Dear god. The Finns are trying to steal Lake Superior!

[Jon Miller]

I know that I have a classmate and good freind who is practicing Jew. As in he follows (most of) the cultural practices and the like. Also religiously he follows, and is active in the Jewish community at UMD. He actively looks to Jewish girls as girlfreinds.

He is a dual citizen of Israel, actually (I think was born there). I am sure that he intends to raise his children as Jews (I beleive he is reform).

My best-freinds wife is also Jewish. She, however, is basically nonpracticing. I think they do Passover.. but I don't think they are Kosher even during that (not entirely sure on this). She is an atheist, her parents are athiest/agnostic, and her Jewish grandparents are New Age (I think her father's parents are Lutheran). My best freind would likely be classified as liberal nonpracting Christian (or deist/theist, depending on the mood).

I bet that children would be raised to know that they had Jewish heritage, but I doubt it would be a large factor in their life.

Jon Miller

[Pekka]

Seems to me you're all bunch of Euros. Americans, what are they? not even a real entity. Bah.

[Method]

Originally posted by Pekka
Where's the Chinese?

San Francisco county california, evidently.

[Bill3000]

It's because the map is only a lising of the plurality of ancestry of each county. Because of this, there's a sacrifice of information to be able to make a clear map. And actually, Chinese is there - plurality of San Fransisco County.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Eli
WTF?! Why are there so many Germans?

cause we're talking pluralities. Take a small rural country in Kansas, or Wyoming. Lets say its numbers look like this

30% German
25% English
20% American (IE mainly British origin, mixed)
15% Scottish (including Ulster Scots/Scots Irish)
5% Welsh
5% Other

Now to an American on the ground, this is a "WASP" county, one with a British Origin Protestant minority, and a large German minority. But on this map it would show as "German".

Imagine if in Israel, a survey asked for national origin, and people responded Russian, German, Polish, or Sephardic. And anyone whose ancestors came in 2nd aliyah or earlier put down "Israeli". Youd show Sephardic "pluralities" in plenty of places you know to be majority Ashkenazic.

[Pekka]

So that's to hurt the Chinese credibility? That they're all just liberals?

There's tons of Chinatowns everywhere, in NYC, all there is is bunch of Chinese people. I think they count for something. This is just to throw the idea of.. Chinese as normal people out of the window. Disgusting.

[Method]

They count for something, yes. Evidently it's simply not the largest population in any county but san francisco.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Thorgal
What "american" (light yellow counties) means?

Given there is a group called "American Indian," This other category is very suspicious. I'm not surprised by the distribution of African Americans or Finns for that matter, but I am surprised that national origin Germans make the plurality in so many counties. I would have expected more English pluralities, just based on the phone books in so many cities. However, a lot of immigrants ended up having their names "anglisized" by immigration authorities in the early part of this century. (I presume this data comes from the census, but I don't know that.)

Incidentally, the Finns can have Lake Superior as long as they don't move it. Why would they take it to Stockholm instead of Helsinki in any case?

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Thorgal
What "american" (light yellow counties) means?

It's most likely that they're some mixture of British and German. Pretty much every white in Appalachians and in the rural south is some part English, Scottish, Irish, and German (and most probably have a twist of Welsh). Very few people in the area are "purely" British or "purely" German, because the populations have been in the area for so long and because they intermarried so thoroughly.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer


Given there is a group called "American Indian," This other category is very suspicious. I'm not surprised by the distribution of African Americans or Finns for that matter, but I am surprised that national origin Germans make the plurality in so many counties. I would have expected more English pluralities, just based on the phone books in so many cities. However, a lot of immigrants ended up having their names "anglisized" by immigration authorities in the early part of this century. (I presume this data comes from the census, but I don't know that.)

Incidentally, the Finns can have Lake Superior as long as they don't move it. Why would they take it to Stockholm instead of Helsinki in any case?

Blau, look at my posts. Also look at the counties with "American" majorities. Appalachia, central Tenn, etc. Those are descendants of old stock settlers, mainly English and Scots Irish in origin. Now if your ancestors had arrived from Ulster, but never felt Irish, were already a mix of Scot and English borderers back in Ulster, and some of your ancestors were regular English, French, German, AmerIndian, etc, wouldnt you be tempted to answer "American"?

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
I am surprised that national origin Germans make the plurality in so many counties. I would have expected more English pluralities, just based on the phone books in so many cities. However, a lot of immigrants ended up having their names "anglisized" by immigration authorities in the early part of this century. (I presume this data comes from the census, but I don't know that.)

Unitl recently, Germans constituted the largest single ethnic group that had ever immigrated to the U.S. "British" immigrants as a whole outnumbered them, but Germans constituted a larger number than English, Irish, Scottish, or Welsh individually.

[KrazyHorse]

There might have been more immigrants, but they came later, so had less time to increase their numbers. In all likelihood the total amount of English "blood" in the US is higher than the total amount of German "blood"

[Eli]

LOTM:

African is considered a national origin.

Considered shmonsidered. People whose origins are from South Africa are not of the same nationality of people who came from Kongo or Senegal.

[Wycoff]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse There might have been more immigrants, but they came later, so had less time to increase their numbers. In all likelihood the total amount of English "blood" in the US is higher than the total amount of German "blood"

I think that that's pretty difficult to quantify because of the extensive intermixture of the two populations. The Germans immigrated here in mass rather early, and the initial English lead wasn't that great in absolute terms.
Germans were 10% of the population in 1790, roughly 400,000 out of 4 million. However, Germans began immigrating here in mass numbers by the 1830s, outnumbering the combined immigrants from the UK (Northern Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh) The huge numbers of German immigrants from the 1830s-1860s ensured that Germans were a very significant part of the population from an early point.

Besides, the Germans, English, Scots, and Irish tended to immigrate to the same places. They're so intermixed by now that it's pretty hard to say who's German and who's English. That's why people in the yellow areas said "American" They're not English with a trace of other ethincities. They're full fledged "mutts" without any dominant ethnic heritage.

Here's a link to immigration figures by country of origin from 1820-2003.

Click on table 2.

EDIT:

Here's a link to a book discussing the heavy German / Scots-Irish in the Appalachians

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Eli
LOTM:

African is considered a national origin.

Considered shmonsidered. People whose origins are from South Africa are not of the same nationality of people who came from Kongo or Senegal.

But most African Americans, IIUC, dont know exactly where in Africa their ancestors came from. Under the conditions of slavery it was hard to maintain that connection, other than in some areas like the Carolina coast where the slave population was huge and linguistic and other cultural survivals were more overt.