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5x more visible in statistics. Visibility in the actual real world away from on paper statistics is a lot more complicated and has a lot more factors than this. Not saying one is more visible than the others, but you have completely over simplified it. I could say there's way more Indian people in Dallas than Des Moines, IA but it doesn't mean that every corner of Dallas automatically has Indian people visible just because the entire place has more. That's an extremely naive way to look at things.
Things like geographic integration vs. segregation of the population, businesses, etc has a lot more to do with it than one blanket statistic. I think the Bay Area is #2 in the country for all of this, don't get me wrong, but most of us are way over simplifying how to actually measure influence. Having a big population doesn't mean they're influential either in a place where they are a minority - and neither does having a smaller but sizable population. I mean look at the East Village in Manhattan - tons of Japanese things there - stores, restaurants, bars, etc - yet barely any Japanese people actually live in that area but it has a big influence on the area way more than the actual populations that live there.
So for me if you're talking about Indian, Pakistani, etc - or any other population - and its influence then it goes beyond population in the areas where they are. How many restaurants, stores, markets, etc specifically for these countries exist in areas without much of the population living there (i.e are there Indian, Pakistani, etc restaurants, stores, etc in areas where they don't even live)? How prevalent are Indian, Pakistani, etc celebrations in spaces (bars, clubs, parks, etc) that have nothing to normally do with the populations? These types of things to me have to do with actual influence. Having someone from country X living somewhere doesn't mean they are having any influence on the rest of the place they are living in. Really naive way of looking at things IMO.
Awesome post and great rebuttal to the simplistic lense from which 18Montclair likes to espouse his opinions. And again, this topic was specific to South Asians and not only Indians. Can anyone reiterate the numbers of Pakistanis Bangladeshis et al in SF CSA (because SF and SJ are independent in every other metric) and other cities being discussed?
Awesome post and great rebuttal to the simplistic lense from which 18Montclair likes to espouse his opinions. And again, this topic was specific to South Asians and not only Indians. Can anyone reiterate the numbers of Pakistanis Bangladeshis et al in SF CSA (because SF and SJ are independent in every other metric) and other cities being discussed?
Influence is something that's more complicated than just the general population statistic. That general statistic is only the starting point. Influence is much more complicated to measure though.
As far as statistics for foreign born non-Indian South Asians go (Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan)... Not that this means everything, but it's the starting point:
1. NYC MSA: 199,859 people
2. Washington DC MSA: 57,613 people
3. Houston MSA: 39,186 people
4. Dallas MSA: 34,573 people
5. Chicago MSA: 32,319 people
6. Los Angeles MSA: 31,152 people
7. Detroit MSA: 21,106 people
8. Philadelphia MSA: 19,727 people
9. San Francisco MSA: 18,163 people
10. Atlanta MSA: 17,528 people
11. Baltimore MSA: 15,176 people
12. Boston MSA: 13,134 people
13. Miami MSA: 11,032 people
14. Riverside, CA MSA: 8484 people
15. Sacramento MSA: 7845 people
16. San Jose MSA: 7729 people
17. Seattle MSA: 7513 people
18. Austin MSA: 6247 people
19. Stockton, CA MSA: 4987 people
20. Denver MSA: 4788 people
21. Minneapolis MSA: 4746 people
22. Orlando MSA: 4718 people
23. Hartford, CT MSA: 4650 people
24. Columbus, OH MSA: 4546 people
25. Tampa MSA: 4209 people
San Jose+San Francisco in this case is 25,892 people, which would rank 7th behind NYC, DC, Houston, Dallas, Chicago, and LA.
I calculated everything over 10% because I can just eyeball it. I got curious about what the linguistic breakdown of each metro areas South Asian population looked like, and there were some surprising results
Source from 2016 Canadian census (South Asian languages here include by Dravidian languages + Indo-Aryan languages)
Source American Factfinder (South Asian languages here include Gujurati, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Nepali/Marathi/other Indic Languages, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam/Kannada/or other Dravidian languages)
CSA/CMA numbers.
New York has 722,475 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 22% speak Bengali, 19% speak Hindi, 15% speak Urdu, 14% speak Gujurati,
Toronto has 609,885 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 28% speak Punjabi, 21% speak Urdu, 18% speak Tamil, 11% speak Gujurati.
