9.8: Ethnic Regions

Waves of immigration to the United States produced a variety of ethnic patterns on the landscape. Some ethnicities are so numerous that they occupy vast swaths of the country known as ethnic regions. The regions are typically dominated by a single ethnicity, even though barriers to entry to any of these regions are never legal. The US constitution does a reasonably good job of protecting the rights of minorities of all stripes to move to whatever region of the country they chose. In earlier times and in many parts of the world, regional and ethnic differences can be explosively dangerous.

There are three main ethnic regions in the United States. Around a dozen smaller ethnic regions, sometimes referred to as ethnic islands, also can be found sometimes occupying areas as small as a single county. The largest ethnic region in the US is German-American. It is hard for most Americans to point out the characteristics of Germanic-America because so much of American culture has been derived from German-Americans. But there are clues. For example, people in Wisconsin may drink more beer, eat more knackwurst and sauerkraut, and celebrate Oktoberfest more heartily than people in Tennessee. Still, to the outsider, German-America is difficult to characterize as fundamentally distinct from the Mid-South which appears on the map below as “American-American”.

Figure 9-17: Infographic. Note the large percent of Americans that claim German and Irish heritage. There was a time in some parts of the US when a much lower percent claimed their Irish heritage. Most American families, if they have been in the US long have mixed ancestry. Source: Wikimedia

Figure 9-16: Map of US Ethnicity by County - This map shows the dominant "Ancestry" in each US county in 2000. Source: US Census Bureau / Wikimedia.

The other large ethnic regions in the US are the Mexican Borderlands and the so-called Black Belt in the Lowland South. These latter two regions are distinguished by cultural traditions that are more recognizably distinct from mainstream America. Foodways, musical traditions, holiday celebrations, and a host of other cultural practices mark these two regions as somewhat unique from the rest of the US. In the Southern Black Belt, you might eat a soul food supper with collard greens, black-eyed peas, and chitterlings (chitlins) with sweet potato pie at a Juneteenth celebration. In the Mexican Borderlands, you might eat gorditas, pozole, and tamales with churros for dessert at a Día de Muertos party. You might not as well. Those characterizations of the Black Belt and the Mexican Borderlands are stereotypical, but either scenario would seem exotic in much of Iowa. There are many small ethnic islands as well. They are too numerous for an introductory textbook, but at least a few deserve some attention in hopes that students will be interested in visiting or learning more. Italian-Americans are the dominant group in many areas in the Northeast. Irish-Americans live in many of the same locations as the Italian-Americans. Norwegian-Americans, as well as other descendants of Scandinavian ancestors, form many ethnic islands in Minnesota and the Dakotas. Cajuns, descendants of French-Canadians migrants dominate regions of swampy southern Louisiana. Spanish-Americans are numerous in much of northern New Mexico.