Soon I’ll wrap this series up – but first, we need to take a look at Swiss-Americans, and their reverence for the Mason-Dixon line.
The Swiss aren’t particularly common in America, but they’re notably sparse in the South. Apparently, whatever brought those with Swiss ancestry to the United States didn’t involve a love of sweet tea and kudzu.
Link to full Swiss tableau: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/supercensus/SwissAmericans?:embed=y&:display_count=no
Today we look past the general term Hispanic to see where America’s Hispanics truly come from. Calling someone “Hispanic” is like calling them “European.” It speaks somewhat to their ancestral heritage, but encompasses a *very* broad swath of very different folks.
Yet as we see when we map the United States by most populous Hispanic sub-type for each zip code, we find the Hispanic population of America is, overwhelmingly, Mexican.
To arrive at this took a very tedious formula. I’m sure there’s some better way to do it, but the only way I knew was with an IF, AND, THEN, ELSE statement. Basically, for each sub-type, I made a formula that said, “If there are more of this group than that group, and that group, and that group, and that group (etc.) then this group is the biggest group in the zip code.” If the group wasn’t the largest, the code looked at the next one. And so forth, and so on. Here is the code for just one of the ethnic groups I looked at:
if [Guatemalan]>[- Cuban] and [Guatemalan]>[- Dominican (Dominican Republic)] and [Guatemalan]>[- Mexican] and [Guatemalan]>[- Other Hispanic or Latino: – Spaniard] and [Guatemalan]>[- Other Hispanic or Latino: – Spanish] and [Guatemalan]>[- Other Hispanic or Latino: – Spanish American] and [Guatemalan]>[- Puerto Rican] and [Guatemalan]>[Argentinean] and [Guatemalan]>[Bolivian] and [Guatemalan]>[Chilean] and [Guatemalan]>[Colombian] and [Guatemalan]>[Costa Rican] and [Guatemalan]>[Ecuadorian] and [Guatemalan]>[Honduran] and [Guatemalan]>[Nicaraguan] and [Guatemalan]>[Other Central American] and [Guatemalan]>[Other South American] and [Guatemalan]>[Panamanian] and [Guatemalan]>[Paraguayan] and [Guatemalan]>[Peruvian] and [Guatemalan]>[Salvadoran] and [Guatemalan]>[Uruguayan] and [Guatemalan]>[Venezuelan] then “Guatemalan”
Here’s a link to the Tableau tool: https://public.tableausoftware.com/profile/jared5561#!/vizhome/themexicans/HispanicAmerica
If you want to find Swedes in America, head to Minnesota. While Swedes can be found across the plains states, they are concentrated in the Minnesota region.
Link to full tool: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/supercensus/SwedishAmericans?:embed=y&:display_count=no
The Portuguese favor two locations in the United States – Massachusetts, and Southern California. Outside of those small enclaves, they’re nearly nonexistent, creating a vast empty expanse when mapped.
I would imagine someone with some knowledge of Portuguese history could shed some light on why their descendents are found in those areas – the map, as it stands, is just a tantalizing clue in need of further explanation.
Link to full Tableau tool:
Some ethnic groups spread out to fill every nook and cranny in the United States – Germans, I’m looking at you! Others, like the Norwegians, stick to one region and don’t stray far. For the Norwegians, the northern stretches of the Great Plains clearly holds a special attraction.
Link to Tableau tool: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/supercensus/NorwegianAmericans?:embed=y&:display_count=no
Today I take a brief break from ethnicity to look at the percentage of residents in American zip codes who were born outside of the United States. This isn’t the same as the percentage of non-citizens, mind you, which I looked at separately, and which I’ve turned in to the Reveille. One of the major themes of my series on ethnic/racial heritage is that the United States is an immigrant nation – the primary difference between each immigrant group is order of arrival.
The map of foreign-born residents is the simplest way to see where the newest immigrants have settled – where the newest addition to our mixing bowl can be found. Some may not be citizens, and there is no way at the moment to tell whether they’ll be able to become legal citizens of the United States. That debate is a big part of why I became interested in this data. However, legal or not, they’re here – and now we can see visually *where* they are. Originally, ancestry and ethnic mix seemed like a good, quick way to show that the United States is a hodge-podge of post-Revolution immigrants. Instead, I found the dispersal of different ancestries compelling. Many maps later, here we are.
Share with anyone you know living in the United States, but born outside her borders. They can see how many of their neighbors share their non-native born status.
A link to my Tableau visualization, which allows for more exploration of the data and the map: https://public.tableausoftware.com/profile/jared5561#!/vizhome/supercensus/ForeignBorn
It being Thanksgiving, I think of Native Americans, among other things. It’s a carryover from my childhood, when the whole Pilgrims & Indians mythos was treated as gospel truth.
Looking at their distribution, you can see Native American concentrations in modern tribal areas — Oklahoma, in particular, is easy to pick out. Other reservations and concentrations of Native Americans can be seen in the southwest, and parts of the northern Great Plains.
Native American demographics weren’t included in the census dataset I used as my primary source. They’re included in files that look at race, rather than ancestry, and it’s a little weird to me that the two aren’t kept together. Race is about more than just race – it’s also about where we came from, and how we got where we are today. These maps help show both where we are now, and to some extent, I think they speak to how we got here, as well.
Link to map in Tableau: https://public.tableausoftware.com/views/supercensus/NativeAmericans?:embed=y&:display_count=no
In my continuing series looking at demographics of America, I now turn to Czech-Americans. Using Census data, I’ve mapped where people reporting Czech ancestry live in the United States.
The map shows a strong distribution in the mid-west and Texas, and is set so that it tops out at 5% of the population reporting Czech ancestry. I’ll be continuing this series – so stay tuned for new maps and a new look at the polyglot nature of America!
Here’s the Tableau map, if you’d like to zoom in and see smaller geographic areas:
https://public.tableausoftware.com/profile/jared5561#!/vizhome/supercensus/Czech
Jared W. Kendall 