# 26 ethnicity maps of the US **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 10, 2013, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486 "2013-09-10T07:04:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/1 "2013-09-10T07:04:05Z")
I’m not sure I consider ‘Norwegian’ an ethnicity, but OK. Whatever group you want, it’s listed [here](http://www.businessinsider.com/maps-of-ancestry-groups-in-america-2013-9). > [@](#): > > The United States may be a melting pot, but many[ancestry groups](http://www.businessinsider.com/largest-ethnic-groups-in-america-2013-8) still stick together. > > Take German-Americans, the country’s largest ancestry group with 49 million members. While they make up more than 30% of the population in the Midwest, they account for less than 10% of the population in the Deep South and California. ---
**Author:** ![Peremensoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ce7236/32.png) [@Peremensoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peremensoe)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/2 "2013-09-10T08:40:35Z")
Of course Norwegian is an ethnicity–of longer standing than many. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 10:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/3 "2013-09-10T10:38:40Z")
Here’s a map split up by counties that shows a much more precise accounting of what the largest ethnic ancestries are: [![](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg) ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg) This has a lot of relevance to the thread recently on the South: > **[Who counts as a "Southerner"?](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=700865)** > > The dictionary defines “Southerner” as simply someone who lives in the southern United States. But I believe this is basically punting because they don’t want to delve into the hot-button complexity of what this term really means in practice. To... In that thread I suggested that people look at the map given in Joel Garreau’s book _The Nine Nations of North America_: > **[The Nine Nations of North America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nine_Nations_of_North_America)** > > The Nine Nations of North America is a 1981 book by Joel Garreau, in which the author suggests that North America can be divided into nine nations, which have distinctive economic and cultural features. He also argues that conventional national and state borders are largely artificial and irrelevant, and that his "nations" provide a more accurate way of understanding the true nature of North American society. The work has been called "a classic text on the current regionalization of North America... Note that almost precisely the South (or “Dixie,” as Garreau calls it) corresponds to one of the areas where the largest ethnic ancestry is not German. However, notice that in the South the largest ethnic ancestries are either black or “American.” Calling your ancestry “American” on the census means that you don’t feel like answering the question. So my generalization is that about half of all counties in the U.S. have German as the largest ethnic ancestry. The remaining counties can be split up (with a few left-overs) into these places: 1. New England and nearby New York and New Jersey, where the largest ethnic groups are English, Irish, French, and Italian 2. Utah and nearby Idaho, Wyoming, and Nevada, where the largest ethnic groups are English 3. Large parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, where the largest ethnic groups are Mexican 4. Certain counties where the majority ethnic group is American Indian 5. Certain counties where the majority ethnic group is Norwegian 6. An area that corresponds almost precisely to the South (“Dixie”) in Garreau’s map, even down to including the same parts of states that he does What the largest ethnic ancestry in the counties of the South where the largest ethnic ancestry is not black is hard to say. By putting down “American” for their ancestry on the census, people there have made it difficult to know their true ancestry. It’s probably mostly English (with some Scots-Irish). ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/4 "2013-09-10T12:15:51Z")
It surprises me that Jews are not mentioned. Aren’t there about 5 million Jews in the US? ---
**Author:** ![Ferret\_Herder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e47774/32.png) [@Ferret\_Herder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ferret_Herder)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/5 "2013-09-10T12:31:58Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > It surprises me that Jews are not mentioned. Aren’t there about 5 million Jews in the US? I doubt that is considered an ethnicity (or at least wasn’t by these researchers), considering that Jewish people come from Germanic and Slavic heritage, from the Middle East, from Africa, and elsewhere. Then again, this is just a selection of images from a presumably larger work. