Slavic/Eastern European communities in NA

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Docere

Ethnic Origin: Toronto Census Metropolitan Area

Polish 237,240 4%
Ukrainian 144,330 2.5%
Russian 139,910 2.4%
Hungarian 59,720 1%
Romanian 50,515 0.9%
Croatian 37,460 0.6%
Serbian 33,055 0.6%
Macedonian 28,315 0.5%
Lithuanian 19,525 0.3%
Albanian 17,685 0.3%
Czech 16,630 0.3%
Slovak 14,580 0.2%
Bulgarian 11,220 0.2%

Considering that most of these areas were all part of Poland for a very long time in history, they're all Polish to me.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

Is the Parma you're referencing the suburb of Cleveland? I know the Cleveland area has tons of people from Eastern Europe (the city even has neighborhoods called Slavic Village and Ukranian Village, though both have long been abandoned by the ethnicities they were named for), but is Parma especially known for this?

I think Parma is still pretty Slavic, but it's a working class, aging inner-ring suburb in a stagnant metro, so likely undergoing demographic change. Probably getting blacker, given its close to East Cleveland. Probably analogous to Warren, MI outside Detroit.

[Docere]

Parma Ohio

Polish 15.9%
Slovak 6.3%
Hungarian 5.3%
Ukrainian 4.6%
Czech 2.5%
Slovene 1.8%

https://statisticalatlas.com/place/Ohio/Parma/Ancestry

[pj3000]

^ All Polish

[Docere]

Cleveland is interesting in it has an array of Slavic and Eastern European ancestries in its population (Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian etc.) While in Detroit, Milwaukee and Buffalo it's really just the Polish that's significant I believe.

[edale]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think Parma is still pretty Slavic, but it's a working class, aging inner-ring suburb in a stagnant metro, so likely undergoing demographic change. Probably getting blacker, given its close to East Cleveland. Probably analogous to Warren, MI outside Detroit.

Oh yeah, I'm familiar with Parma. I just didn't know it was 'famous' for being Slavic...I think of it as being just another pretty unremarkable inner burb, like countless others in NEO.

Funny you mention Warren. My grandmother's parents immigrated to the US from the Czech Republic, and settled on the Ohio side of the Wheeling, WV area. 7 of the 8 kids they had moved to Detroit around WWII to take work in the factories (my grandmother was the lone holdout who stayed back in eastern OH). I think most of them settled in the city first...Hamtramck area. But slowly they began to migrate to the burbs, and most ended up in Warren. I have fond memories of visiting Warren and can remember my great aunt's 70s time capsule of a house very well. I also remember tagging along with her to some Polish market in Hamtramck as a little kid. She was very down on Detroit, but would still make trips in for the market and bakeries and stuff.

Again, I didn't realize Warren was a hotbed for Slavs or "Slovaks" as my grandma always referred to herself. Seemed to be just standard, unremarkable suburbia to me.

[pj3000]

Originally Posted by Docere

Cleveland is interesting in it has an array of Slavic and Eastern European ancestries in its population (Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian etc.) While in Detroit, Milwaukee and Buffalo it's really just the Polish that's significant I believe.

Pittsburgh is similar in that way. Lots of Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian identity, to go along with Polish. The first Slovak and Croatian churches and social organizations in the US were in Pittsburgh. I imagine that it had to do with coal mining and steel industry connections between the two cities.

[edale]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Pittsburgh is similar in that way. Lots of Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian identity, to go along with Polish. The first Slovak and Croatian churches and social organizations in the US were in Pittsburgh. I imagine that it had to do with coal mining and steel industry connections between the two cities.

For sure, and that extends into WV and OH river cities around Pittsburgh, too. Tiny little towns in eastern Ohio that don't even have Google Streetview have Byzantine Orthodox churches:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ba....8411992?hl=en

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by edale

Again, I didn't realize Warren was a hotbed for Slavs or "Slovaks" as my grandma always referred to herself. Seemed to be just standard, unremarkable suburbia to me.

Warren, like Parma, was a white flight, working class bungalow belt suburb populated by white ethnics. Also had a reactionary reputation, known as very hostile to AAs (now probably 1/3 AA and growing).

Warren was very Polish and Italian (still is to an extent). It was the first suburban stop from the Polish and Italian enclaves on Detroit's East Side.

