How “Ethnic” Were White Ethnic Neighborhoods? European Ancestry Groups in the Twentieth-Century USA

To what extent did Southern, Central, and Eastern (SCE) European groups maintain distinctive residential patterns vis-à-vis Northern and Western European groups in the late twentieth-century USA? Classical assimilation and melting pot interpretations of these groups’ historical experiences imply that, by the century’s end, SCE European groups’ ethnic neighborhoods would have vanished. However, pluralistic or “beyond the melting pot” interpretations of these experiences suggest that such neighborhoods were durable, partly because of SCE European groups’ ethnic homogeneity preferences, that is, a desire to reside near co-ethnics. The present study’s 1970 and 1930–1980 data analyses indicate that Italians, Poles, Greeks, and Russian ancestry Jews had unique residential patterns net of their socioeconomic status and of US-born persons’ expressed desires for social distance from these groups. The study concludes that SCE European groups’ distinctive residential patterns may have been due partly to these groups’ ethnic homogeneity preferences, although alternative explanations are not completely dismissed.