Regardless, I know you’re a fan of Albion’s Seed, but it needs to be noted that New England only has a population of around 14.5 million, wheras the Mid-Atlantic (using the narrow Census definition of NY, NJ, and PA), has a population of over 41 million.

I realize certain parts of the Mid-Atlantic, particularly portions of upstate New York, eastern Long Island and the Wyoming Valley of northeastern Pennsylvania, were settled by Yankees. Still, it’s likely the majority of the northeastern population, and perhaps even the majority of the white Northeastern population, come from non-Yankee cultural areas.

Thus, I’d be a bit nervous, if your thesis is the higher WORDSUM is in part due to Yankee forebears, equating the Northeast with New England.

yes, but ohio is a dual state. the northern 1/3 was settled from the northeast (case western reserve). the southern 2/3 from the south (the ‘butternuts’). southeast ohio is part of appalachia. the same tendency occurs in indiana and illinois, which have a ‘northern’ and ‘southern’ component.

2) Maryland, which in many ways was Southern (it fought on the side of the Union, but was a slave state–no idea about hookworm), also has very high white, non-poor, college-educated scores. And DC whites are off the charts (323!).

this is probably self-selection though. the DC suburbs and DC attract highly educated whites. i think some of this applies to the pacific zone.

3) Are there enough data to overlay income onto the WORDSUM data? Eligibility for food stamps (typically <200% of the official poverty rate) has a large effect.

i’ll look. the income data is not fine- grained. usually education has better sample sizes.

historically the northeast has had the highest concentration of Jews. so….

yes, but only since 1900 to a noticeable extent (the earlier german jewish wave was more dispersed, going as far the midwesten cities, and the sephards were marginal). the differences well predate the jewish migration wave, though some roman catholic scholars have argued that ~1950 secular jews ditched their white ethnic catholic political allies in the domain of culture, and aligned with liberal/secular protestants in the northeast (e.g., jews and liberal protestants are the biggest backers of family planning).

I think Kevin Phillips makes this claim in The Cousins’ Wars, but the actual picture seems to be more complicated.

thanks. phillips was relying on other older primary sources (david hackett fisher says the same). not surprised it’s more complicated.

Could there regional variations in common vocabulary usages that affect the wordsum scores?

probably. but i think they look for stuff you’d see on the SAT. immigrants do worse (see hispanics).

Would you kindly point me to more stuff on the topic? Best,

Albion’s Seed is a place to start.

#13, to my knowledge you are correct.

As I understand it, one selection event like that wouldn’t really be enough to have that big a genetic impact. Is that right?

R = S(heritability)

so it depends. but culturally the selection event might be strong enough. consider that 25% of s koreans are xtian, but 75% of american koreans are. that’s selection bias, + positive feedback loop of the dominance of the church in american korean culture.

Ellsworth Huntington believed that the initial selective process of choosing to cross the Atlantic (and surviving the journey) explained the economics and intellectual achievements of New England. As I understand it, one selection event like that wouldn’t really be enough to have that big a genetic impact. Is that right?

Not just Poland, but the entire Pale of Settlement as well. My Jewish ancestors came from different parts of the Pale, all then part of the Russian Empire, now in Moldova, Lithuania and Latvia, and IIRC, they were all listed as having come from Russia when they came through Ellis Island, though all were considered Jews, not whatevers back where they came from.

What I learned recently is that it was not only Jews who were scattered among different countries. Villages whose dominant or only language was Polish, Lithuanian, Belarussian and Ukrainian, as well as Yiddish, were all intermixed amongst each other, hither and yon, throughout much of what became the killing fields of WW2. The populations were defined by culture (and language) much more than borders, especially before WW1 but even up until the end of WW2. God knows the extent to which they were genetically distinct. (My source is not Snyder’s Bloodlands but another book, whose title and author I cannot recall, published about a year or two earlier. Not very authoritative I admit — sorry).

