Demographics Thread - 2023 (difference, beach, NYC, largest)
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Most English
[...]
Washington DC: 19.8%
[...]
Kansas City: 17.9%
[...]
Boston: 14.2%
St. Louis: 14.1%
Philadelphia: 13.1%
[...]
Chicago: 9.9%
New York City: 7.1%
Most German
[...]
St. Louis: 35.8% (#2 after the Twin Cities, big surprise there)
[...]
Kansas City: 28.5%
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Chicago: 25.0%
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Philadelphia: 22.7%
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New York City: 12.6%
Boston: 8.2%
Most Irish
Boston: 29.8%
Philadelphia: 29.2%
[...]
Chicago: 20.4%
[...]
Washington DC: 19.7%
New York City: 19.4%
St. Louis: 18.9%
[...]
Kansas City: 17.5%
[...]
Most Italian
New York City: 25.6%
Philadelphia: 21.1%
Pittsburgh: 19.4%
Boston: 18.7%
[...]
Washington DC: 10.2%
[...]
St. Louis: 7.1%
[...]
Kansas City: 4.9%
[...]
Most Polish
Chicago: 16.6%
[...]
New York City: 8.0%
Philadelphia: 7.8%
[...]
St. Louis: 3.7%
[...]
Most Scottish
[...]
Washington DC: 5.3%
[...]
Kansas City: 4.4%
[...]
Boston: 3.7%
Cincinnati: 3.6%
St. Louis: 3.3%
Cleveland: 3.1%
Philadelphia: 3.0%
Most French
Houston: 6.2%
Boston: 5.2%
[...]
St. Louis: 4.2%
[...]
Washington DC: 3.6%
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Most Arab
[...]
Most Norwegian
(no surprises here)
Most Swedish
(ditto)
Most Russian
Miami/Fort Lauderdale: 5.0%
New York City: 4.6%
Los Angeles: 3.9%
San Francisco/Oakland: 3.7%
Most Odd Ball Concentrations
Los Angeles: Armenian: 5.9%
Cleveland: Hungarian: 5.4%
Boston: French Canadian: 3.6%
Boston: Portuguese: 3.5%
Los Angeles: Iranian: 3.1%
Miami/Fort Lauderdale: Brazilian: 3.1%
Some comments and observations on the snippets I left in:
• These are urban area percentages, right? I asked because I can think of at least two cities I am familiar with that might register on the "Most Odd Ball Concentrations" list even if their UAs do not.
One is Watertown, Mass., an inner-ring suburb of Boston that I believe has the highest percentage of Armenian-American residents of any US municipality.
The other is the smaller Kansas City, the one in Kansas that many on the East Coast confuse for the bigger, more important one next door east. The Strawberry Hill neighborhood just southeast of downtown KCK has non-trivial numbers of Russian and Baltic residents, or so it seems to me; I recall attending a service at a Russian Orthodox church on the hill as a boy — and the fourth season of the revived "Q***r Eye", its second in the Kansas City area, featured the Fab Five making over the manager of a Lithuanian social club on Strawberry Hill (the episode opened with a great aerial drone shot of the neighborhood).
• It seems to me that the cities with sizable German-American populations show that German heritage in some fashion. I think I don't need to tell you about St. Louis and its beer-brewing prominence, for instance, and Philadelphia is home not only to the first settlement in the country to bear the name "Germantown" but also several really good German restaurants. But Kansas City has the fifth-highest concentration of German-Americans of any of the country's large cities, yet I would be hard-pressed to point out any sign of that heritage there (maybe because the St. Louisans clocked it when it came to beer brewing; the old brands I heard of growing up, Muehlebach and Goetz, had either died or were on their way into the dustbin of history during my youth. The city's old ballpark, named for George Muehlebach when it opened in 1923, is long gone.) And I couldn't point you to a decent German restaurant in the city, either. However, the Muehlebach Hotel survives.
• Meanwhile, Kansas City has a small Italian-American community, yet it had two famous and popular Italian restaurants in my youth — the Italian Gardens and Gaetano's. And the family that opened the supermarket in the Power & Light District that was the "loss leader" for its residential component are the Cosentinos, who run at least three other supermarkets in the area. Similarly, it had two French restaurants despite having nearly no French presence. (My guess there is that these had more to do with French cuisine's elevated reputation in America than with any actual French presence.)