San Francisco has 375,792 speaking South Asian languages, of which 32% speak Hindi, 16% speak Punjabi, 11% speak Tamil, 10% speak Telugu
Washington DC has 239,790 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 24% speak Urdu, 18% speak Hindi, 12% speak Telugu, 10% Bengali
Chicago has 210,337 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 27% speak Urdu, 21% speak Gujurati, 20% speak Hindi
Vancouver has 204,285 people speaking South Asian languages of which 74% speak Punjabi and 12% speak Hindi
Dallas has 177,002 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 20% speak Telugu, 19% speak Hindi, 16% speak Urdu, 10% speak Tamil,
Vancouver's Desi population is definitely mostly from one area of the subcontinent.
New York doesn't have a huge South Indian presence, though by raw numbers they do.
San Francisco has the most South Indian presence.
Telugu speakers have a huge spread
Punjabi speakers prefer the Western cities.
Languages more associated with Muslims (Urdu and Bengali to a smaller extent) live in the more eastern cities than Western ones.
Hindi and Urdu are basically the same spoken language, except written in different alphabets. I think Punjabi could be written in two different alphabets as well, but all three religious groups that speak it still call it Punjabi.
Side note: Can someone tell me why the American Factfinder website is so difficult to use? Hell, I just noticed that they don't even bother to split up the Chinese languages. It's called "Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese)" there. How lazy.
I calculated everything over 10% because I can just eyeball it. I got curious about what the linguistic breakdown of each metro areas South Asian population looked like, and there were some surprising results
Source from 2016 Canadian census (South Asian languages here include by Dravidian languages + Indo-Aryan languages)
Source American Factfinder (South Asian languages here include Gujurati, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali, Nepali/Marathi/other Indic Languages, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam/Kannada/or other Dravidian languages)
CSA/CMA numbers.
New York has 722,475 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 22% speak Bengali, 19% speak Hindi, 15% speak Urdu, 14% speak Gujurati,
Toronto has 609,885 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 28% speak Punjabi, 21% speak Urdu, 18% speak Tamil, 11% speak Gujurati.
San Francisco has 375,792 speaking South Asian languages, of which 32% speak Hindi, 16% speak Punjabi, 11% speak Tamil, 10% speak Telugu
Washington DC has 239,790 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 24% speak Urdu, 18% speak Hindi, 12% speak Telugu, 10% Bengali
Chicago has 210,337 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 27% speak Urdu, 21% speak Gujurati, 20% speak Hindi
Vancouver has 204,285 people speaking South Asian languages of which 74% speak Punjabi and 12% speak Hindi
Dallas has 177,002 people speaking South Asian languages, of which 20% speak Telugu, 19% speak Hindi, 16% speak Urdu, 10% speak Tamil,
Vancouver's Desi population is definitely mostly from one area of the subcontinent.
New York doesn't have a huge South Indian presence, though by raw numbers they do.
San Francisco has the most South Indian presence.
Telugu speakers have a huge spread
Punjabi speakers prefer the Western cities.
Languages more associated with Muslims (Urdu and Bengali to a smaller extent) live in the more eastern cities than Western ones.
Hindi and Urdu are basically the same spoken language, except written in different alphabets. I think Punjabi could be written in two different alphabets as well, but all three religious groups that speak it still call it Punjabi.
Side note: Can someone tell me why the American Factfinder website is so difficult to use? Hell, I just noticed that they don't even bother to split up the Chinese languages. It's called "Chinese (incl. Mandarin, Cantonese)" there. How lazy.
New York doesn’t have a strong south Asian presence? Have you ever even been to New York? It’s a massive part of the culture and visible EVERYWHERE. Lol what silly post.
New York doesn’t have a strong south Asian presence? Have you ever even been to New York? It’s a massive part of the culture and visible EVERYWHERE. Lol what silly post.
I said "South Indian", not "South Asian", as in Telugu/Tamil/Kannada speakers. And that is in comparison to the other Indian groups. I also fully put that in raw numbers, there is a South Indian contingency, but not as much as the North India/Pakistanis/Bengalis.
Awesome post and great rebuttal to the simplistic lense from which 18Montclair likes to espouse his opinions.
No you are stating opinions-Im stating facts.
Nearly 10% of the SJ Metro is Asian Indian. 1 in 10. I cant find any US Metro that even comes close to that.
How is it possible for Chicago to have the 'most noticeable South Asian influence' when they are nearly 5x more visible in San Jose.
Even in sheer number at county AND CITY level, San Jose beats Chicago, handily.
Indians in the Bay Area arent relegated to ethic neighborhoods but they live all over from one end of the valley to the other, in areas that are desirable and prominent to everyone-they are billionaires not just on the technical side of Silicon Valley but also the finance and venture capital side where I work. They sit at the helm of mega behemoths like Google and they represent Silicon Valley in congress, and another Bay Area native of Indian descent is currently a US senator and just might become the next president of the United States.
