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Notes -
Extremely salient point here.
Also here, and these are like inverses of each other but making the same argument.
When faced with an extremely conformist/homogeneous overculture, your choices are to adapt to conform as closely as you can and try not to stand out much... or carve out a subculture for yourself with others who share some degree of similarity to you and separate your identity as a group from the overculture.
Right now in the U.S., the overculture is the left-liberal cathedral.
For the post-civil war South, the overculture would have been 'white' culture, and enforced segregation prevented most blacks from assimilating, so as you say their only option was to form parallel institutions with black leaders arising to positions of prominence within that subculture.
And for better or worse, now the overculture not only allows assimilation, but it actively plucks the best and brightest of the undercultures so the undercultures are robbed of possible leaders and innovators.
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