What is the least "WASP" city in the United States?

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Docere

You can look up religion at the county level here:

https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/

Pew might be a bit low for Detroit.

White Catholic (% of total population)

Macomb 30%
Oakland 18%
Wayne 15%

DuPage 27%
Lake (IL) 18%
Cook 16%

That sounds about right to me. Macomb is heavily Italian and Polish and will be more Catholic.

Also, Middle Easterners are White per Census, and they won't be Catholic, they're Orthodox Christian or Muslim. This affects all three counties, but especially the Wayne County numbers. Wayne County's white population is very heavily Arab.

Though I agree that Metro Detroit will be slightly less Catholic too bc it developed later and received a large Appalachian population. Wayne County, especially, has a bunch of Appalachian-descended suburbs.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Also, Middle Easterners are White per Census, and they won't be Catholic, they're Orthodox Christian or Muslim. This affects all three counties, but especially the Wayne County numbers. Wayne County's white population is very heavily Arab.

Lots of Arab Christians are Catholic, most notably Lebanese Marionites and the Christian Iraqi population (Chaldeans).

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by eschaton

Lots of Arab Christians are Catholic, most notably Lebanese Marionites and the Christian Iraqi population (Chaldeans).

Those are Eastern Rite Catholics, though. Functionally Orthodox. Would they be grouped with Roman Catholics?

I grew up in a heavily Chaldean area, and they had Chaldean churches, with Orthodox-style rites. They didn't attend the Roman Catholic churches.

[Steely Dan]

^ The 23 smaller Eastern Rite Churches of the Catholic Church are in full communion with the Latin Church (BY FAR the largest Catholic church, accounting for 98% of Catholics globally) under the broader umbrella of the "The Catholic Church".

Thus, Eastern Rite Catholics are as "catholic" as anyone else, even if some of their liturgical practices are a little different from those of the Latin Church.

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Docere

Whites: Evangelical Protestant

Atlanta 45%
Houston 39%
Seattle 27%
Phoenix 26%
Detroit 24%
St. Louis 24%
Los Angeles 21%
Baltimore 20%
Chicago 19%
San Diego 17%
Pittsburgh 14%
Miami 13%
Washington DC 13%
Philadelphia 12%
Providence 10%
NYC 7%
San Francisco 7%
Boston 6%

Whites: Mainline Protestant

San Diego 29%
Pittsburgh 27%
Baltimore 22%
Washington DC 22%
Philadelphia 21%
Houston 19%
St. Louis 19%
Detroit 18%
Atlanta 17%
Boston 16%
Miami 15%
Phoenix 15%
Chicago 14%
Los Angeles 14%
Providence 13%
NYC 11%
Seattle 11%
San Francisco 10%


Whites: Catholic

Providence 46%
Chicago 38%
NYC 36%
Pittsburgh 35%
Philadelphia 34%
Boston 31%
St. Louis 30%
Miami 24%
Baltimore 20%
Detroit 19%
Phoenix 19%
Washington DC 19%
San Francisco 18%
Los Angeles 15%
San Diego 15%
Seattle 15%
Houston 14%
Atlanta 12%

Whites: Jewish (by religion)

Miami 24%
NYC 14%
Los Angeles 8%
Washington DC 7%
San Francisco 6%
Baltimore 5%
Boston 5%
Chicago 4%
Philadelphia 4%
Detroit 3%
San Diego 3%
Houston 2%
Phoenix 2%
Seattle 2%
Atlanta 1%
Pittsburgh 1%
Providence 1%
St. Louis 1%

Whites: Unaffiliated

San Francisco 47%
Seattle 36%
Boston 34%
Los Angeles 32%
San Diego 30%
Washington DC 29%
Baltimore 26%
Detroit 26%
NYC 24%
Philadelphia 24%
Phoenix 24%
Providence 24%
St. Louis 21%
Atlanta 20%
Chicago 20%
Miami 19%
Houston 18%
Pittsburgh 16%

When I see these stats it reminds me I'm firmly esconced exactly where I belong: in the NE Corridor.

[Crawford]

Providence looks to be the least Jewish part of the NE Corridor. It's a pretty big outlier.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Providence looks to be the least Jewish part of the NE Corridor. It's a pretty big outlier.

Hard to have Jews when everyone's Italian.

[Docere]

DC whites seem to pretty match the profile of affluent whites nationally. Which isn't surprising given that it's filled with transplants, with no particular region of origin dominating.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Docere

DC whites seem to pretty match the profile of affluent whites nationally. Which isn't surprising given that it's filled with transplants, with no particular region of origin dominating.

Yeah, DC's native white population has more-or-less been gentrified out of the metro entirely now. They originally decamped into PG County, but black suburbanization pushed them into Anne Arundel and South Maryland.

[Crawford]

You do sometimes hear the old-school white DC accent, though. It sounds similar to the Baltimore accent. "Warshington". We have a boomer work colleague who grew up in NW DC and she definitely has the accent.

