good description of the changes made in 1955 are at https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/misc/lrb/lrb_reports/history_of_abortion_laws_6_4.pdf#page=8, also the next two pages.
The news piece also includes a quote from Tanya Atkinson, but not an opposing quote from the pro-life side. Quoting from the opposing side could have informed the reading audience that a separate provision already criminalized feticide, and with a more severe penalty than for abortion. The implications of this are discussed at https://www.maciverinstitute.com/2023/09/justice-is-the-whim-of-a-judge/.
PPWI asked “other stakeholders” before going ahead and openly violating the law, but they didn’t ask the baby. Unborn babies have been documented on ultrasound attempting to resist the instruments used to kill them.
Door County, according to state health department forms, suffered 190 induced abortions from 2010 to 2021. This averages out to nearly sixteen killed per year. If Hispanic immigrants assimilate to the host culture, more Hispanic babies will die from abortion. Already, Latino babies are more likely to be aborted than White babies, and a 2022 survey found evidence of assimilation over multiple generations of Latino immigrants: https://www.axios.com/2022/06/28/abortion-views-latinos-supreme-court-roe-poll
But could the opposite sort of influence happen, with Americans becoming more like Hispanic immigrants?
A very recent poll shows that Hispanics desire to have more children than non-Hispanic whites: https://news.gallup.com/poll/511238/americans-preference-larger-families-highest-1971.aspx.
The breakdowns in the Gallup poll show that Hispanics, Catholics, people who attend religious services more often, and people with incomes less than $40,000 a year are all more likely to want larger family sizes. The poll also found that Americans today prefer a larger family size to a greater degree than has been seen since 1971. That could fit with Hispanic immigrants leading the trend.
That could be surprising, but maybe less so remembering that in 1963, Keta Steebs admired several migrant families she had the privilege of profiling: https://doorcounty.substack.com/p/population-explosion-means-picking. People influence others all the time, even just by setting an example, and why should Hispanic immigrants be incapable of influencing?
From 2010 to 2021, Latinas in Door County had 131 babies. Considering that roughly half were undocumented immigrants, this could set an example to follow in handling difficult situations. No matter what the problems are, elective abortion does not need to be the answer.
One thing that is nice to reflect on is that when “forever” type rhetoric is used to describe efforts to protect and preserve Door County, what is really meant is keeping it nice so it will be ready when there are more around to enjoy it. This helps to refute the claim against Jens Jenson that he supposedly favored native plants because of racism. Rather, those who follow in Jenson’s footsteps and participate in community projects to remove non-native invasives, are preserving something so that someday the descendants especially of those who today tend to be pro-life will get to enjoy it.
Other posts related to protecting unborn babies:
https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/protecting-unborn-babies