American Jews and the ancestry question

[jimrtex]

Unlike in Canada or Australia, the US Census Bureau doesn't count Jewish ancestry.  I'm guessing a plurality write Russian*, with good numbers writing Polish as well.  Good numbers for German, Austrian, Hungarian and Romanian as well (not to mention Israeli, Iranian or Syrian for those whose families didn't immigrate to the US from Europe).

A good number may "defy" it and write Jewish anyway or leave it blank.

* Most pre-WWI "Russian" Jews came from Ukraine or Belarus and few from Russia proper of course.

The ACS ancestry question is a fill in the blank, with some suggestions made. The instructions in a different booklet do say to not specify a religious group. The Census Bureau codes religious groups as Other.

The Census Bureau does not report many ancestries. Some smaller groups such as Lilliputians may not be reported for statistical reasons and confidentiality. Ancestries associated with ethnic and racial groups are not shown in the tables (eg Mexican and Chinese). Persons may include these as ancestries, and the examples include Cambodian and Korean, but they are also included as sub-class of race.

So a person might report that they are White and Asian:Chinese and then for the Ancestry report Irish and Chinese. They will be shown in tables as reporting multiple ancestries, but only counted in the tables as Irish and Other ancestry. In a state like California bazillions of people will be listed as Other.

In comparing the ACS to the 2000 Census, they have switched the wording:

In the 2000 census, they had one, two, or no ancestries.
In the ACS they have one, multiple, or no ancestries. The instructions say to only report two ancestries, but the wording was clearly changed, and I suspect that some have reported more than two.

[jimrtex]

Milton Berle had a really good bit about this.  Any of you old enough to remember Uncle Miltie?  Before the Great War, they asked us what nationality we were, and we said German.  We're all German, they said.  Then, after the war started, we were suddenly Jewish.  But ma, aren't we German.  No, Milton, we're Jewish.  Anyone asks, we're not German, we're Jewish.  So, all of the sudden, we're not German any more, we're Jewish.  My grandparents suddenly aren't from Germany, they're from Jewelery.  (Ba da boom)  Or something like that.

Anyway, JimRTex is right.  Take a look at the long form:  they're not interested in ethno-religious identity.  You can be Jewish or Catholic or Zoroastrian, but they're more interested in the nation of origin of your ancestors.  Russia is a legit answer, as is Poland.  (Germany used to be, before the war.  FWIW, many prots and cathosics got the same advice.  When I was young it wasn't uncommon to hear people say, "If they ask you about your ancestry, say English."  If you're a Jew in 1918, and one parent is from Russia and the other is from Germany, you say "Jewish" in conversation, "Russian" on official forms.  If you're a Catholic in 1918 and one parent is from Germany and the other is from Italy, you say Italian.  If both parents are from Germany, you say England.  As a result, probably German has become undercounted for some time.)

Though 'Pennsylvania Dutch' and 'Chaldean' are valid ancestry responses, and Yiddish is a valid language.

American Community Survey and Puerto Rico Community Survey
2015 Code List (PDF)

Irish Scotch
Scotch Irish

Have separate codes.

Aggregated Codes (XLSX)

Flemish, Prussian, and Sicilian are not aggregated with Belgian, German, and Italian, though Walloon, Bavarian, and Neapolitan are.

48 of the individual states are aggregated with American. Hawaii and Texas are not.

[jimrtex]

Take a look at the long form:  they're not interested in ethno-religious identity.  You can be Jewish or Catholic or Zoroastrian, but they're more interested in the nation of origin of your ancestors.  Russia is a legit answer, as is Poland.

True, though it gets tricky with border changes, ethnic groups and the like.

For example, those descended from Germans from Russia certainly write "German" in most cases, and that's likely the case of descendants of ethnic Germans from Romania or Hungary as well.  Those descended from ethnic Germans in the Sudetenland would likely write "Austrian" I suspect, but someone with Czech roots would write "Czech."

With Jews, I guess it could go either way.  Were John Kerry's paternal ancestors - German-speaking Jews from what is now Czechoslovakia - "Austrian" or "Czech"?  

