Re: CHAT: US ancestry [was Re: FWD [OT but interesting] Arctic

Quoting Lars Henrik Mathiesen <thorinn@...>:

> > Date:         Sun, 18 Aug 2002 23:46:25 -0400
> > From: John Cowan <jcowan@...>
> >
> > There probably aren't enough people who list themselves as both
> > African-American and of Danish ancestry (say) to show up as even
> > a blip.  Both are a matter of self-labeling.
>
> Remember that the US Virgin Islands used to be Danish, and had a
> significant slave population. They were run as a colony by expat Danes
> for about seventy years after emancipation, as well. So there's bound
> to be a number of families with both African and Danish descent.
>
> Now, if you'd said Swedish there...
Well, for a while the Swedes did colonize most of what is now
Delaware, and Delaware has always had a large African population.
(During the Civil War, the only reason it didn't secede was
that Lincoln militarily occupied it, and so it did its best
to be generally obnoxious to the Union government.) But that was
350 years ago, and, according to the US Census website, very few
people remain in that state who claim Swedish ancestry, so you're
probably right that if there are any such people, they would
probably not be recognized as such on a Census form.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier
Dept. of Linguistics  "Nihil magis praestandum est quam ne pecorum ritu
University of Chicago sequamur antecedentium gregem, pergentes non qua
1010 E. 59th Street   eundum est, sed qua itur." -- Seneca
Chicago, IL 60637

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