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introduction
introduction
Pictured above is New York's Little Italy. A high concentration of Italians live and work in this area making it an ethnic neighborhood.
Among the many ethnicities around the world, there are places where these distinct ethnicities come together to live in the same region or country-- notably the United States (U.S.). The U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2010, identified over 10 different identities within the country, though the distinction between ethnicity and race is unclear at times. For example, “African American” is an ethnicity while “black” is a race, but in the 2010 Census, these two terms were combined into one category. The ethnicity, African American, refers to those whose cultural heritage can be traced to Africa. On the other hand, “black” is a term that simply refers to dark skin-- this includes African Americans, but can also include people who can trace their cultural heritage to regions such as Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Islands.
distribution
distribution
These diverse ethnicities within the U.S. are rarely dispersed evenly throughout a region; they tend to form clusters in neighborhoods within the same city and state. In these clusters, ethnic groups tend to outnumber any other ethnicity or race.
Generally, ethnicities tend to gather in the same neighborhood or city, such as San Francisco’s Chinatown (Asian Americans), New York’s Harlem (African Americans), and Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood (Hispanics). Other examples of such ethnic clusters can be found in many communities within cities and states. For example, in Detroit or Chicago, there is a large portion of African Americans in comparison to the rest of the cities in that state. In Detroit, African Americans take up 85% of the population, but are only about 7% of the population in the rest of Michigan. As for Chicago, it has less than a fourth of Illinois’ total population but over half the state’s African American population. Additionally, states like California or Texas have a large Hispanic population. In California, the Hispanic population takes up half of the entire population in the city of Los Angeles. Hispanics also take up over half the total population in cities like El Paso and San Antonio, both of which are near the Mexican border.
urban scale distributions
urban scale distributions
Furthermore, within these cities, different ethnicities also gather at an urban scale. Urban areas became popular due to the rapid rise of steel, automotive, and ancillary industries that came with steel; these growing industries sharply increased the demand for labor in those areas, and became a pull factor for immigrants or ethnic groups looking for jobs. On the other hand, there were also push factors that drove immigrants out of their own country and into the U.S. in search of a better life, such as the Great Famine in Ireland. For example, Southern and Eastern European ethnic groups also immigrated to the U.S. and gathered in neighborhoods near newly rising industries and urban areas, such as cities like Detroit where auto production was expanding in the early 1900s. These neighborhoods were named after the predominant ethnicity that resided in it, such as Greektown and Poletown. However, as descendants of European immigrants moved out of the original ethnic neighborhoods, immigration of African Americans and Hispanics filled up those areas like Detroit and Chicago. Currently, a majority of African Americans and Hispanics can be found in urban or metropolitan areas, typically in the Southeast and Southwest (respectively).
These pictures show San Francisco's Chinatown (top) and Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood (bottom).
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