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Doesn't seem like the profile of any particular region in the US. I'd place an ethnic profile like that in the Midwest (look at many Ohio cities) and in the South (like Nashville and Knoxville) over anything particularly Northeastern.
Heck, in Chicago, Italian and Irish make up a larger percentage of our pop. than they do in Baltimore:
Ancestries: Irish (6.6%), German (6.6%), Polish (5.4%), Italian (3.4%), United States (1.9%), English (1.9%)
Baltimore doesn't look too different than Columbus:
Ancestries: German (17.9%), Irish (10.6%), English (6.1%), Subsaharan African (4.6%), United States (4.0%), Italian(3.7%).
Not really seeing this "white ethnic" pattern of the Northeast in that particularly debated city.
Try the Baltimore MSA. Baltimore is a higher percentages of German and Irish that Chicagoland, and higher percentages of Irish and Polish than the NYC area. Also, not all cities in any state in the northeast have high Italian or Irish populations. Many cities/boroughs in PA have demographics uncharacteristic of the northeast; many MD towns have demographic characteristics of what is stereotypical of the northeast. Baltimore is a poster child of white flight starting in the 50's. Before, however, the city was more than 80% white.
It certainly is in places where the % was high and enclaves still exist, like Milwaukee (+ many other areas of WI where polka, pork roast & sauerkraut still are part of daily life) and Cincy.
Although German ancestry is most common in the Midwest and Pennsylvania, it's very common everywhere except in the Deep South and New England. So it's not a very good marker of defining what city a region belongs in.
Unless it's the Midwest. You don't see cities as German as the ones out there.
You don't really see any cities outside of the Northeast where 30%+ of the MSA is Italian, Irish, Polish or Jewish. These are the 10 largest MSAs in the Northeastern U.S. plus a few non-Northeastern ones.
Buffalo - 38.61% of MSA (48.57% of NHW population)
Boston - 36.45% of MSA (49.38% of NHW population)
New Haven - 36.07% of MSA (55.09% of NHW population)
Philadelphia - 33.03% of MSA (51.26% of NHW population)
Hartford - 32.86% of MSA (47.21% of NHW population)
New York - 32.26% of MSA (66.94% of NHW population)
Pittsburgh - 31.80% of MSA (36.55% of NHW population)
Worcester - 30.13% of MSA (37.27% of NHW population)
Rochester - 30.12% of MSA (38.57% of NHW population)
Providence - 27.72% of MSA (34.83% of NHW population) Cleveland - 26.69% of MSA (37.01% of NHW population)
Chicago - 22.81% of MSA (41.78% of NHW population)
Detroit - 21.19% of MSA (31.16% of NHW population)
Baltimore - 19.98% of MSA (33.78% of NHW population)
Washington - 14.25% of MSA (30.42% of NHW population)
Last edited by BajanYankee; 10-06-2014 at 03:41 PM..
Try the Baltimore MSA. Baltimore is a higher percentages of German and Irish that Chicagoland, and higher percentages of Irish and Polish than the NYC area. Also, not all cities in any state in the northeast have high Italian or Irish populations. Many cities/boroughs in PA have demographics uncharacteristic of the northeast; many MD towns have demographic characteristics of what is stereotypical of the northeast. Baltimore is a poster child of white flight starting in the 50's. Before, however, the city was more than 80% white.
Which throws the whole "white ethnic" characteristic of Baltimore out the window. The South is known for having Irish, anyway. Some Southern accents have Irish influence, not just English.
Which throws the whole "white ethnic" characteristic of Baltimore out the window. The South is known for having Irish, anyway. Some Southern accents have Irish influence, not just English.
Which throws the whole "white ethnic" characteristic of Baltimore out the window. The South is known for having Irish, anyway. Some Southern accents have Irish influence, not just English.
While there certainly is an Irish presence in the South, it's a bit of a stretch to say it's "known" for its Irish presence.
American regions definitely have an ethnic and cultural element to them.
Louisiana was one of the first Catholic havens in the eastern US, so Sicillians followed the French Cajuns there. To this day New Orleans has one of the biggest concentrations of Italians in the Southeast. Others settled in cities like Birmingham, from which the southern grocery chain "Bruno's" came.
WASPs from New England took a boat ride around South America to get to San Francisco bay and settled the PNW. That's why they both have such a focus on education (Stanford, Berkeley, Washington) and typically vote Democrat even in rural areas.
On the other hand, the Appalachian region of the States was settled by "Scots-Irish" Presbyterians, who started going "wild" in isolation (homemade whiskey didn't help either.) Snake handling religions, limited access to education and cities, and a more laxed morality started the "redneck" outlaw culture that spread as they moved into the "Wild West". They were already warriors before moving out of Northern Ireland, but the new world got them more into fighting. They also made auto racing more of a working class sport than a rich man's hobby. The great revival of the 1800s converted most of them to northern sects like Baptist and Methodist.
A lot of the "white ethnics" from Poland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, etc. were imported into Northern states to work in factories of the big Gilded Age industrialists. A lot of the regional identity associated with these regions is wrongly attributed to these groups though. New York was still New York, Boston was still Boston, etc., in the early 1800s. The core of New York was Dutch reform and Boston was Puritan. The term "Yankee" was actually based on a Dutch term (probably Jan Kees = John Cornelius, two common Dutch first names.)
My grandfather was Dutch and German (1600s settlers in rural NY/NA), and he had a strong Brooklyn accent. Teddy Roosevelt has some of the first recorded speeches, and was from "old" New York of the 1800s. Also Daniel Day Lewis used actual voice recordings for his "Bill the Butcher" character from 1840s-60s NYC. To me that seems like an accurate portrayal of how people in New York talked back then, long before Ellis Island and the modern Big Apple. It wasn't like they were all talking with British accents and then turned from "New York" to "New Yawk" over night.
As some said above, climate and geography aren't always the only thing that defines a region. The people living there, and the culture they carry with them, have a lot to do with it.
Last edited by Hamtonfordbury; 10-06-2014 at 06:26 PM..
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