For my own part, I think the South vs. Appalachia is much ado about nothing, the narcissism of extremely small differences. The real distinctions: religious diversity and the substantial German element in the Border South are overlooked in dominant discourse, in favor of a less distinctive aspect of Appalachian history, namely Unionism, which some then postulate, on the basis of broad generalizations and outright misunderstandings, into a dichotomy between a fractious mountain culture vs. a hierarchical lowland culture. The problem with that, of course, is that Unionism was found in the Lowland South such as eastern NC, southern MS and East TX. Maybe the Upland/Border vs. Lowland/West Country distinctions had relevance in the colonial era and maybe in parts of the eastern seaboard, but by the 19th century and further west in TN, KY, MS, AL and TX, “upland” and “lowland” southerners had merged pretty seamlessly.

In any event, the two areas’ pathologies have a single set of explanations. There is no need to develop a new explanation, the old ones still hold valid, the South languishes under the ongoing pernicious effects of slavery, low-church Protestantism, lower class pathologies from the British isles, and environmental determinism.

The census map isn’t helpful in this regard as the two divisions of the Midwest have both Upland Southern and “Northern” Midwestern (Yankee-Scan.-Ger.) components.

On Germans’ regional differences, I’d concur with Razib’s application of Hackett-Fischer’s theory that subsequent arrivals and minorities conform to the original 4 dominant Anglo cultures. I’d add the example of 18th-century Swiss and German settlers and their descendants in Appalachia and the Border South, a perfect example Fisher ignores.

At this point it would be next to impossible to find individuals in Appalachia of entirely German descent, outside of a few Anabaptist strongholds and even here there has been intermarriage, but there is a substantial German element in the mix in WV, western VA and NC, and parts West settled by settlers from those areas. The German element has not lifted the Upland Southerner in terms of economic or intellectual performance beyond his more Anglo-Celtic lowland Southern compatriots. I’d also add that there is an often ignored lapsed Quaker element in this population, whose influence is also minimal.

There is some qualitative evidence to support the notion that 19th-century Upland Southerners had a higher standard of living than the lowland whites, but these disparities might have been a heightened as part of a rhetorical argument against the economic effects of slavery on free labor and the cultural influence of Africans on lowland whites. Sometime ago there was a conference, I’ll post the link in another post, about the distinction between Appalachia and the South. Some argued that the cultural differences where heightened for rhetorical purposes. Certainly, in terms of kinship, many Upland Southerners have ties to the lowland South, and Appalachia did contribute to the settlement of the Old Southwest.

In any event, in terms of quantitative data, there seems to be little difference between Upland and Lowland South, currently, in terms of poverty and health stats, and taking into account the effects of the Sunbelt migration, so the presence of German and Quaker ancestry doesn’t seem to have been a sufficiently important factor.

The differences are minor: different accents, more religious diversity, different way of curing hams, a more diverse cuisine, and slightly better, more diverse farming practices in the Upland South as opposed to the Lower South. There was also a historical tendency towards old fashioned Republicanism in some districts, in opposition to the old Solid South of the Democrats. But even this political difference has been eclipsed.

For example, I would expect that westerners would be more likely to identify the meaning of “arroyo” and people from the mid-atlantic to recognize that “run” means stream/creek. And, I don’t know where people come from that know what “hingle” means—when a garage mechanic used the term I had no idea what it referred to.

Chuck

I think Kevin Phillips makes this claim in The Cousins’ Wars, but the actual picture seems to be more complicated. One of the more distinctive features of Boston English — it’s non-rhoticism — was extremely uncommon in England during the initial period of settlement. (In fact, if you listen to recordings of British POWs during World War I, it’s striking how rhoticism was still widespread among soldiers — but not officers — from the Home Counties! Unfortunately, the recordings don’t seem to be online anymore.) It’s more likely that non-rhoticism with lengthening of the previous vowel was the result of English elite influence in the late 18th century. (Though this is contested.) See The Cambridge History of the English Language for details.

Several other things come to mind:

1) There are plenty of cold-weather, northern-ish states (e.g., Ohio) that do worse than MA (about half to two-thirds of the black-white gap).

2) Maryland, which in many ways was Southern (it fought on the side of the Union, but was a slave state–no idea about hookworm), also has very high white, non-poor, college-educated scores. And DC whites are off the charts (323!).

3) Are there enough data to overlay income onto the WORDSUM data? Eligibility for food stamps (typically <200% of the official poverty rate) has a large effect.