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

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I don't doubt a large share of LA whites are Jewish, but I doubt a majority.

Yeah, there are Jews in basically all the white west side neighborhoods, but not many will have a Jewish majority. Places like Pacific Palisades have Jews, but they aren't particularly Jewish.

And there are still lots of whites in the fringe SFV, in places like Chatsworth. I don't think those places are particularly Jewish.

I really meant to say more like half, not majority. There’s no way of knowing since LA city isn’t a neatly defined geopolitical entity like NYC. But it figures that if the county is 5.7% Jewish, and most of the very Jewish areas are in LA city, then 13-14% is within the realm of possibility. Jews are also not just limited to the Westside or SFV. One of the densest Jewish concentrations is the area between Koreatown and Beverly Hills, south of WeHo. My office (when I was commuting) is around 3rd and La Brea, and on Rosh Hashanah last year, more than half of the people walking by were dressed in either Orthodox clothing and/or had yarmulkes on. My bosses (who aren’t Jewish) live in that neighborhood as well, and they can confirm that there’s a large Orthodox population and it certainly shows in the voting results of their precinct. As a side note, I once took a Lyft ride to my sister’s BuzzFeed office just up the street; my driver was from Israel (and played Hebrew music during the entire ride) and he shouted something in Hebrew to a bunch of Jewish kids playing outside on the residential streets. You would also think the Hollywood Hills and Los Feliz, where there’s wealth associated with the entertainment and media industries, is quite Jewish.

It’s true that west of the 405 gets more WASPy, although Russian is the most common ancestry in Brentwood and Iran being by far the most common foreign place of birth (Russian and Iranian being proxies for “Jewish”). The Palisades are even more WASPy, but it’s still a very affluent community with many Hollywood types. Chatsworth has its own chabad and synagogue, and it’s adjacent to areas that are known to be rather Jewish—West Hills, Porter Ranch, Granada Hills, and Northridge. The latter three though are more racially diverse, so they’re not “exclusively” Jewish communities.

I also suspect that a good amount of LA Jews claim German ancestry, since we have a comparatively smaller Eastern European population. And since there are 1.5 million (have to double check that) people in Greater NYC who claim “German” ancestry but seemingly very few “regular” German Catholics or Protestants, I think it’s safe to assume that a good amount of LA Jews are identified as “German” in the Census, unless every single Russian, Pole, Hungarian, etc. is Jewish.

[Docere]

From the Pew religious landscape study

Los Angeles MSA

White Protestant 12%
White Catholic 5%
Jewish 3%
White no religion 11%

[Docere]

New York MSA

White Protestant 9%
White Catholic 19%
Jewish 8%
White no religion 12%

[Crawford]

Orange County, CA, in particular, seems to have a large white Protestant population. Lots of mainline Protestant denominations and Christian megachurches, lots of people with roots in the country's midsection.

[Docere]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

LA? SF? Vegas?

None of these. Pretty sure your standard English/American, German and Irish ancestry responses top the list for whites in these areas.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Docere

I would agree with this. NYC is probably the only city where a majority of whites are not of NW European ancestry. I think around 50% of whites are Italian American or Jewish.

Non-Hispanic white. I think Miami is the place where the most people who self-identify as white are not of NW European ancestry.

[destroycreate]

I'm late to the party clearly, but anecdotally or at least culturally I would say Honolulu, El Paso, Miami, LA, and NYC are the least if we're talking WASPY-like Leave-It-To-Beaver WASPY.

[destroycreate]

Originally Posted by Docere

I would agree with this. NYC is probably the only city where a majority of whites are not of NW European ancestry. I think around 50% of whites are Italian American or Jewish.

Also, most Italian-Americans in NYC are Sicilian, which if we're honest is as far from stereotypical white culture you can get (gold necklaces, machismo, mama n' pasta, comparatively dark features, loud/animated). Go ask anywhere in Northern or Mid Italy and they'd agree since their mentality is very different. It's arguably more influenced by Middle Eastern/North African culture than it is anything else.