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/6 "2013-09-10T13:08:56Z")
> [@Ferret\_Herder](#): > > I doubt that is considered an ethnicity (or at least wasn’t by these researchers), considering that Jewish people come from Germanic and Slavic heritage, from the Middle East, from Africa, and elsewhere. Then again, this is just a selection of images from a presumably larger work. The Jewish population in New York has historically been largely Yiddish speaking. Although there has been a large-scale movement to English, there are still a few Yiddish speaking neighborhoods in Brooklyn and a few towns in upstate NY, such as Kiryas Joel. Yiddish, of course, is a language closely related to modern German, but I would _seriously_ doubt that large numbers of New York Jews identify themselves as German-American unless they have mixed ancestry from a gentile German group such as Pennsylvania Dutch or Germans settlers in the Dakotas. That brings up another point - ethnic surveys in the US are largely based on self-reporting of ethnicity, which allows people to report based on their own biases and notions about who they are. It’s possible that someone identifying as “Norwegian” is only 1/32 Norwegian with the rest of their ancestry being German, English, and French Canadian, but they pick “Norwegian” because their last name is Norwegian and grandpa said that “We are a Norwegian family”. It’s not like they do a DNA test and say, “zomg, you have craploads of French Canadian admixture plus a little Danish, afraid you’ll need to file for a change in ethnic classification” ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/7 "2013-09-10T13:32:51Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > It’s not like they do a DNA test and say, “zomg, you have craploads of French Canadian admixture plus a little Danish, afraid you’ll need to file for a change in ethnic classification” They’ll never institute mandatory testing - most politicians wouldn’t even qualify as human. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 1:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/8 "2013-09-10T13:38:53Z")
Norwegians. We’re _everywhere_. \ Sorry. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/9 "2013-09-10T14:09:14Z")
The maps linked by OP are misleading, especially since respondents stated their own ethnicity and were allowed to name more than one. The map of “American” ethnicity is interesting. 😃 When I was young, my father told me his family was “Scotch-Irish” which I ignorantly took to mean part Scottish, part Irish. :smack: It’s only recently that I’ve realized this was a distinct group who [were of great importance in early America](http://www.freewebs.com/fishmarkos1/usconnections.htm). [QUOTE=Teddy Roosevelt] … That these Irish Presbyterians were a bold and hardy race is proved by their at once pushing past the settled regions and plunging into the wilderness as the leaders of the white advance. They were the first and the last set of immigrants to do this; all others have merely followed in the wake of their predecessors. But, indeed, they were fitted to be Americans from the very start; they were kinsfolk of the Covenanters; they deemed it a religious duty to interpret their own Bible… … in the Revolutionary war, the fiercest and most ardent Americans of all were the Presbyterian Irish settlers and their descendants. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![BetsQ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/fbc32d/32.png) [@BetsQ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BetsQ)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/10 "2013-09-10T15:41:34Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > Calling your ancestry “American” on the census means that you don’t feel like answering the question. I put “American” down because I don’t actually know where my distant ancestors were born. It’s not a political statement, it’s just that I’m nth generation American. I can’t believe that isn’t more common in the U.S. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/11 "2013-09-10T19:35:41Z")
> [@Crotalus](#): > > It surprises me that Jews are not mentioned. Aren’t there about 5 million Jews in the US? They probably based their figures on the Census. The Census does not ask about religion, so the number of Jews, or where they live, is not talied. Even though, as you say, Jews can also be considered an ethnic group. ---
**Author:** ![Machine\_Elf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/82dd89/32.png) [@Machine\_Elf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Machine_Elf)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/12 "2013-09-10T20:23:53Z")
Related to the OP: here is the [Racial Dot Map](http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html). They claim to show one dot per person, mapped throughout the entire US. They’re probably telling the truth, because sometimes the map is slow to update. But the interesting thing is that you can zoom down to the level of neighborhoods and see all sorts of patterns. ---
**Author:** ![control-z](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@control-z](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/control-z)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/13 "2013-09-10T20:51:51Z")
Anybody else have a hard time telling all the shades apart? Some of the distinctions are subtle at best. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/14 "2013-09-10T21:55:18Z")
