by David Macadam @ The Oligarch Kings
American Ethnic Geography
Valpariso University
The map above is from Valpariso University and shows the spread across America and Canada of the more populous of the various ethnic groups that now make up America. The base colour, pink, represents those whose majority ethnic background is English, Yellow is German and so on. A veritable melting pot indeed, or maybe more like an ethnic mosaic. .
Absolutely fascinating. And, for a Brit who was taught that America was settled by the English, with assistance from a smattering of Scots and Irish, who then took the continent from the Dutch and the Spanish, the sight of that vast enormous tract of Germans sweeping across the northern states is almost horrific! I mean when the hell did that happen? We should have been told!
So naturally, to a blog like this, a question occurs, do we see this range of ethnicity represented in the administration? Perhaps we might expect it to come out in those who become President? Well, if that is so you will be disappointed.
Even those who hold that Obama is a sign of a move forward for racial politics forget (or choose to forget) that Obama’s Kenyan father was not a representative of the established African-American stock who had been brought over to the States in the seventeenth and eighteenth century. He is not from a family of those enslaved Africans brought to toil in southern plantations. His people did not fight against repression and intolerance. Rather than Obama being one of their own, African-Americans were passed over by Obama’s elevation not vindicated.
Indeed the backgrounds of the Presidents rarely if ever represent the wide spread of ethnic backgrounds that make up the real Americans that one is likely to meet walking down Main Street. Certainly it bears little resemblance to the map above. Below is a chart I have created to show when the earliest ancestor of each President first came to America…
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