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So what? The downside is no ocean (though not on the west coast). But lots of people like the outdoor activities available in the west. You can't climb a 14er in the east.
The mountains aren't as high. Big deal. All of those outdoor activities, the ocean, and the vibrancy of diverse large cities are in the East.
The mountains aren't as high. Big deal. All of those outdoor activities, the ocean, and the vibrancy of diverse large cities are in the East.
You can't do the same hiking and climbing that you can on western mountains on eastern ones, except for maybe a handful of them, which get repetitious after a while. If you don't care much about the outdoors, it's a big deal, if you do they're not comparable at all.
This probably isn't politically correct, but a lot of white people outside the major metros of the East Coast don't seem to have as distinct an ethnic culture, which also probably amplifies the culture of Hispanics and Asians on the West Coast (in addition to the fact that there are actually tons of recent immigrants from Asia and Mexico, which is probably the primary reason).
"Heavily" may have been too strong of a word choice. All I simply mean to say is it seems there are relatively strong ties (reflective on migration patterns, architecture, local cuisine, etc.) to Mexico and Asia in the Western US -- much moreso than the rest of the country. Tell me if I have the wrong idea.
There's a "southwestern" style of architecture, but nothing particularly Asian here in Colorado. The Asians here were mostly brought here from California and put in internment camps. Some liked it and stayed after WW II ended. As for more recent immigrants, I don't think our rate is any higher than any other part of the country. Even on the west coast, except for California, there aren't a lot of Asians. Look at the demographics of Portland and Seattle. They're pretty white.
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Originally Posted by nei
Having more Asian and Mexican immigrants?
Re: Asians, see above. Mexican, yes. But most Anglos don't celebrate Cinco de Mayo or Day of the Dead. We all eat of lot of Mexican food here, but the real Mexicans tell us most of it isn't authentic.
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Originally Posted by 2e1m5a
This probably isn't politically correct, but a lot of white people outside the major cities of the East Coast don't seem to have as distinct an ethnic culture, which also probably amplifies the culture of Hispanics and Asians on the West Coast (in addition to the fact that there are actually tons of recent immigrants from Asia and Mexico, which is probably the primary reason).
Oh, baloney! There's a big Italian community in Denver, also San Francisco. I don't know where your demarcation line is for east/not east, but Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Minneapolis all have ethnic communities. The first three are similar to the east, e.g. Polish, Italian, Irish, and Mpls is German/Scandinavians. There are also a lot of Germans in Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St. Louis.
Oh, baloney! There's a big Italian community in Denver, also San Francisco. I don't know where your demarcation line is for east/not east, but Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Minneapolis all have ethnic communities. The first three are similar to the east, e.g. Polish, Italian, Irish, and Mpls is German/Scandinavians. There are also a lot of Germans in Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St. Louis.
Denver is 5.1% Italian, which is not much lower than Baltimore's 6.5% (national avg is 5.9%).
I think the big difference between the Northeast and the Midwest is the percentage of the non-Hispanic white population that's Catholic or Jewish. Last week, we were doing calculations for this by metro area. In the NYC metro, more than half of the non-Hispanic white population is Catholic. I didn't even bother to include the Jewish population.
I've never considered Germans to be "ethnic" whites. They assimilated faster and to a greater degree than most white ethnic groups.
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More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country, according to the federal census. Arguably, by this measure, people of German descent form the nation's largest ethnic group. Yet that fact could easily elude the casual observer of American life. Today, comparatively few signs remain of the once formidable political clout, organizational life, and ethnic consciousness of German Americans. Over the twentieth century, the ethnicity that went by that label underwent what the historian Kathleen Conzen calls a "thorough submergence."
This probably isn't politically correct, but a lot of white people outside the major metros of the East Coast don't seem to have as distinct an ethnic culture, which also probably amplifies the culture of Hispanics and Asians on the West Coast (in addition to the fact that there are actually tons of recent immigrants from Asia and Mexico, which is probably the primary reason).
