Are Irish Catholics as concentrated in the Northeast as Italian Americans?
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  Are Irish Catholics as concentrated in the Northeast as Italian Americans?
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Author Topic: Are Irish Catholics as concentrated in the Northeast as Italian Americans?  (Read 972 times)
King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
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« on: September 03, 2020, 06:45:57 PM »
« edited: September 03, 2020, 07:57:06 PM by King of Kensington »

Obviously Irish ancestry is more dispersed than Italian ancestry, but at least half of Americans of Irish ancestry are of Protestant background from the surveys I've seen (and few of the Protestants live in the Northeast).  But "Irish Americans" are basically Catholic, there's no real separate Irish Protestant identity separate from generic white Americans.  Are Catholic Irish Americans as concentrated in the Northeast as Italian Americans?

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TDAS04
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« Reply #1 on: September 03, 2020, 07:43:49 PM »

I don’t think so.  In the Midwest, Irish Catholics have dominated politics in such cities as Chicago and St. Paul, which are considerably less Italian than Northeastern cities.
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Tintrlvr
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« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2020, 11:03:53 AM »

The only plurality Irish ancestry counties in the US are in the Northeast (the furthest west is Lackawanna, PA and the furthest south is Cape May, NJ), except for interesting isolated exceptions in Butte-Silver Bow, MT and Loving, TX, which are both pretty demographically exceptional counties for a variety of reasons, but tend to be more suburban/exurban/rural rather than urban, not a huge surprise given that Irish-Americans mostly arrived a couple of generations before Italian-Americans.
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Sol
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« Reply #3 on: September 04, 2020, 04:39:56 PM »

The only plurality Irish ancestry counties in the US are in the Northeast (the furthest west is Lackawanna, PA and the furthest south is Cape May, NJ), except for interesting isolated exceptions in Butte-Silver Bow, MT and Loving, TX, which are both pretty demographically exceptional counties for a variety of reasons, but tend to be more suburban/exurban/rural rather than urban, not a huge surprise given that Irish-Americans mostly arrived a couple of generations before Italian-Americans.

I wouldn't characterize Butte as any of suburban/exurban/rural.
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King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #4 on: September 05, 2020, 12:06:56 AM »

My guess is no either.  Irish are two or three generations ahead of Italians in terms of the immigrant experience, plus they were already English speaking and moved faster into the British/Northwest European mainstream (and hence were more likely to convert to Protestantism).  Surnames like O'Toole and Flanagan don't stick out in say Iowa the way Esposito or Rossi do.

Of course from ancestry figures it's impossible to know whether one is Catholic or Protestant, or whether they're descended from Catholics who converted etc.
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King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #5 on: September 05, 2020, 07:28:06 PM »

Did some googling and found that 46% of Irish Catholics ca. 1980 lived in the Northeast (Italian Americans were 57% in the NE according to 1980 census).  Obviously the proportion for both has declined since.
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Tintrlvr
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #6 on: September 05, 2020, 07:38:22 PM »

The only plurality Irish ancestry counties in the US are in the Northeast (the furthest west is Lackawanna, PA and the furthest south is Cape May, NJ), except for interesting isolated exceptions in Butte-Silver Bow, MT and Loving, TX, which are both pretty demographically exceptional counties for a variety of reasons, but tend to be more suburban/exurban/rural rather than urban, not a huge surprise given that Irish-Americans mostly arrived a couple of generations before Italian-Americans.

I wouldn't characterize Butte as any of suburban/exurban/rural.

I realize that was an ambiguous sentence but meant the NE counties that are Irish ancestry plurality are mostly suburban/exurban/rural, not Butte/Loving
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Indy Texas
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« Reply #7 on: September 05, 2020, 07:50:59 PM »

There are a lot of Americans outside the Northeast with Irish surnames and ancestors who emigrated from non-Ulster Ireland, who are nonetheless not practicing Roman Catholicism, do not "look" particularly Irish, and do not maintain any sort of Irish or Irish-American customs beyond maybe joking that they're "Irish" on Saint Patrick's Day as an excuse to have a few extra drinks at a party.
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King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #8 on: September 06, 2020, 06:22:02 PM »

The only plurality Irish ancestry counties in the US are in the Northeast (the furthest west is Lackawanna, PA and the furthest south is Cape May, NJ), except for interesting isolated exceptions in Butte-Silver Bow, MT and Loving, TX, which are both pretty demographically exceptional counties for a variety of reasons, but tend to be more suburban/exurban/rural rather than urban, not a huge surprise given that Irish-Americans mostly arrived a couple of generations before Italian-Americans.

The biggest concentration is not surprisingly in the Boston area, the most "Irish" metro, particuarly the South Shore suburbs (aka the Irish Riviera). 

Philadelphia might be #2 in terms of the Irish feel - they're the largest ancestry group in the metro and some of the suburban counties are around 25% Irish ancestry. 
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King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #9 on: September 07, 2020, 07:09:15 PM »

Regional distribution:

Irish ancestry

Northeast  8,490,000  26%
Midwest  8,030,000  24%
South  10,600,000  32%
West  6,010,000  18%

Scotch-Irish ancestry

Northeast  361,000  12%
Midwest  508,000  17%
South  1,590,000  52%
West  601,000  20%

Only a small number of people identify as "Scotch-Irish" in the Census (many would presumably write "Irish" or just "American") but from what I've seen about half of Protestants of Irish ancestry live in the South so it's probably a fairly decent proxy measure for the "Protestant Irish" population.
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All Along The Watchtower
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« Reply #10 on: September 07, 2020, 09:21:15 PM »

Why would anyone take self-reported ancestry numbers with anything other than a massive grain of salt...?
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cinyc
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« Reply #11 on: September 10, 2020, 12:04:41 AM »

Why would anyone take self-reported ancestry numbers with anything other than a massive grain of salt...?

Do you have any other, better numbers?
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King of Kensington
Junior Chimp
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« Reply #12 on: September 10, 2020, 01:13:09 PM »

From the 1990s:

South:  Protestant 73%, Catholic 19%

Non-South:  Catholic 45%, Protestant 39%

Can't find anything beyond South/non-South but New England likely was as Catholic-dominated as South is Protestant-dominated.  

Though Massachusetts - the most Irish-Catholic state - has undergone a big shift to nonaffiliation since then.
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