PROPER AMERICANS :

Rethinking Who They Are Census Shows People Are Declining to Report Their Heritage (Michael Powell, May 25, 2002, Washington Post)

As new immigrants arrive with strong social, cultural and linguistic ties to their homelands, older immigrant generations intermarry, move and fade into the tapestry of the United States. Census officials have charted the decline in ancestry reporting across the board -- in border states with lots of immigrants and in midwestern states with few immigrants.

It would appear, in other words, that choosing an identity has become a quintessentially American exercise.

"The United States is a nation of immigrants," said Jeffrey Passel, a demographer with the Urban Institute. "The census becomes a way of cherry-picking identity."

The U.S. Census Bureau has released data for 33 states from the 2000 Census long form in which one in six households were asked the questions on ancestry. The biggest decline in named ancestries has come in the nation's the oldest immigrant stocks. Nine million fewer people identify themselves as being of German ancestry, while those identifying themselves as English and Irish fell by 5 million each.

There was a brief moment in the 1970s when it became fashionable for second- and third-generation European immigrants to reassert their heritage, whether Italian, Irish or Polish. This was especially true of the immigrant-rich port cities, from New York, Boston and Baltimore to San Francisco.

That moment has all but passed. The old-line ethnic neighborhoods are falling away, as fourth- and fifth-generation immigrants intermarry, and move. [...]

For those whose forefathers arrived a century ago, ethnicity is no longer central to their self-identification.

Gig Young, proprietor of that sweet-smelling Caribbean bakery on Utica Avenue, runs down the possibilities. Jamaican (though he left 37 years ago), West Indian, African and Chinese ancestry and . . . an American. He's not sure what he answered on the census form.

"I'm a bit of everything. So I guess I'm a proper American."

Surely a hundred years isn't too long to wait before our Latino, Islamic, Asian, and other immigrants become simply "American". Posted by Orrin Judd at May 25, 2002 10:10 AM