Via Race / History / Evolution Notes, here are Ancestry.com's interesting maps of racial ancestry by state: A Genetic Census of America. One pattern I noticed is that the more odd the background (as with this map of Melanesian ancestry, which tops out at 0.1%), the more New Mexico stands out (with New York as the other state most likely to be anomalous).
I'd call it the Law of Newness, but it doesn't much apply to New Hampshire, with New Jersey kind of in the middle.
Since we've been speaking of German-Americans, here's "Europe West," which presumably includes Germans, Dutch, Belgians, and French (but not Scandinavians, Brits, Irish, Iberians, or Italians):
Generally, most of the country is kind of German, but less so in the giant cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Or New Mexico.
By the way, n/a says that he think's Ancestry.com's methodology in these maps isn't the ideal, so don't take them as the final word. (Also, keep in mind that the maps are likely biased by who wants to spring for ancestry testing.)
By the way, n/a says that he think's Ancestry.com's methodology in these maps isn't the ideal, so don't take them as the final word. (Also, keep in mind that the maps are likely biased by who wants to spring for ancestry testing.)
Jayman did some useful work on this: http://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/maps-of-the-american-nations/
ReplyDeleteThat's a good place to start. He did a few posts on the subject.
Cincinnati and northern Kentucky had a huge German population, probably approaching 50%. Milwaukee would have been similar. Also, Louisville, St. Louis and Fort Wayne would have been 30-40% German by 1880. The Ohio Valley was settled mostly by Germans from the Rhine Valley, so the life would have been a bit different from that of the Prussians up in Wisconsin.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.rjkoehler.com/2014/01/16/chinese-tourists-feel-disrespected-in-korea-ye-olde-chosun/
ReplyDeleteAsian no likey Asian.
You really should read Colin Woodard's AMERICAN NATIONS.
ReplyDeleteOn other news, do you not find it hilarious that Michael Sam is now a Ram? What % of rams are gay?
Well, Chuck Devore stated that Houston is less Germanic it more diverse than New York City, lots of Latins, some blacks and other these days.
ReplyDeleteWhat an odd sort of map projection.
ReplyDeleteBy making the western U.S.-Canada
border a straight line, you make the
east-west lines in the lower part of
the map (e.g., the northern borders
of North Carolina and Nevada) tilted.
The eastern third of the country is
tilted, and about to split from the
rest of the country in a cleavage through
Lake Michigan and the Mississippi Rover.
I doubt that this view of the country
can be seen from any point in space.
What is this map projection called?
Does it have any advantages at all?
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)
P.S. In the map of Melanesians in
the various states, their proportion
of the population ranges from
0.001 to 0.001 -- that's the same
number! (Were significant digits
lost by the truncation?)
The British royal family has had German connections since a Prince-Elector of Hanover (and grandfather of Prussia's Frederick the Great) became King George I. That probably started the historical process of German migration to North America in the 18th Century; Germans felt comfortable with the process of switching allegiance to another German sovereign, even if he sat on a throne in London and spoke English. "Hey, one of our guys rules the American colonies. Let's move there."
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to weight this data based on absolute numbers of voters and show correlations with voting patterns and other social and economic data. Where is HBD chick when you need her?
ReplyDeleteYou have indicated that self reported data on race is reasonably accurate, so census data would might be adequate, except the racial categories in the census do not provide such fine detail between groups.
I love Oregon, it's German, Scandinavian, Irish, and English. In other words it's pretty damn White.
ReplyDeletehttp://thepunditpress.com/2014/05/05/college-wins-us-debate-championship-by-repeating-the-n-word-over-and-over-speaking-incomprehensibly/
ReplyDeleteThis is how debates are 'won' in our society. It's like Libs claim that the side of 'gay marriage' 'won the debate' when, in fact, all debate was muted by the fact that Jews control the media and academia and have threatened everyone with blacklisting or demotion if they openly opposed 'gay marriage'. So, Libs MUST support 'gay marriage' openly and Cons can only oppose it with timid silence, which is useless. Cons have gone from silent majority to silent minority. Silent, silent, and silent.
So, Libs 'won the debate'.
And in the Towson debate, the black kids just shouted and hollered a lot, but I guess Afrocentric logic is different from ours, and we must judge truth by its volume and vibrancy. After all, if MLK didn't have a boombox voice, would he be hailed as a hero--even though everything he was was plagiarized from others?
Btw, I have a splendid idea for how black kids can win spelling bees:
Spell 'effervescent'
Sanjay Patel: e-f-f-e-r-v-e-s-c-e-n-t.