Nearly 10% of the SJ Metro is Asian Indian. 1 in 10. I cant find any US Metro that even comes close to that.
How is it possible for Chicago to have the 'most noticeable South Asian influence' when they are nearly 5x more visible in San Jose.
Even in sheer number at county AND CITY level, San Jose beats Chicago, handily.
Indians in the Bay Area arent relegated to ethic neighborhoods but they live all over from one end of the valley to the other, in areas that are desirable and prominent to everyone-they are billionaires not just on the technical side of Silicon Valley but also the finance and venture capital side where I work. They sit at the helm of mega behemoths like Google and they represent Silicon Valley in congress, and another Bay Area native of Indian descent is currently a US senator and just might become the next president of the United States.
Chicago's South Asian population within city is proportionally quite low compared to that of the metro area, so they don't really get "relegated to ethnic neighborhoods" as they seem to be mostly in the suburbs. I think that's been mentioned several times in this thread already. Also, having an ethnic working class South Asian urban neighborhood doesn't mean there isn't a white collar suburban presence. There's a lot of both in New York City and the Tri-State area. The ethnic enclave makes a lot of sense especially for working class immigrants. Getting rid of them essentially makes it extremely difficult for immigrants who come from a working class background and are less likely to be proficient in English or have the financial ability to weather the needs of car ownership that the suburbs require.
The other thing that's been mentioned before is that the South Asian population in the Chicago area has been in the area for quite a while at this point and is entering a third generation and are hella integrated. They're the family next door in a nice US suburb. There's an exchange I've heard between a second-generation Indian-American friend and a third-generation Indian-American friend (the same age-ish) where the mother of the first was wondering why she was doing that yoga stuff which she thought of as some backwards mysticism stuff and the third-generation Indian-American friend whose mom was pretty down with yoga as it keeps your body toned. That's a weird arc.
There's also a number of Christian South Asians in the Chicago area as they were among the groups most likely to get out of India early on.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 02-17-2019 at 07:47 AM..
I want to echo OyCrumbler’s post by reaffirming that Chicago’s South Asian population does blend into the general population more because of the community being older and more well-established. The assimilation factor is much higher here because of the multiple generations of the community that have already gone through the initial settlement decades earlier. We already onto the third generation here. That means there are grandchildren of the original immigrants that are in high school and college now. That’s extremely rare to find in the Bay Area. Therefore, the presence is even further watered down because a lot of us are now probably more American than we are Indian.
Nearly 10% of the SJ Metro is Asian Indian. 1 in 10. I cant find any US Metro that even comes close to that.
How is it possible for Chicago to have the 'most noticeable South Asian influence' when they are nearly 5x more visible in San Jose.
Even in sheer number at county AND CITY level, San Jose beats Chicago, handily.
Indians in the Bay Area arent relegated to ethic neighborhoods but they live all over from one end of the valley to the other, in areas that are desirable and prominent to everyone-they are billionaires not just on the technical side of Silicon Valley but also the finance and venture capital side where I work. They sit at the helm of mega behemoths like Google and they represent Silicon Valley in congress, and another Bay Area native of Indian descent is currently a US senator and just might become the next president of the United States.
I never once stated in my post that this poster responded to that Chicago was above the Bay Area. I stated that actually and you'd know this if you bothered to read it without bias - and I've stated multiple times that the Bay Area is #2 in the US for South Asian influence. The entire thing I wrote was in general and could be applied to so many posts on this site, not just this one. If you are trying to automatically make a total population statistic synonymous with "influence" then you (anybody) just don't understand what influence actually means. You're telling me that because my fiance from China lives where we do, she's automatically having cultural influence on the people of our community where we live without doing anything? That is utter BS - there's a lot of actions and factors that need to take place before you can say that someone or some people are having influence on the others around them besides them just minding their own business, going to work, etc. Even the integration of those people into the rest of the population versus segregation is a big factor.
We can post a lot of population statistics, and again it's only the starting point to a broader, larger and more complicated discussion on what influence actually means and how to measure it. Influence is a hell of a lot more than population. Again it's like the East Village in Manhattan - almost no Japanese people live there, yet there's a bunch of actual legitimate shops, restaurants, bars, etc there which people from Japan frequent. They have big influence on the area despite having a low population there.
One thing I wanted to add that I think is funny. I have an Indian family friend that went to high school in the burbs of Chicago in the early to mid 80s and graduated valedictorian. After college and getting married, she and her husband settled down in the same suburb. Her kids also graduated or are attending the same school and told me that they used to pass by their mom’s class pic and point out her pic all the time. It just goes to show how old some parts of the South Asian community really are in the Chicago area.
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