[Docere]

NYC metro (via PRRI):

White Catholics

Putnam 38%
Ocean 36%
Monmouth 35%
Staten Island 34%
Suffolk 33%
Morris 31%
Sussex 30%
Dutchess 29%
Hunterdon 29%
Nassau 29%
Somerset 29%
Bergen 28%
Fairfield 26%
Orange 26%
Middlesex 25%
Rockland 24%
Westchester 24%
Passaic 19%
Union 19%
Hudson 16%
Essex 13%
Queens 10%
Manhattan 9%
Brooklyn 7%
Bronx 4%


White Protestants

Hunterdon 31%
Sussex 31%
Dutchess 24%
Ocean 22%
Morris 21%
Orange 17%
Suffolk 15%
Putnam 15%
Fairfield 14%
Monmouth 14%
Somerset 14%
Bergen 13%
Middlesex 11%
Nassau 9%
Rockland 9%
Manhattan 8%
Passaic 8%
Staten Island 8%
Westchester 8%
Union 7%
Essex 6%
Hudson 6%
Brooklyn 4%
Queens 4%
Bronx 3%

[Crawford]

So among the wealthier, more populated NY metro counties, Morris appears to be WASPiest.

Western Morris has a horse-country, quasi rural feel, fairly wealthy, eastern Morris is more railroad suburbs, mostly rather desirable. Morristown is the county's urban center and is multiethnic.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

You can look up religion at the county level here:

https://www.prri.org/research/2020-census-of-american-religion/

Pew might be a bit low for Detroit.

White Catholic (% of total population)

Macomb 30%
Oakland 18%
Wayne 15%

DuPage 27%
Lake (IL) 18%
Cook 16%

Neat symmetry, but using % of total population makes the comparison not terribly apples to apples considering the wildly different % of NHW in these counties.

2020 NHW %:

Macomb: 75.5%
Oakland: 69.0%
Wayne: 47.8%

DuPage: 63.4%
Lake (IL): 57.2%
Cook: 40.7%

[Docere]

Yeah, among Detroit area counties, only Macomb really stands out for being particularly Catholic.

[Docere]

White evangelical Protestant

Jasper 37%
Newton 37%
Grundy 26%
Porter 23%
Kendall 17%
DeKalb 16%
Kenosha 16%
Lake IN 15%
Kane 14%
McHenry 14%
Will 11%
DuPage 9%
Lake IL 9%
Cook 5%

White mainline Protestant

Newton 26%
Jasper 24%
DeKalb 23%
Porter 23%
Grundy 22%
McHenry 22%
Kenosha 21%
Kendall 18%
Kane 16%
Will 16%
Lake IL 13%
DuPage 12%
Lake IN 10%
Cook 7%

White Catholic

DuPage 27%
McHenry 27%
Will 26%
Kenosha 25%
Kendall 23%
Grundy 19%
DeKalb 18%
Kane 18%
Lake IL 18%
Porter 17%
Cook 16%
Lake IN 16%
Jasper 10%
Newton 9%

[muertecaza]

Originally Posted by Shawn

It's not perfect, but a basic sniff test is: did the Protestant sect/branch have any presence before the Great Awakening? If yes, it's Mainline. If no, it's probably Evangelical.

Mormons . . . at least the white ones, tend to be really English. They fit the WAS part, but not the P (per how WASPs define "Protestant").

Originally Posted by Docere

Yup. Utah is the most "English" state I believe. Not only did the Mormons originate among Yankees from back east, but there was a lot of direct immigration to Utah from Britain as well.

https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/b/BRITISH_IMMIGRANTS.shtml

Yeah, I come from Mormons on both sides, and being Mormon they've done all the family history stuff. Very English, with a strong minority of Scandinavian (Swedish/Danish), as there were a few prominent early Scandinavian Mormon converts that really leaned into polygamy.

Mormons were too fringe and as you say not considered 'Protestant' enough to be WASPs, although you might say Mormons are sort of the WASPs of the 'Mormon Corridor,' especially Arizona-Utah-Idaho. In my life in Arizona at least Mormons have only ever been 5-10% of the population, but have an outsized impact on political and cultural life similar to the traditional WASPs nationally.

[Docere]

Utah is also the most Danish state I believe.

[Quixote]

Notice the small Catholic/Protestant differential in Manhattan. You have an overrepresentation of English, Scottish, and British ancestry relative to the metro area. It’s still surprising given how dominant Italian and Irish are throughout the CSA.

[Docere]

Los Angeles County

White evangelical Protestant 5%
White mainline Protestant 6%
White Catholic 5%
Jewish (religion and ethnic) 5.5%

Orange County

White evangelical Protestant 11%
White mainline Protestant 11%
White Catholic 8%
Jewish (religion and ethnic) 2.5%

[Quixote]

So OC is basically as white Catholic as Manhattan. Go figure.