There were actually a number of the same sort of European immigrant communities all over the West at various points. San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and San Diego all had various little ethnic neighborhoods of Italians or Jews or Irish or Germans or Eastern Europeans or Scandanavians over history. Though the immigration numbers weren't as large and didn't go on as long as places in the Northeast or Midwest--so in part the older ethnic neighborhoods dried up quicker than back East. I used to live in what was the old Polish neighborhood of Portland, Oregon(later the center of the black community, now becoming hipsterville) and while the old Polish church and library remained and the annual Polish festival is popular, the only Polish people you'd see at the church were recent immigrants who lived in the suburbs. In other places though where you had more sustained immigration over years you had ethnic communities that regained some of their identity even after moving almost en masse to the suburbs. I've got relatives in the suburbs of Milwaukee and Chicago and Detroit who still identify highly with being Polish Catholics, even though the youngest generation is pretty average suburban white people at this point. This is way more evident in the eastern metros though from my experience between Boston, New York, and Philadelphia with specific European ethnic groups.
You had a lot of boom and bust cycles out west in terms of immigration as well. Some mining or logging boom towns were highly diverse at one point--Butte, Montana at one time in the early 20th Century was like a little Lower East Side or Brooklyn of the time--huge Irish population, a Italian community called Meaderville, a sizable Chinatown, Jewish areas, and large Serbo-Croatians. However, once the booms ended and the towns started falling on hard times, the flow of immigrants stopped---and then within a generation or two everyone got more mixed together into a sort of general American identity. Sort of the nature of the frontier, where the dominant culture was sort of the Scots-Irish Protestant types once the booms died down. There just wasn't the numbers to maintain the identity as much as back east. Though you can still see it a few places. Like the little fishing port of Astoria on the Oregon Coast still has sort of remnants of when it had a large Finnish community. The history of a lot of places can be suprising considering how they currently feel culturally---I had no idea until recently that Reno, Nevada used to have a Little Italy area right near it's downtown in addtion to the old Basque community that's still around in some ways.
There's a "southwestern" style of architecture, but nothing particularly Asian here in Colorado. The Asians here were mostly brought here from California and put in internment camps. Some liked it and stayed after WW II ended. As for more recent immigrants, I don't think our rate is any higher than any other part of the country. Even on the west coast, except for California, there aren't a lot of Asians. Look at the demographics of Portland and Seattle. They're pretty white.
Seattle has one of the highest Asian % in the country outside of California and Hawaii. By metro:
Seattle: 11.4%
Portland: 5.7%
San Francisco: 23.2%
San Jose: 21.1%
Los Angeles: 14.7%
Denver: 3.7%
I assumed Denver was more similar to Seattle. In the Northeast, NYC and DC have similar % to Seattle. Boston and Philly lower.
Boston: 6.5%
New York City: 9.9%
Philadelphia: 5.0%
Washington DC: 9.3%
Oh, baloney! There's a big Italian community in Denver, also San Francisco. I don't know where your demarcation line is for east/not east, but Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Minneapolis all have ethnic communities. The first three are similar to the east, e.g. Polish, Italian, Irish, and Mpls is German/Scandinavians. There are also a lot of Germans in Milwaukee, Cincinnati and St. Louis.
Areas with a large Italian-American are mainly limited to the Northeast and the Cleveland/Chicago metro areas:
Neither Denver or San Francisco shows up on the list. Perhaps it means something that whites in the southwest are lumped together as "Anglo" rather than sometimes distinguished by "Italian-American", "Irish-American", etc.
You had a lot of boom and bust cycles out west in terms of immigration as well. Some mining or logging boom towns were highly diverse at one point--Butte, Montana at one time in the early 20th Century was like a little Lower East Side or Brooklyn of the time--huge Irish population, a Italian community called Meaderville, a sizable Chinatown, Jewish areas, and large Serbo-Croatians.
Interesting. This sort of explains something I read in a blog about Pennsylvania politics.
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Pennsylvania’s southwest has much in common with West Virginia and Southeast Ohio, the northern end of Appalachia. Electoral change in the region is best understood by grouping these three areas together as a whole. Socially conservative (the region is famously supportive of the NRA) but economically liberal, the industrial southwest voters typify white working-class Democrats. These voters can be found in unexpected places: Catholics in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, loggersalong the Washington coast, rust-belt workers in Duluth, Minnesota and Buffalo, New York.
I think you make a good point. Nearly every place in America was formed by people of diverse backgrounds that later blended into a general American identity. These discussions often ignore a lot of demographic nuance and history.
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