[Quixote]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Orange County, CA, in particular, seems to have a large white Protestant population. Lots of mainline Protestant denominations and Christian megachurches, lots of people with roots in the country's midsection.

Orange County is Arizona by the Pacific Ocean, only with a lot more Asians and Middle Easterners (Iranians and Arabs). I would say Huntington Beach, Yorba Linda, and San Clemente are the main places that still live up to that old-school reputation of devout conservatism and piety.

Still though, south OC has its share of chabads/synagogues. I think Laguna Woods (a retirement community) has a good amount of Jews. It's 5% Russian, 4.1% Polish, 2.4% Iranian (although OC Iranians tend to be Muslim), 1.8% Hungarian, and 1.1% Romanian.

[brickell]

Originally Posted by Docere

New York MSA

White Protestant 9%
White Catholic 19%
Jewish 8%
White no religion 12%

Do you have the dataset that shows racial/ethnic breakdown?
Do Miami next.

[Docere]

Approximations, based on ethnic breakdowns provided.

https://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/

[Docere]

Miami

NHW Protestant and other Christian 11%
NHW Catholic 9%
Jewish 9%
NHW no religion N/A

[Shawn]

Originally Posted by destroycreate

Also, most Italian-Americans in NYC are Sicilian, which if we're honest is as far from stereotypical white culture you can get (gold necklaces, machismo, mama n' pasta, comparatively dark features, loud/animated). Go ask anywhere in Northern or Mid Italy and they'd agree since their mentality is very different. It's arguably more influenced by Middle Eastern/North African culture than it is anything else.

This is certainly true of Mass and RI Italians, who are mostly Sicilian. I didn't meet a Northern Italian until I started working in Japan, with some Milanese and Genoese clients and coworkers. Plus a guy from Naples, who seemed much more like the guys I went to high school with. Naples is traditionally considered Southern, no? But maybe more in a Virginia / NC way, whereas Sicily is Deep South Alabama?

[urban_encounter]

[QUOTE=Docere;9119386Remarkably Boston looks more like San Francisco or Seattle in it's % declaring no religion than other "northern ethnic" cities like New York, Philadelphia or Chicago.[/QUOTE]

That won’t end well.

[Crawford]

I don't think most NYC Italians are Sicilian. The vast majority are southern Italian, to be sure, but there are six other regions in southern Italy. Tons of people have roots in Abruzzo, Apulia, Campania and Calabria.

Sicily is likely the most common province of origin, though, at least with the later postwar migration. But Campania (Naples) and Calabria seem almost as common.

[Docere]

But let’s get back to Brooklyn, or more to the point, New Jersey, being that my trip to Brooklyn was sandwiched between visits to Long Island and New Jersey. Which brings me to Soprano Country—Bloomfield, Clifton, and North Caldwell. I saw it all. But what really stuck with me is how ubiquitous Italian American life is in the area (not just New Jersey or Long Island, mind you; I took a jaunt down Brooklyn’s Court Street and Avenue U, too, and saw plenty of pasticcerie and salumerie, not to mention other subtle, or not so subtle, signs of Italian American existence).

What struck me is the way a small town, like, say, Nutley, New Jersey, seems to have become (or always was?) a kind of Little Italy all its own. That when Italian Americans did their part in the great white flight to the suburbs in the decades following the Second World War, those in the New York area appeared to have taken a good part of the commerce and culture of their urban neighborhoods with them. (I realize I’m making some broad generalizations here.)

This phenomenon did not happen in California, even though the state had a number of Italian American urban neighborhoods that disappeared or drastically changed when Italian Americans moved out of the cities. Why does Italian American identity remain intact more recognizably in Eastern suburbs?

There are two straightforward answers: demographics and geography. California’s 1.5 million Italian Americans just don’t compare to the nearly 4.5 million in New York and New Jersey. Plus, New York’s relative nearness to Italy arguably allows for commerce and culture to move back and forth more easily.

