American Jews and the ancestry question

[angus]

Milton Berle had a really good bit about this.  Any of you old enough to remember Uncle Miltie?  Before the Great War, they asked us what nationality we were, and we said German.  We're all German, they said.  Then, after the war started, we were suddenly Jewish.  But ma, aren't we German.  No, Milton, we're Jewish.  Anyone asks, we're not German, we're Jewish.  So, all of the sudden, we're not German any more, we're Jewish.  My grandparents suddenly aren't from Germany, they're from Jewelery.  (Ba da boom)  Or something like that.

Anyway, JimRTex is right.  Take a look at the long form:  they're not interested in ethno-religious identity.  You can be Jewish or Catholic or Zoroastrian, but they're more interested in the nation of origin of your ancestors.  Russia is a legit answer, as is Poland.  (Germany used to be, before the war.  FWIW, many prots and cathosics got the same advice.  When I was young it wasn't uncommon to hear people say, "If they ask you about your ancestry, say English."  If you're a Jew in 1918, and one parent is from Russia and the other is from Germany, you say "Jewish" in conversation, "Russian" on official forms.  If you're a Catholic in 1918 and one parent is from Germany and the other is from Italy, you say Italian.  If both parents are from Germany, you say England.  As a result, probably German has become undercounted for some time.)

[angus]

I had no idea there were so many choices. 

I always assumed that John Kerry's ancestors were probably from Ireland.  If they were from czechoslovakia, they could choose Bohemian, Moravian, Czech, Czechoslovakian, or Slovak, according to the long list jimrtex posted.  They might also pick Austrian or German.  If they did pick German, they have all these to choose from:  German, West German, East German, German from Russia, Pennsylvania German, Germanic, and French German. 

If you think that's impressive, look at all the choices under Hispanic.  (Why do they need separate listings for Gallego and Galician?!)

I always choose U.S. or American on those things, if given the option.  If not, I check "other" and write in "U.S.A."  None of my grandparents were born in the USA, but both my parents were, and I was, and I don't feel any connection to or affiliation with any of those other countries. 

[angus]

For Spanish Speakers, even a fairly neutral classification of "category" was confusing.

Well it is confusing.  Not just for spanish-speakers either.  Note that MENA and Algerian are separate boxes.  I know it reads "check all that apply" but do you really need to have Egypt/Algeria separate from others of hamito-semitic stock?  

Hispanic is particularly confusing and should probably go away.  Two people born a mile apart, one in Verin, Spain and one in Chaves, Portugal, would not likely consider themselves of a different race.  One would identify as a Galician, the other as portuguese, ethnically, but if they move to the USA, they would be expected to both check White and the one from Verin also to check Hispanic then write in Galego.

Or, let's consider two people from the mountains eastern Peru, both of 100% Aymara stock.  Suppose one was raised wealthy parents with a Spanish surname and sent to catholic school and taught spanish by nuns and communicates always in spanish.  He eats paella, ceviche, and tapas, and drinks rioja.  The other is from a poor village and doesn't even hear a word of spanish until he's 15 years old.  He has an Aymara name and Aymara is his native language.  He eats cuy, potatoes, and corn, and he drinks chicha.  They both immigrate to the united states in their 20s and happen to live here when the 2010 census long form arrives in their mailboxes.  As immigrants, they don't want to break any rules so they're trying hard to fill the form out correctly.  After scratching their heads and googling AIAN, they finally figure out that this probably best describes them.  The wealthy one also checks Hispanic since he thinks in Spanish, whereas the the impoverished one only thinks in Aymara.  Yet, as much as the construct can be argued to exist, they are of the same race.

[angus]

If you think that's impressive, look at all the choices under Hispanic.  (Why do they need separate listings for Gallego and Galician?!)

Gallego is Hispanic
Galician is not.

Galician is considered to be either a dialect of Portuguese, or a separate language. Brazilian and Purtuguese are not Hispanic.

"Gallego is Hispanic.  Galician is not."  Not sure what you're getting at here.  Gallego is simply the Spanish word for what English people call Galician.  (Galego, with one L, is their own word for it.)  Thus, Gallego, Galego, and Galician are the same thing.  I'm aware that there's an argument over whether it is a dialect of Portuguese or its own language, but that's not the point.  Galicia is in Spain, is it not?  Do we exclude galicians, catalonians, valencians, and asturians because they're not castellano?  That's just as confusing. 

[angus]

As a result, probably German has become undercounted for some time.

I'm almost certain that English ancestry is far more undercounted than German ancestry. 

maybe.  There was a time when English names were shunned.  People named their babies Emily and George and such in profusion till about 1776, then it became very unfashionable, kinda like it became unfashionable to name babies Adolf in Germany starting in about 1945.  I knew about that, but I didn't know that they went so far as to disclaim English ancestry.  They may have, though.  Or, the anglo-American population may simply identify as USA or American.  I guess you could look at those claiming English ancestry before and after the American label was introduced.  It can't have been that long ago.  2000, maybe?

[angus]

Even with massive 19th century German immigration, English would have had a massive head start (and something like 60% of whites in 1790 were of English descent I believe). 

They could still have been outdone by German, Italian, and Irish.  Consider this:  the US population in 1790 was 3929214.  That is less than one-fifth of the number of immigrants who entered the USA in the 1800s, and most of those were not from England.  That is also less than one-third of the number of immigrants in the US in the year 1900.  According to the census bureau, in the year 1900, the total number of foreign-born residents in the US was 10341276.  The number generally rises as you play it forward.  In the decade from 1991 to 2000, eleven million immigrants entered, the majority of whom were from Mexico.  As of 2014, the rankings, by country, for the number of foreign born are:

Mexico
China
India
Phillipines
Viet Nam

UK is not in the top five.  It is currently at 13th.  Also, between 1850 and 1930, about 5 million Germans migrated to the United States.  During that same period, about 3 million British and about 4.5 million Irish entered America.  About 2.4 million Italians entered the US during that period.

If one assumes, as you say, that 60% of whites were of UK origin, and subtracting 3/5 persons per 1 million negroes (or about 600 thousand) from the 3 million, then about 1.4 million were of UK origin in 1790.  1.4 million + 3 million is 4.4 million.  That's still less than the 4.5 million Irish and less than the five million who were German.  And we're not even counting the post-1900 immigration, largely from the Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America.