> [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > Related to the OP: here is the [Racial Dot Map](http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html). They claim to show one dot per person, mapped throughout the entire US. They’re probably telling the truth, because sometimes the map is slow to update. But the interesting thing is that you can zoom down to the level of neighborhoods and see all sorts of patterns. That’s really cool. I looked at my neighborhood and areas are pretty well defined racially. I had trouble finding my immediate neighborhood since you can’t zoom in very far and relatively speaking there are hardly any people. But in the surrounding neighborhoods the patterns are really dramatic. For example there is one condo development that I assumed had a fair number of immigrants but from that map I see that it’s bright red (Asian). It’s interesting to me because there are a lot of ethnically oriented stores in the area. By ethnic in this context I mean mostly southern Asia which I assume is mostly Indian and east Asian which I’m guessing is probably ethnic Chinese/Taiwanese. Anyway, I always wondered what kind of population base you needed to support the number of such stores we have around here and now I see. ---
**Author:** ![Sudden\_Kestrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecd19e/32.png) [@Sudden\_Kestrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sudden_Kestrel)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/15 "2013-09-10T22:09:50Z")
> [@deltasigma](#): > > I’m not sure I consider ‘Norwegian’ an ethnicity, but OK. If you lived in Minnesota, you’d know better than to say that. ---
**Author:** ![deltasigma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e5b9ba/32.png) [@deltasigma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/deltasigma)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2013, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/16 "2013-09-10T22:39:56Z")
> [@Sudden\_Kestrel](#): > > If you lived in Minnesota, you’d know better than to say that. I knew when I wrote that I’d probably regret it. I figured Norwegian would get lumped in with Scandinavian or something. I guess I’m just not exposed to much of that around here and even if I were, I still probably wouldn’t notice. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/17 "2013-09-11T00:17:45Z")
Very strange was the list of notable Americans of French Canadian descent. It included Celine Dion (who is from and still resides in Quebec, even if it is possible she has become an American citizen) and Chelsea Clinton while neither of her parents is listed. Jack Kerouac was certainly of French Canadian origin of course. ---
**Author:** ![thelurkinghorror](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7c8e57/32.png) [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/18 "2013-09-11T00:33:03Z")
Yeah, the only reason they’d have data for “Jewish” is from every person who wrote that into the “Other” section, providing that this is from census data. > [@Peremensoe](#): > > Of course Norwegian is an ethnicity–of longer standing than many. Although for centuries they were under the “iron fists” of either Denmark or Sweden, so often expected to have some of those ancestries mixed in. Lots of Norwegians (Norwads) live in Ogdenville 🙂 Finnish is not on there, but I can tell you Michigan will be the darkest (the UP). > [@septimus](#): > > The maps linked by OP are misleading, especially since respondents stated their own ethnicity and were allowed to name more than one. The map of “American” ethnicity is interesting. 😃 > > When I was young, my father told me his family was “Scotch-Irish” which I ignorantly took to mean part Scottish, part Irish. :smack: It’s only recently that I’ve realized this was a distinct group who [were of great importance in early America](http://www.freewebs.com/fishmarkos1/usconnections.htm). If someone is from the island of Ireland, but says they are anything but Irish, it’s a good clue. Aka Scots-Irish, which is more en vogue now as Scotch is booze or an egg. In the US they have had a redneck reputation as a lot were in the upper south. Former Senator Jim Webb [wrote a book](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_Fighting). ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/19 "2013-09-11T01:00:58Z")
BetsQ writes: \> I put “American” down because I don’t actually know where my distant \> ancestors were born. It’s not a political statement, it’s just that I’m nth \> generation American. I can’t believe that isn’t more common in the U.S. Put it this way then. It means that you either can’t or don’t want to answer the question. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2013, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486/20 "2013-09-11T01:03:53Z")
If your father couldn’t be bothered to explain to you what Scots-Irish means, that’s kind of strange. It’s a pretty common ethnic ancestry in the U.S. It’s the sort of thing that you’d think that people of that ancestry would be happy to talk about and indeed kind of proud to talk about. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/26-ethnicity-maps-of-the-us/668486.md?page=2)