Correct.
Spell 'bibliophile'
Whachamacallisha: I-ll-bibliophile-your-honkey-racist-ass-mothafuc*a-cuz-you-know-this-punkass-shit-be-designed-to-dis-black-folks-jes-like-you-mammy-and-yo-pappy-and-yo-grandmammy-and-yo-grandpappy-and-yo-whole-generation-done-to-our-people-which-be-why-i-fly-like-a-butterfly-and-i-spell-like-a-bee-and-that's-why-you-bettah-award-me-or-my-homeys-gonna-burn-down-yo-whiteass-city!
CORRECT 1000x over. You win the prize!!!
I was at first surprised to see Minnesota so low. Heck, they're the folks who've got the statue of Herman the German.
ReplyDeleteMy family is from Iowa--my parents high school sweethearts from Vinton. Unsurprised by it being at the top. I would have thought it's figure would have been higher--a third, maybe even 40%. The Germans--and i've ridden in the combine with a few when helping my cousin with his harvest--good folks. The best organized farmers. Nicest looking farms, best looking corn in the fields.
At first, i thought Minnesota was suffering from more blacks (native and Somalis) in Minneapolis. But that would hit Wisconsin even a touch harder.
So i think its the Scandivanians. Minnesota--relative to Iowa--more Scandinavians, fewer Germans. This would explain the Dakotas too.
Places with lots of Germans are pretty darn nice places to live.
I have a Melanesian friend, which prompts the thought - how many of the people who opine here on racial matters have any friends from the races about which they opine?
ReplyDeleteIt's not a requirement - you can perfectly well have a valid view of Melanesians without ever having been within a thousand miles of one. But experience might lend perspective, or even just the ability to compare generalisations to your own observations.
Looking at how German Indiana is makes me think of Kurt Vonnegut, born to a family of German-American architects in Indiana.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, people often think the "midwestern accent," (which is so strongly associated with Minnesota and Wisconsin) is due to Scandinavian influence. However linguists have determined that it is actually due to German linguistic influence.
Highly recommend that website, IF you really want to know. We always suspected something odd on my dad's side, a hushed and hasty divorce, etc. My dad, my sister and myself all took the DNA test there, too. Come to find out, it was true, my paternal grandma's father was evidently a high-yellow Creole and my father carried 8% mixed African genes. I carry 4% (Benin/Togo, Bantu), so there, guess I can now use the "N-word" with abandon. Or maybe not, as my phenotype still screams "PINKY"
ReplyDeletedearieme:"I have a Melanesian friend, which prompts the thought - how many of the people who opine here on racial matters have any friends from the races about which they opine?
ReplyDeleteIt's not a requirement - you can perfectly well have a valid view of Melanesians without ever having been within a thousand miles of one. But experience might lend perspective, or even just the ability to compare generalisations to your own observations."
Confining it to the Continental racial divisions:
Black/Black-White hybrids: Around 7 to 10 that I have known reasonably well (more than workplace friends but less than intimate friends). Of these, 1 is a fairly close friend.
Asians/Asian-White hybrids: Around 10-12 that I know reasonably well. Of these, 3 are close friends.
Whites/Caucasoids: Around 20 that I know reasonably well. Of these, 3 are close friends.
Amerinds: 0
Aborigines:0
My family is from Iowa--my parents high school sweethearts from Vinton. Unsurprised by it being at the top. I would have thought it's figure would have been higher--a third, maybe even 40%. The Germans--and i've ridden in the combine with a few when helping my cousin with his harvest--good folks. The best organized farmers. Nicest looking farms, best looking corn in the fields.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. It immediately reminded me of the dominance of Iowa State in wrestling, and if there was a connection. Are Germans good at wrestling?
If you go back through the pre-2000 era, not bad. Outside of the Soviet Union, you see a few German flags dotted here and there. And if you look closely at the US results, you see quite a few German surnames.
What's up with the West Europe category? Is that based on self identified Americans?
ReplyDeleteNo way French and Germans are that interchangeable. Even in Belgium they mix like oil and water.
The 18th-19th century writers said the German immigrants to the USA were small and darker than the English colonial stock. Well, maybe they were Rheinlanders or Alsatians? That does not describe your average crowd in Hamburg or Berlin.
I always hear this trope about how German Americans are, but I'm not so sure. The PA Dutch are small and dark on average. Language is just language.
So where is this "French/German" category coming from?
"So where is this "French/German" category coming from?"
