U.S. Ethnic Distribution

With our visit to America's Midwest today let's have a look at it's ethnic distribution.

While working at jobs taking calls from across the U.S., the name and address of the caller would appear on my computer screen. As many thousands of calls were taken, certain definite patterns in the ethnic distribution of the country, going by the names, became apparent.

ARRANGEMENT OF IMMIGRANT GROUPS

I realized how the major European ethnic groups in the U.S. had arranged themselves in much the same way as their homelands were in Europe. The Italian-American heartland is the northeastern U.S. On a map, this part of the country forms a peninsula just as Italy does on a map of Europe. New York City, with it's considerable population of Italian descent, occupies about the same position on this "peninsula" as does Rome on a map of Italy.

As the population of Germany increased in the Nineteenth Century, space became more scarce on the Luneberg Heath, the plain across the northern part of the country. Many of those who wished to farm headed for the open spaces of the U.S. midwest. To the north of Germany is the Scandinavian countries and, just as in Europe, immigrants from those countries positioned themselves to the north of the Germans, particularly in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

In Europe, to the east of Germany lies Poland. Bringing this pattern to North America, Polish settlers positioned themselves to the east of the Germans. In fact, I noticed what we could call a "Mirror Poland" in the U.S. Warsaw, Poland's capital city, is toward the eastern part of the country. If, in America, Chicago represents the new Warsaw, cities like Cleveland and the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga can be considered as new versions of Polish cities to the west of Warsaw.

But in America, Chicago is to the west of the Polish community while in Poland, Warsaw is to the east, making this part of the U.S. a mirror version of Poland. However, Poland did not exist as a nation when the wave of immigrants came in the late Nineteenth Century and the last time Poland existed territorially before that Warsaw was indeed to the west of the country. I noticed a new wave of Polish immigrants to the U.S. since the end of the Iron Curtain and these are focused on New York City instead of Chicago.

In Europe, Portugal is a small country on the edge of the continent against the ocean. Fitting this arrangement pattern, Portuguese immigrants to America have chosen Rhode Island as the New Portugal and could not have picked a state that came closer to mirroring Portugal's position in Europe.

On a map, Texas resembles geographically the Indian subcontinent. This might subconsciously draw Indians to settle there and indeed Texas has about 8.7 percent of America's population but about 11 percent of it's immigrants from India.

This immigrant arrangement pattern does not include those whose homelands are not far away from America. Cubans simply cross over to Florida and Mexicans occupy what we could call the "Natural Mexico", which includes the lands of the U.S. southwest which were once a part of Mexico.

DISPERSION OF IMMIGRANT GROUPS

A number of patterns in the dispersion of immigrant groups also became apparent to me. Irish-Americans have dispersed throughout the country from their traditional heartland of Massachusetts much more than Polish and Italian immigrants have. I could detect only a faint concentration of Irish names around Boston. It is true that Irish immigrants arrived before those from Italy and Poland but I believe a major factor was that those from Ireland arrived speaking English.

It is easy to see which ethnic group was the first immigrant settlers, and the influence of the Civil War of 1861-65 also shows up. The only concentration of Anglo and Scotch names in America is in the south. In other areas they seem to be the background among which other groups settled. This is because the waves of immigrants from Europe in the late Nineteenth Century went to the north, particularly New York City, because it had won the Civil War. The Anglo and Scotch names were in America before the Civil War.

Another easy way to tell which group settled a place first is the names of the places. In eastern New York State, the place names are often Dutch but the resident's names are far more likely to be Italian (Roosevelt means "Rose Field" and Tappan Zee means "Inland Sea" in Dutch).

It is obvious that the heartland of African-Americans is the southern states. In the rest of the country, black people are very heavily concentrated in cities. The only place I noticed a significant number of black people in small towns was in the south, presuming that I could tell a black person by their voice. If I had never heard of the town I presumed it to be a small town. This clearly indicates that the black dispersion from the south to the rest of the country was relatively recent.

German-Americans seemed to me to be the most rural but black Americans are by far the most urban. If German-Americans can be said to have a city, it is Milwaukee or maybe Omaha. More recent immigrant groups tend to choose a hub city. The concentration of Arab names around Detroit is really striking and Fresno continues to serve as the hub for Armenians in America.

THE HUB CITIES FOR IMMIGRANTS

America's two great hubs for immigrants are, of course, New York and Los Angeles. The important factor to consider is whether the immigrant group arrived primarily by ship or by plane, thus indicating the time frame of arrival.

In the past, immigrants arrived by ship. Thus by simple geography, Europeans arrived in New York and the far fewer Asians in Los Angeles. This can easily be seen in previous immigrant patterns but now has changed completely due to airplanes. Europeans seemed to me to be as likely to land in Los Angeles as Asians were to start out in New York.

One recent immigrant group that does not seem to start out in the primary immigrant hubs as much as the other groups is those from India. The reason is obvious, there is no Indiatowns like there are Chinatowns simply because Indian immigrants tend to speak English.

America is full of both French and Spanish names. Yet, I notice no concentration of these names at all around the traditional hub cities. French names are concentrated in the northern New England states and Spanish names in the southwest, in Florida and, in New York City.

This tells me that there was little direct immigration from France to America and the ancestors of most Americans with French names were French-Canadians first. Since we know the Spanish names around New York belong mostly to Puerto Ricans, it is also clear that there was little direct immigration from Spain to the U.S. and that these immigrants came from other countries in the western hemisphere.

These patterns in immigration do not show up as well in Canada because it's population is so concentrated against the southern border instead of being spread throughout the country or in Britain because it has only been a major immigrant destination for the past fifty or sixty years and two thirds of it's immigrants are concentrated in the London area.