[pj3000]

Are the Cuban/Hispanic communities in Florida the Deep South's version of the Polish/Eastern European rustbelt?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by pj3000

Are the Cuban/Hispanic communities in Florida the Deep South's version of the Polish/Eastern European rustbelt?

How so?

[Crawford]

Maybe somewhat. Working class, ethnic, tribal, reactionary. Hialeah, FL is kind of a subtropical Warren, MI.

And actually Macomb County, MI has a small population of Venezuelan refugees who have similar cultural/political norms as in Hialeah.

[Docere]

Seven Hills is also very white ethnic and Slavic:

Polish 21.9%
Slovak 8.4%
Hungarian 4.9%
Czech 4.2%
Slovene 3.1%
Ukrainian 2.9%

https://statisticalatlas.com/place/O...Hills/Ancestry

Seven Hills developed some notoriety as the hometown of Nazi camp guard John Demjanjuk.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl...326-story.html

[benp]

Originally Posted by Docere

Cleveland is interesting in it has an array of Slavic and Eastern European ancestries in its population (Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian etc.) While in Detroit, Milwaukee and Buffalo it's really just the Polish that's significant I believe.

Polish-Americans may predominate in Buffalo, but plenty of Slovaks, Hungarians, Russians, Ukrainians, etc arrived here. Even though my family identified as "Polish" both my grandmothers were from what is now Slovakia and spoke Hungarian as kids. I think Polish became the lingua franca in Buffalo, along with German before the war, but over the decades intermarriage mixed everyone up. My parents spoke Polish at home. Around the corner from my house is a former temple that became a Serbian Evangelical church just a few years ago (it has since become an Italian religious group), and I am aware of 2 different Ukranian social clubs, along with a Hungarian (and of course Polish) social clubs not too far away. I have noticed a couple of churches nearby with signs in Russian, also, and a couple of workers at my eye doctor are from Russia.

So, they are here, but the Polish-Americans were the most visible. I think since WW2 most of the Eastern European immigrants have predominately been from Russia, the former Soviet republics, and former Yugoslavia. Not many new Poles.

[Docere]

The last wave of Poles (80s/90s) went mostly to Chicago and NY/NJ. They didn't really go to the other Polish American centers.

[PoshSteve]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I think Parma is still pretty Slavic, but it's a working class, aging inner-ring suburb in a stagnant metro, so likely undergoing demographic change. Probably getting blacker, given its close to East Cleveland. Probably analogous to Warren, MI outside Detroit.

It's not. Parma is to the south/southwest of the city, and the black population of Cleveland is primarily on the east side and generally migrating out to the NE and SE. locally Parma is known for being very white (even racist) and is the Trump stronghold of Cuyahoga County. Definitely still a Slavic, working class, aging inner ring suburb.

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Uzbeki food is outstanding. Same with Georgian food. Russian food is pretty blah, so many former Soviets like cuisines coming out of the Caucuses and the Central Asian states, with lots of interesting Silk Road influences.

And a lot of Jewish former Soviets are actually from Samarkand, Uzbekistan area, which was an enclave of Bukharan Jews. Central Queens, especially, is full of Uzbeki restaurants, and Southern Brooklyn is full of Georgian restaurants.

a little further east but next door on the silk road - i went to a Kyrgyzstani restaurant in shanghai and it was fucking fantastic. a very interesting silk road influenced menu plus they randomly had beer towers lol.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

Cleveland is interesting in it has an array of Slavic and Eastern European ancestries in its population (Slovak, Croatian, Slovene, Hungarian etc.) While in Detroit, Milwaukee and Buffalo it's really just the Polish that's significant I believe.

chicago also has/had significant lithuanian, czech, serbian, russian, bosnian, hungarian, ukranian, and other eastern european communties in addition to the ubiquitous poles.

chicago was such a hotbed of european immigration in the late 19th/early 20th, that it got at least a little taste of just about everything back then.

it's just that the poles were SO incredibly numerous here, that they live much, much larger in the city's collective consciousness.

[Docere]

^ Yeah didn't really have Chicago have in mind since it's a much bigger city. Most European nationalities are well represented in Chicago.

[JManc]

Chicago was tagged as the second largest Polish city for a long time. Not sure if it still is.