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's intended to be a single category, just two populations put into one bucket. Imagine there were three populations, English, German and French. Saying the population is 40% German and French doesn't imply that German and French are interchangeable, just that 40% of the population is not English.
So basically this is a negative category or catch all dumping ground for anything self-identified as vaguely European but not British, not Irish, not Scandinavian, not Slavic, not Italian, and not Hispanic.
DeleteIn other words, the often mentioned but never delimited Heinz 57 Homo Americanus. These are the people who swear up and down they are white but have an animus against any actual European culture, non?
George I was not an English speaker. I forget which Monarch reintroduced English to the court and who was the first to do so.
ReplyDeleteI am told that Henry Twdr was the first to make it so.
"The 18th-19th century writers said the German immigrants to the USA were small and darker than the English colonial stock."
ReplyDelete1900
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/04/Troops_of_the_Eight_nations_alliance_1900.jpg
The photo might be rigged but for what it's worth Brit and Yank on the left, German in the middle - diet I guess?
NH, VT, and ME include large French-Canadian populations. We have plenty of Germans, but I'm betting not so many as the midwest, and the French (mostly from a very small area west of Paris before settling in Quebec, BTW) are the likely explanation fo the dark green of northern New England.
ReplyDeleteNew England is conspicuous by having very few people of German origin. When I taught at a research university in Boston most of my students were Irish, Italian, English (going by surnames), Jewish, Polish, Greek, and international. Here in the lower Midwest where I teach now, we have a sizable fraction of students with German names, and surprisingly they occasionally look Hispanic. Perhaps they are the progeny of all those lonely farmers who got sick and tired of being lonely and got themselves mail order brides!
ReplyDeleteI took the AncestryDNA test and have a majority of Europe West (with plenty of surprises in the trace amounts-- African types and Asia South, i.e. Dot Indian) Anyway, I called and spoke with someone there about the Europe West and was told that the DNA of that area was so mixed that they couldn't at this time distinguish it into smaller populations.
ReplyDeleteAs to what
dearieme said,
In college shared rooms with Hong Kong Chinese, a Watts Negro, East L.A. Mexican-Indian, worked and was friends (or more) with blacks, viets, thais, cambodians, eastern Europeans, Mexicans, Japanese.
I wonder how representative this sample is of the country. Researching the genetic history of the British Isles is a surprisingly popular hobby, especially in the South. So maybe British-Americans are more likely to send for their own ancestry results.
ReplyDeleteYeah, everyone's always known that British ancestry counts in the censuses are massive underestimates, but this is a much greater discrepancy than I would have estimated.
30-35% in the South is about what you would expect, but the numbers in the rest of the country are a surprise to me. Pretty much every state, including Illinois, is more British than anything else? New York is almost twice as British as Italian?
Also, it strange to see Scandinavian is much more common than Italian/Greek.
ReplyDeleteMine is pretty standard lowland South: the British Isles. Mine go back to London, York, Perth, Ulster, Wales, the Midlands.
ReplyDeleteEurope West is basically the descendants of the Germanic tribes which flourished on the Continent following Rome's fall. The Franks (and Normans) were Germanic but adopted the Latin of the Empire/church, and eventually it became French.
ReplyDeleteHowever with the passing of years, one would think these regions would bear out distinct genetic markings. I'd be surprised if there isn't a nice difference between high and low Germans, and a close similarity between low Germanic descendants and their Anglo-Saxon brethren in GB.
Speaking of British, one has to think that this ancestry captures an Anglo/Saxon-Celtic-Norse hybrid given that island's history. The question becomes, how much of each? The further West one goes, the more Celtic. The further inland, the least Viking. Or is "British" really mostly Anglo-Saxon?
Right, but my question is: what data Ancestry is using for the "Europe West": are they using actual French and Germans (if so, what parts of France and Germany?) - or are they using data from Americans who self-classify as European but don't fit in any other category.
DeletePennsylvania Dutch don't look like most Germans. Part of that is they are Swiss, Alsatian, Rhineland people.
I am part German, part Britishid. Some distant French too. NatGeo pegs me as Danish or German. Yet I get zero "Europe West" from Ancestry - but my real German relatives are on there.
So question, how do actual Germans from Germany score on this "Europe West" category?
Did the industrious race of Alpines all mysteriously migrate from Bavaria and the Rheinland to Pennsylvania, leaving little trace in bad old Europe? Or is this some kind of funky genetic sampling from Americans who don't fit in any Eurozone?
Scratching mein head.
