Irish Boston, Italian Philadelphia

[PHL10]

Originally Posted by Docere

German seems invisible as an ethnic group in Philadelphia.

I'm not sure I would agree with that. In addition the German Society of Pennsylvania (on Spring Garden) still being an organization assisting recent German immigrants and hosting many cultural events, there is still a decent German cultural presence in Northeast Philadelphia; this includes two cultural clubs, one being fairly substantial in size. If you roll-in the suburbs and satellite cities like Reading, you get a better feel for the German-American influence in SE PA.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Interesting.

Given my background, I associate Americans of German ancestry with the great cities they built, like Milwaukee, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago, and so on......

My guess is that >95% of Americans with German ancestry have never milked a cow

Exactly, all (except Pittsburgh) are Midwestern cities. I think of industry and cities as much as farming when I think of the Midwest.

I would have just said "farming" if I only wanted to invoke a rural image.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Wow, Bronxville had large Irish and Italian share in 1980. I wouldn't have guessed this, given its WASPy reputation. There is an estate enclave and a slightly more modest apartment enclave, which is pretty indistinguishable from neighboring parts of Yonkers. The apartment enclave nowadays is pretty posh too, but maybe there were sharper cleavages back then.

Bronxville has almost no Jews, and WASPs are a really small minority in NYC making it hard for them to completely "dominate" any one community. Just 8% of the metro area was of English ancestry then, even though it was a lot whiter and this was before the drop-off of English ancestry responses. With the exception of Connecticut, I don't think there were any English ancestry-plurality communities in the NYC area, Bronxville came the closest (about 4x the metro average, basically even with Irish). Irish is well ahead of Italian but there's no evidence of "Irish underrepresentation" in 1980. They're culturally much closer to WASP-dom; 40 years ago this mattered more than today. Italians were still quite close to the immigrant experience; Mario Cuomo, who grew up in an Italian-speaking household, was elected as the first Italian American governor of NYS around this time.

The data I saw from the 1970s (which combined both ancestry and religion) showed Irish Catholics were the best-educated and most affluent group after Jews. Their long history in the US and concentration in the Northeast were likely factors.

[Docere]

Re-posting this:

Originally Posted by Docere

English ancestry, 1980

Boston 697,328 20.2% (#2 behind Irish)
New York 1,283,498 8% (#4 behind Italian, Irish, German)
Philadelphia 950,599 17.1% (#3 behind Irish, German and ahead of Italian)
Chicago 846,212 10.8% (#4 behind German, Irish, Polish)

[eschaton]

IIRC Pennsylvania Dutch was still pretty widely spoken as a home language by non-Amish in the rural areas of Eastern PA up until around 1920. The one-two punch of the anti-German animus of WW1 and the rise of mass media caused a steep decline, so that it went extinct outside of the Amish.

This was the same period that a lot of minority languages in the U.S., like Cajun French, old New Mexican Spanish, and many Native American languages also went into rapid decline.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

I think of industry and cities as much as farming when I think of the Midwest.

Ok.

It just seems odd to me to associate a specific ethnic group with "farming" when direct on-farm employment only accounts for about 1% of all US jobs.

The fact is that the VAST, VAST majority of Americans of all ethnicities have little to no exposure to farming. I'm not seeing why german-americans specifically would be singled out in anyone's mind for "farming", but whatever.

[JManc]

Because when Germans aren't making cars, beer or invading France, they farm.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

Ok.

It just seems odd to me to associate a specific ethnic group with "farming" when direct on-farm employment only accounts for about 1% of all US jobs.

The fact is that the VAST, VAST majority of Americans of all ethnicities have little to no exposure to farming. I'm not seeing why german-americans specifically would be singled out in anyone's mind for "farming", but whatever.

Wiki says the German migration wave between 1820-1920 was split about evenly between urban and rural.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Quixote

Bottom line though is that English ancestry is undercounted. It's certainly at least second to German; maybe even #1.