However, there’s a more interesting possibility, one that requires much more careful study than is called for in a simple blog post: that is, the role of the (often-overlooked) second major wave of Italian immigration to the U.S. after the Second World War. Sure, California received its share of post-WW II immigrants (and they’re still coming today—Silicon Valley is full of Italians with H1-B visas), but not to the same degree as on the East Coast. Further—and yes, I’m being a little coy here—but I’ll take a wild guess that the influx of new immigrants in the post-war decades reinvigorated Italian American communities in greater New York in multiple ways: from customs around food, to the use of Italian and dialects, to all sorts of vernacular displays of culture.

Let’s get specific, or maybe I’m just turning to the mundane. For example, I was surprised at how much Neapolitan I heard walking around Nutley and at the ways the local Nutley supermarket, a Shop-Rite, caters to an Italian American clientele.

http://bloggers.iitaly.org/bloggers/...nian-goes-east

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Quixote

I really meant to say more like half, not majority. There’s no way of knowing since LA city isn’t a neatly defined geopolitical entity like NYC. But it figures that if the county is 5.7% Jewish, and most of the very Jewish areas are in LA city, then 13-14% is within the realm of possibility.

Is L.A. city as Jewish as Manhattan? Manhattan is around 15% Jewish or 30% of the NHW population there. I don't think half of LA whites are Jewish.

There may be a few wealthy west side neighborhoods where the Jewish share is similar to UES/UWS of Manhattan.

I'm not even sure Beverly Hills is majority-Jewish. Very few places in the US are majority-Jewish.

[Crawford]

I doubt Beverly Hills is 50%+ Jewish. It attracts Hollywood wealth, in general, not just Jewish wealth.

Is there a large, secular Jewish geography in North America that is still clearly majority Jewish? Not just census tracts or small villages, but an area of at least, say 40-50k people? In the past, sure, but I'm not so sure these days given intermarriage and wealth segregation trumping ethnic segregation. Maybe Livingston, NJ area or parts of Westchester around Armonk/Rye Brook, or LI around Jericho/Plainview? I'm not confident Scarsdale makes the cut.

It seems that majority Jewish secular area with outstanding schools tend to attract families of all backgrounds that want outstanding schools, especially Asians. And those with less notable schools become Orthodox, over time.

[SIGSEGV]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I doubt Beverly Hills is 50%+ Jewish. It attracts Hollywood wealth, in general, not just Jewish wealth.

Is there a large, secular Jewish geography in North America that is still clearly majority Jewish? Not just census tracts or small villages, but an area of at least, say 40-50k people? In the past, sure, but I'm not so sure these days given intermarriage and wealth segregation trumping ethnic segregation. Maybe Livingston, NJ area or parts of Westchester around Armonk/Rye Brook, or LI around Jericho/Plainview? I'm not confident Scarsdale makes the cut.

It seems that majority Jewish secular area with outstanding schools tend to attract families of all backgrounds that want outstanding schools, especially Asians. And those with less notable schools become Orthodox, over time.

Skokie is down from majority-Jewish to around 30% (and the Asian population is up to 25%, largely Filipino I think).

[Docere]

Originally Posted by Crawford

I doubt Beverly Hills is 50%+ Jewish. It attracts Hollywood wealth, in general, not just Jewish wealth.

Is there a large, secular Jewish geography in North America that is still clearly majority Jewish? Not just census tracts or small villages, but an area of at least, say 40-50k people? In the past, sure, but I'm not so sure these days given intermarriage and wealth segregation trumping ethnic segregation. Maybe Livingston, NJ area or parts of Westchester around Armonk/Rye Brook, or LI around Jericho/Plainview? I'm not confident Scarsdale makes the cut.

It seems that majority Jewish secular area with outstanding schools tend to attract families of all backgrounds that want outstanding schools, especially Asians. And those with less notable schools become Orthodox, over time.

Two Montreal suburbs do: the wealthy village of Hampstead (population 7000, 75%) and the larger economically mixed Cote St. Luc (population of 30,000, 62%).

https://www.federationcja.org/en/jew.../demographics/