I love Oregon, it's German, Scandinavian, Irish, and English. In other words it's pretty damn White.
ReplyDeleteOregon? Two words: hippie redneck. The redneck part I like. The hippie part not so much. And I like pumping my own gasoline. It's a strange brew of redneckiness, Portlandia (SWPL the extreme edition) and a big dose of make-work socialism with a dash of drug overdose.
My family is from Iowa--my parents high school sweethearts from Vinton. Unsurprised by it being at the top. I would have thought it's figure would have been higher--a third, maybe even 40%. The Germans--and i've ridden in the combine with a few when helping my cousin with his harvest--good folks. The best organized farmers. Nicest looking farms, best looking corn in the fields.
My wife is from Iowa and her multi-generational Iowa family is mostly German with a bit of English and Swedish.
I like Iowans and Iowa. Mostly good, decent, quiet, hardworking folks. HOWEVER, the state has extremely high taxes (income, property, sales, all of it) and the educational establishment is in the grips of the unions. Furthermore, the "good hardworking" farming folk have all been bought up with farm and ethanol subsidies. They all complain about the heavy hand of the government until it's subsidy reduction discussion time when they wail and whine about the plight of the poor farmers. In other words, they are hypocrites.
Also they are interracially the worst of both worlds -- many Iowans flagellate themselves about white racism in public, but in private are some of the most parochial and racist people I ever met (I prefer people who are publicly race realist, but are privately tolerant and accepting of decent nonwhite individuals).
One of the best dark comedy movies is about an Iowa college town called "The Last Supper," in which self-righteous lefty grad students go all batty and murderous in the name of justice but then runs into a very clever Rush Limbaugh-like character at the end. It's a hoot.
Texan. Traced my roots back to country of origin (google warrior, no independent research). Results roughly:
ReplyDelete55% British (of that, a roughly 60/40 split between English/Scottish, where 'Scottish' is overwhelmingly Ulster-Scot)
25% Ashkenazim
20% German
<1% Miscellany: Dutch, Welsh, Friesen, French Hugenot
Half of family Southern, one quarter Northern, one quarter new arrival (Anschluss exodus).
oh dear, can you imagine if we Isrelis held the same privileges in America that Melanesians do? Read the Compacts of Free Association. If ==we== had the right to have our folks become ===commissioned officers=== in the US Armed Forces without ever swearing an oath of loyalty to the US, the Steve-nikkim (sorry, Steve-osphere) would be screaming bloody murder.
ReplyDeleteThe USA-Canada border ==is== a straight line, on the classic Mercator Projection.
Let me dust off my tome on spherical trigonometry and check whether all isometric projections feature this.
It's cool that you live in outer space, so you want your maps to look like what you see when you look out your window.
We earthbound individuals attach more importance to knowing which compass point to follow to get from Origin to Destination. That's one feature of Mercator's projection.
Am I the only one here, who has ever spent serious time at the US Army's missle-range terminus smack in the middle of Melanesia?!?
I wish Euros and Israelis made a pact of mutual recognition and protection. That would also be ethical: what's good for the Israeli law is good for European law.
DeleteIsraelis could come visit Europe any time and be safe and protected, so long as you acknowledge Europe as a Eurostate. Euros could go to Israel anytime a long as they acknowledge they are in a a Jewish state.
Europe could follow Israel's lead in matters of international and refugee law. We would abide by any enumerated Jewish standards on an equal basis, enforcing those laws for our own people in Europe.
We would also follow Israel's lead and act as a formally bound ally in dealing with enemies of the people of Israel or the people of a Europe. We could also have formal exchange programs for military and scientific purposes.
The Americans can elect whomever they want. President for life Biggie Smallz, Sec of State Honey Boo Boo, whatever.
Europe and Israel could work with people who want to join together to find a new, different path. Utopian, I know.
There's no way all of the deep south states have 20% or more German ancestry. It must be picking up Anglo-Saxon ancestry among the British which means it is not very useful in distinguishing among ethnicities.
ReplyDeleteSounds like what we all really want is a genetic census of isteve readers.
ReplyDelete"Sounds like what we all really want is a genetic census of isteve readers."
ReplyDeleteA general survey of the readership would be interesting, methinks.
Come on, show your genetic cards--here's mine
ReplyDeleteAfrica 4%
Asia South 2%
Europe West 57%
Ireland 14%
Scandinavia 12%
Iberian Peninsula 9%
Italy/Greece 2%
Ancestry.com says they sample genetics from the region's current indigenous populations, so these are old country genetics (though migrations may have changed racial stock in the old countries--think Muslims in France/Germany/Britain), not against other (mud-blood) Americans per se.