1980 census

English 49,598,035
German 49,224,146

2021 ACS

German 42,220,180
English 31,825,171

English ancestry has dropped off much more significantly. The numbers should match German at the very least.

American ancestry responses are most common in the South where the overwhelming majority of whites are of British ancestry and the switch from English to American responses was most dramatic.

On the other hand, in some locations (NYC and Miami for example) the "American" numbers seem to high to add to the English total.

There's an obvious undercount, but the data is imperfect.

An alternative solution is to just assume English ancestry matches German ancestry nationally since they were pretty much at par in 1980 so increase the English by a third to compensate.

* (I think even 1980 was an undercount - even there was a lot more unreported and "American" ancestry in the South than anywhere else but let's just stick with this more conservative assumption).

[Docere]

English ancestry 2021

Boston 501,806 10.2%
New York 610,442 3.1%
Philadelphia 483,236 7.8%
Chicago 483,774 5.1%

American ancestry 2021

Boston 152,615 3.1%
New York 768,512 3.9%
Philadelphia 198,341 3.2%
Chicago 241,362 2.5%

Estimated English ancestry (x1.33):

Boston 667,402 13.6%
New York 811,888 4.1%
Philadelphia 642,704 10.3%
Chicago 643,419 6.8%

These come fairly close to English + American except in NYC, where the estimated English is only 60% of English+American. A lot of Jews seem to write American responses (you can't write Jewish on the census, and there's no nostalgia for Eastern Europe!)

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

Irish still have a culturally working class image though, associated with cops, city workers, tradesmen, Irish pubs, guys with shamrock tattoos etc.

Yes and no. Boston, Philly, NYC, and Chicago have larger shares of Irish than the other big metros, so it follows that there will probably be more civil servants and blue-collar workers of Irish descent (if they happen to be white) than other ancestries. More recent immigrants, such as Italians and Poles, are more likely to own and run family businesses (i.e. restaurants, bakeries, delis, etc.). Policemen, firefighters, and other city workers are more establishment-based, as they are positions of authority. True working class professions are maids, dishwashers, taxicab drivers, sanitation workers, etc.

At the same time though, the Irish are also well-represented in the most affluent, blue-chip suburban and urban communities, although I do notice a relatively higher share of German and English ancestry as well.

[Quixote]

Upper East Side

American 13.6%
Irish 10.2%
Italian 9.7%
German 9.3%
Russian 7.5%
Polish 6.3%
English 5.3%

Upper West Side

German 10%
Irish 9.1%
Russian 7.0%
Italian 6.6%
English 6.4%
American 6.1%

Greenwich Village

Irish 9.9%
German 9.8%
Italian 9.5%
Russian 7.8%
English 7.5%
Polish 7.1%
American 4.5%

West Village

Irish 15%
German 13.2%
Italian 13.1%
English 12.3%
Russian 6.7%
Polish 6.5%

SoHo

Irish 16.5%
Italian 13.8%
English 11.2%
German 9.8%
Russian 7.0%

Tribeca

Italian 11.8%
Irish 10.4%
German 9.7%
English 9.4%
Russian 8.9%

Battery Park

Irish 12.8%
Italian 11.9%
German 8.5%
English 7.9%
Russian 6.8%
American 5.4%

Park Slope

Irish 13.2%
German 10.5%
Italian 10.3%
English 8.0%
American 7.3%

Brooklyn Heights

Irish 12.3%
Italian 11.0%
German 8.7%
American 8.4%
English 7.7%

Boerum Hill

Irish 10.0%
American 8.6%
German 7.1%
Italian 7.1%
English 6.0%

Cobble Hill

Italian 13.5%
German 12.6%
Irish 11.7%
English 10.9%
Russian 6.0%
American 5.9%

Carroll Gardens

Italian 23.2%
Irish 15.2%
German 12.0%
English 9.7%
American 5.5%

Gowanus

Italian 9.6%
German 8.3%
Irish 8.2%
American 7.9%
English 5.5%

[Docere]

I was able to get these numbers, % with college degrees by ancestry group. Italians are less educated than other whites in both NYC and Boston.