• And speaking of French presence, it strikes me as curious that only one of the two cities the French established in what is now the United States shows up as having a non-trivial French presence. What happened to them in New Orleans? (Locally, several people pointed to this fact about NOLA when they scratched their heads at the Michelin Green Guide to Philadelphia dubbing our fair city "the Frenchest in America." I can explain the reasons why if anyone cares.)
• What percentage of the Philadelphia area is Russian? You do see their presence in far Northeast Philadelphia, where there are at least two Russian-run supermarkets and several restaurants. I even saw an ad for Comcast cable TV in Russian on the back of a SEPTA bus once.
• Given that the WASPs (an acronym introduced into the language by Penn sociologist E. Digby Baltzell) are themselves English, I think it's hard for us to think of them as "ethnic" in the way we do the other groups here. And certainly English cuisine enjoys a pretty poor rep, with the exception of fish and chips. But we do have an English restaurant here in Philadelphia called The Dandelion.
• And speaking of French presence, it strikes me as curious that only one of the two cities the French established in what is now the United States shows up as having a non-trivial French presence. What happened to them in New Orleans? (Locally, several people pointed to this fact about NOLA when they scratched their heads at the Michelin Green Guide to Philadelphia dubbing our fair city "the Frenchest in America." I can explain the reasons why if anyone cares.)
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I only broke down those urban areas with more than 1 million white people on that last list. NOLA would be around 18% French ancestry so much more so than those, but its also much smaller.
Kind of funny how DC is more in line with the Southern metros when it comes to European ancestry. Especially the Irish and Italian population.
Because DC is Southern at its core. Despite its diversity, the Majority of its population is White Americans who are several generations in America and multigenerational African Americans, who have been in America for centuries. It also never had as much industry and ports to attract large amounts of European immigrants like its neighbors to the north of it have. Much of DC's diversity and status as a immigration hub is relatively recent, similar to Atlanta/Houston/Dallas.
S
• And speaking of French presence, it strikes me as curious that only one of the two cities the French established in what is now the United States shows up as having a non-trivial French presence. What happened to them in New Orleans? (Locally, several people pointed to this fact about NOLA when they scratched their heads at the Michelin Green Guide to Philadelphia dubbing our fair city "the Frenchest in America." I can explain the reasons why if anyone cares.)
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Would it be to New Orleans of French ancestry identifying as Creole or Cajuns instead of French?
Because DC is Southern at its core. Despite its diversity, the Majority of its population is White Americans who are several generations in America and multigenerational African Americans, who have been in America for centuries. It also never had as much industry and ports to attract large amounts of European immigrants like its neighbors to the north of it have. Much of DC's diversity and status as a immigration hub is relatively recent, similar to Atlanta/Houston/Dallas.
Jackson, Mississippi metro leads the nation in two demographic areas.
48% African-American is highest in the U.S. among medium to large metros (over 150k).
Also, the non-hispanic White population (45%) is likely the most British in the nation. Mississippi as a state is the most British, due to the original settlers as well as having had less immigration over the years than other states.
Because DC is Southern at its core. Despite its diversity, the Majority of its population is White Americans who are several generations in America and multigenerational African Americans, who have been in America for centuries. It also never had as much industry and ports to attract large amounts of European immigrants like its neighbors to the north of it have. Much of DC's diversity and status as a immigration hub is relatively recent, similar to Atlanta/Houston/Dallas.
Yep that’s why people in the northeast aren’t to quick to say DC is absolutely Northeastern.
Something Ive never done before in these threads what measure the ancestry of the "white" population relative to the whole. Because Arabs, Brazilians, Persians, and the like are counted as "white" on the census, they are included. All groups over 3.0% of the total white population are listed. Also only listing those that have a white population of over 1,000,000.
Ill give it a shot here.
New York City - 8,225,020
Italian: 2,108,416 - 25.6%
Irish: 1,598,492 - 19.4%
German: 1,035,830 - 12.6%
Polish: 658,240 - 8.0%
English: 585,050 - 7.1%
Russian: 374,779 - 4.6%
Almost all of the Russians, Ukrainians, Hungarians and Lithuanians in NYC are actually ethnically Jewish. Some of the Germans are also German and Polish Jews (Jews from Poland historically identified as German Jews in America). There are over 2 million Jews in the NYC area, which would make them the second-largest ‘white’ group.
Can we get additional breakdowns for African groups and Caribbean groups?
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