Ok. I'm the weirdo who would like to see Theodor Herzl's ideas copied for an Israel allied Eurostate.
DeleteIreland 49%
Europe East 31%
Great Britain 15%
Scandinavia 4%
Europe West <1%
I've got to say, this is right on the money and matches genealogy almost perfectly. All those names like Franz, Augusta, Wilhelmina, etc were Polacks after all. (Explains a lot).
NatGeo pegs me as Danish or German, but it must be the west + east combo. I got more than my fair 25% share of the Westpreussisch. Not that I look it, really.
Anon 8:13, have you looked into the Asia South part? Do you know if that's gypsy, Melungeon, or some hidden element from Cherokee etc?
DeleteI wouldn't call that "mud blood." It's just mixture, which can be healthy and a chance to start fresh for those who go that route.
The problem in America is that so few people are even a little mixed. It's just a phony ideology with no relation to praxis.
If you are Cherokee or etc, then IMO that's a kind of genetic legitimacy for being here. I'm all Euro (by fate, not choice), so I have to think about different possibilities.
Interesting to looked at the foreign born in 1970, Texas was a very tiny 2.8 percent while California was high for the period at 8.8, only New York was at 11.0 percent. California at 27 percent but 19 Percent in Nevada which I think was only 3 percent in 1970. Texas up to 16.4 percent but I predict with the cheaper housing that Foreign born in California and aboard will go more there and it bumps up to 18 percent like Florida at 19 percent. As I keep telling Republicans to stopped putting all their eggs on Texas its starting to get more into the foreign born and not so much folks from other states, Utah and so forth are much lower but Utah which was almost no foreign born has increase a lot too.
ReplyDeleteTo answer AnotherDad (Rich or Poor?): "German" can mean a lot of things. My many relatives with German surnames range from 100% down to 4%.
ReplyDeleteIf the Germans were Lutheran, they'd have married within their particular synod for generations and remained German. That goes double for small dissident sects-- and tenfold for Mennonites.
German Catholics, though, intermarried with others nearby. Germans are the largest ethnic group in Minnesota (unless you combine the Scandinavians), and NYC was fully one-fifth German a century ago. A significant portion (maybe even a majority) of Germans in both places were Catholic, so that might explain the low numbers today.
Also, the NY figure is for the whole state. Upstate's Germans came in the early 17th century. Colonial Germans are a very different story-- thoroughly assimilated and absorbed. (Whence my four-percenter.)
Elvis's Presleys (orig. Presslar) and the Dales' Earnhardts are essentially Scots-Irish families in which a German surname managed to hang on. And that process worked in reverse, as well. The Dutch Livingstons on the Hudson are well-known. My aunt-in-law married one of those rare Schermerhorns who pronounce it SH-, in the German fashion.
Note the distribution of "Europe West" in New England. Few Germans there; it's about the French. Or, more to the point, who can outnumber the French, who are rather evenly spread themselves. If you want to identify the French counties from the St John River west to the Adirondacks, look at electoral maps from the '30s and '40s. They're the only counties FDR could carry.
Oregon? Two words: hippie redneck. The redneck part I like. The hippie part not so much. And I like pumping my own gasoline. It's a strange brew of redneckiness, Portlandia (SWPL the extreme edition) and a big dose of make-work socialism with a dash of drug overdose.
ReplyDeleteWho cares. Actually, believe or not some of the highest drug use is in Kentucky or West Virginia but this post doesn't like white areas that are liberal they like conservative states with a lot of minorities, crazy. At least in Portland they are not having bunch of kids out of wedlock which can lead to your down fall more than drugs sometimes. Arkansas is the white capital of having kids out of wedlock.
"My wife is from Iowa and her multi-generational Iowa family is mostly German with a bit of English and Swedish."
ReplyDeleteGood number of Czechs in Iowa.
When Czechs look good, they look very good. Czech beauty is tops.
Mos of the Southern Strategy was the fact that the south was in 1970 a region with most native born. Foreign born populations were 1 percent or less unless you count Florida at 8 percent and Texas at 2.8. Fast forward, the South is no less foreign born now than the mid west. Illinois is the only high foreign born in the midwest at 14 percent. In fact libertarian conservative economics with no government regulation of business, tax evasion, and allowing business to pay what they wanted probably helped a lot to spread the foreign born into the south.
ReplyDelete