Those with roots in Galicia (Austrian Poland) could be either Austrian or Polish.

Jews in the Kingdom of Hungary - even the least assimilated Jewish communities like those in Subcarpathian Ruthenia (which went from Hungary to Czechoslovakia to Ukraine) - did have a Hungarian identity to some degree - so I suspect those with roots outside today's Hungary would report Hungarian among their ancestries.  

Most Ashkenazis of Eastern European descent I know would likely say their ancestors came from Russia or Poland.  Few will specifically say Ukraine or Belarus and I think very few write "Ukrainian" on the census.  Poland of course became an independent country after WWI, and Congress Poland was somewhat independent of the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire, even though that became blurred over time.

The ancestry question was first asked in 1980.

When the place of birth and place of parent's birth was asked, it was asked by the enumerator. The Census would change policy from time to time. In one census, there were Poles (from Austria, Russian, and Germany), and the next Census there were no Poles, but a lot more Austrians, Russians, and Germans. My Alsatian ancestors became German on US Census forms after the Huns invaded in 1873.

I suspect that one reason for including the ancestry question was that more and more people were being reported as born in the USA with parents born in the USA.

In the Census test that I took, the racial question included sub-"racial" categories, so I could denote under "White" that I was also Alsatian, Swedish, etc. This might indicate that the Ancestry question may be on the way out.

The Census Bureau appears to be going toward the practice of asking the question as:

Is the person (check all that apply):

[ ] White
German [ ], English [ ]. other _____
[ ] Black
African American [ ], Haitian [ ], Nigerian [ ], other ______
[ ] Hispanic
Mexican [ ], Mexican American [ ], Salvadoran [ ], other ______
[ ] Asian
Chinese [ ], Korean [ ], Asian Indian [ ], other ______
[ ] AIAN
Print name of tribe
[ ] NHOPI
[ ] Native Hawaiian [ ], Guamanian [ ], Samoan [ ], other _____
[ ] MENA
[ ] Egyptian [ ], Algerian [ ], Yemeni [ ]
[ ] Other
Specify _____

For Spanish Speakers, even a fairly neutral classification of "category" was confusing.

[jimrtex]

I had no idea there were so many choices. 

I always assumed that John Kerry's ancestors were probably from Ireland. 

He got a lot of mileage in his political career in Massachusetts on that misperception.

Jews in Bohemia-Moravia mostly spoke German, not Czech, so I would imagine that unless the emigrated in 1938-1939 they identified as Austrian.

His maternal background was definitely Brahmin. It may have helped to be seen as Irish by the time he was running for office.

John Kerry's paternal grandparents converted to Catholicism in 1901 when living in Moedling, near Vienna. They were baptized at the same time that John Kerry's uncle was. They emigrated to the USA in 1905, living first in Chicago, and then somewhat ironically moving to Brookline. John Kerry's father was born in 1915, after they were clearly established in the US. He may not have known anything about the family background. The family was reasonably prosperous, and John Kerry's father was educated at Phillips Academy, Yale, and Harvard Law.

John Kerry's grandparents (according to Wikipedia) were born in Austria and and Hungary so the Moravian or Bohemian connection was more remote. John Kerry's grandmother's siblings were killed in concentration camps. John Kerry said he was unaware of this until 2003. It is conceivable that his grandmother's family may have considered her to be apostate, or that she may have cut links from them as she and her husband were forging a new identity in the US.

[jimrtex]

If you think that's impressive, look at all the choices under Hispanic.  (Why do they need separate listings for Gallego and Galician?!)

Gallego is Hispanic
Galician is not.

Galician is considered to be either a dialect of Portuguese, or a separate language. Brazilian and Purtuguese are not Hispanic.

[jimrtex]

Frederick Kerry's birthplace is in Moravia.

Moravian Jews remained more loyal to German, while the Czech language made more inroads among Bohemian Jews.