Boston MSA

English 51.3%
Irish 47.4%
Italian 41.9%

New York MSA

English 54.7%
German 47.5%
Irish 46%
Italian 38.5%

Philadelphia MSA

English 44.6%
German 39.9%
Irish 37.8%
Italian 37.4%

Chicago MSA

English 51.3%
Irish 45.7%
German 44.8%
Italian 40%
Polish 37.3%

[Quixote]

German tends to be over-represented in the affluent neighborhoods, which suggests to me that indeed some Jews select "German" on the census. The UES and UWS, known for being heavily Jewish, have a disproportionate amount of people claiming German and American ancestry relative to Irish and Italian, which are well-represented in wealthy Downtown Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn.

[Quixote]

Italians aren't (what sounds like) to NY/NJ/CT what French / French Canadians are to New England. Italians can be found across any sizable affluent geography, although they are underrepresented in Manhattan.

Nassau County, which in terms of household income relative to population size is only bested by Santa Clara County, is 20.1% Italian.

Westchester County -- 17.7%
Bergen County -- 17.6%
Fairfield County -- 16.9%

[Crawford]

The Irish dominated the ranks of NYC transit workers until the 1980's or so. Then the West Indians started to take the lead. I believe the track workers are still heavily Irish even today, but train and bus operators are probably most likely to be West Indian.

Cops and firefighters and sanitation workers are still disproportionately Irish.

[Docere]

Although he was supposed to be a "WASP" (or maybe he was German-Scottish like a certain real developer's son who grew up in Queens - very much a New Yawker but not a typical ethnicity associated with it), I think of Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O'Connor) as working class New York Irish. That accent is probably close to extinct today, it's kind of the equivalent of the London cockney accent I guess.

There were a few segments where he'd say something about the "micks" but those just fell flat. First of all because he was "Irish" in the way the Costanzas are Jewish, and second nobody saw the Irish as a minority group of sorts in the 1970s.

And then he quit his working class job and bought an Irish bar.

[Docere]

Re: these NYC neighborhoods:

None really have an "ethnic" character. Except maybe the Upper West Side a bit (where you have an observant Jewish contingent in addition to secular and Reform Jews).

Irish is generally more common than Italian, as I'd expect. More English and German ancestry given you'd have more "middle American" demographics as these aren't ethnic communities and have lots of transplants.

Manhattan looks a lot more Jewish than the gentrified areas of Brooklyn.

[Docere]

NYC

English 73.8%
Irish 57.1%
Italian 41.3%

Obviously "WASPs" are a rather rarified demographic in the NYC area - probably around 5% of the population at most and disproportionately made up of transplants and the very affluent.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Docere

I was able to get these numbers, % with college degrees by ancestry group. Italians are less educated than other whites in both NYC and Boston.

Boston MSA

English 51.3%
Irish 47.4%
Italian 41.9%

New York MSA

English 54.7%
German 47.5%
Irish 46%
Italian 38.5%

Philadelphia MSA

English 44.6%
German 39.9%
Irish 37.8%
Italian 37.4%

Chicago MSA

English 51.3%
Irish 45.7%
German 44.8%
Italian 40%
Polish 37.3%

Interesting data. Yeah, the English in NYC are definitely an elite group that probably wields an outsized amount of power despite their relatively small size. It makes sense. As Italian, Jewish, and Irish as NYC is, it's still a powerhouse command center — a place where legacy and pedigree (e.g. Anderson Cooper, Woody Johnson) gets you places.

Chicago probably has a similar dynamic going on with the North Shore.

Very interesting how "uneducated" the German population in Philly is... much closer to Irish and Italian than English. Germans in Chicago constitute a much larger percentage AND are much more "educated."