According to this article Kerry's Grandfather Left Judaism Behind in Europe, Fritz Kohn was born in Horni Benesov (now in the Czech Republic), but at the time Bennisch, Austria. It appears that Horni Benesov is in eastern Bohemia, but more importantly in Sudetanland. Given its German name, it appears to be a Germanic town, and with a Jewish population of about two dozen.

In any case, Fritz's father died when he was three, and his mother and her three children moved to Moedling, near Vienna where she had relatives. Fritz grew up in Austria, and served in the military. In 1896, a younger brother converted to Catholicism, and changed his surname to Kerry, in hopes of advancement in the military.

[jimrtex]

If you think that's impressive, look at all the choices under Hispanic.  (Why do they need separate listings for Gallego and Galician?!)

Gallego is Hispanic
Galician is not.

Galician is considered to be either a dialect of Portuguese, or a separate language. Brazilian and Purtuguese are not Hispanic.

"Gallego is Hispanic.  Galician is not."  Not sure what you're getting at here.  Gallego is simply the Spanish word for what English people call Galician.  (Galego, with one L, is their own word for it.)  Thus, Gallego, Galego, and Galician are the same thing.  I'm aware that there's an argument over whether it is a dialect of Portuguese or its own language, but that's not the point.  Galicia is in Spain, is it not?  Do we exclude galicians, catalonians, valencians, and asturians because they're not castellano?  That's just as confusing. 

I found some code books going back to 1980 when the Ancestry question was first asked. It appears that they were still working on how to convert write-in entries into codes (this might have been an on the-fly operations as non-expected responses were interpreted). By 1990, the code book for ancestries had been redone, with new code numbers assigned (001 is now Alsatian, while for 1980, 001 was Austrian. There have been minimal changes in ancestry coding since 1990. They have been much more significant for places of birth. Someone born in Kosovo may now indicate that, but would still have to specify Albanian, Serb, Yugoslavian, or some other ancestry.

In 1980 Gallego (Galician) was coded as 204, and included in a Spaniard group that also included individual codes for Catalonian, Basque, and Balearic Islander. The parentheses indicates alternative entries that were coded together (eg Dutch (Hollander, Netherlander) are all coded as 014. This practice is still true, though Dutch is now 021.

By 1990 Gallego was coded as 206, and Galician was no longer considered an alternative spelling. Along with Gallego, Catalonian, and Balearic Islander; Andalusian, Asturian, Castillean, Valencian, and Canary Islander were now distinct codes, but also aggregated with Spaniard. Basque was no longer Spaniard, and is not considered Hispanic.

Galician, Silesian, and Bukovina are now separate codes, but are listed among more generic entries. Silesian and Bukovina are listed after Eastern European. To me, this suggests that the Census Bureau recognizes that as a valid entry, but is uncertain how to group persons (e.g. should Bukovina be grouped with Ukrainian, Romanian, or German?).

Galician is under European which indicates that it might refer to either Spanish Galicia, or pre-WWI Austrian Galicia. Even if it refers to Austrian Galicia, it might be either Ukrainian or Polish. There may be some responses of Galician that the Census Bureau is able to associate with Spain such as ("Spanish Galicia", "Galicia (Span)", "Galicia (La Coruna)") but "Galician" is no longer included in the code book, since Gallego is unambiguous.

In any case Andorran, Cypriot, Greek Cypriote, Turkish Cypriote, Lapp, Liechtensteiner, Manx, Monegasque, Azerbaijani, Ruthenian, Cossack, Finno Ugrian, Mordovian, Voytak, Gruziia, Kalmyk,
North Caucasian, North Caucasian Turkic, Ossetian, Soviet Turkic, Bashkir, Chuvash, Gagauz, Mesknetian, Tuvinian, Yakut, Soviet Union, Tatar, Soviet Central Asia, Windish, Bukovina, Silesian,
Galician, San Andres, Providencia, Surinam, Inuit, Aryan, and Greenlander are all collapsed into a single Other category in PUMS data.

[jimrtex]

The 1990 US Census did accept responses of Amish, Mennonite, and Hutterite coding them as Pennsylvania German, and Hugenot, coding them as French.