Southern European Americans


Southern European Americans are Americans of Southern European ancestry. Southern European American people can usually trace back full or partial heritage to Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Yugoslavia and other nations in Mediterranean Europe. Along with Eastern European Americans and Northwestern European Americans, the category is a subgroup of European Americans.

Background

Southern European Americans have been considered as a distinct cultural and pan-ethnic group in the United States. The group can be broken down further into nation-based subgroups, such as Greek Americans and Italian Americans.

History

Between 1900 and implementation of the 1965 Immigration Act, most immigration into the United States was from Southern and Eastern Europe. Historian Gary Gerstle has noted the lack of protest from Southern European Americans to the Immigration Act of 1924, which effectively ended any further immigration from their ancestral origins. Despite the passing of the Act, opposition at the time, recorded in the Congressional Record, had sought to demonstrate how Southern European immigration had been falling:
Proponents of this measure maintain there are too many southern Europeans in America. Yet for the two years of the present bill's existence the net result between immigration to and emigration from this country indicates there are 4,619 less Greeks here, 5,089 less Portuguese, 13,343 less Spaniards, while the Italians shows a slight increase of 2,207, and Yugoslavians have remained about stationary.

Geographer Donald W. Meinig has proposed that Southern Europeans have at times been politically and culturally oriented in opposition with the Protestant order, or WASP establishment, in the US. Despite this, societal privileges afforded to white Americans gradually became available to them. Respresentative of this change, the US Census Bureau found that Americans of Southern European heritage who were born between 1956 and 1965, had practically converged with British Americans in education statistics, and were even slightly outperforming Americans of solely British ancestry in the completion of bachelor's degrees.
In the in the US, Southern European Americans moved in significant numbers to places likes Lansing, Michigan, where there was a large General Motors plant. In 1973, Governor of Illinois Dan Walker signed Executive Order Number 9-, with a special provision for funding for both Eastern and Southern European Americans, although it was never fully implemented.

Culture

Family has been described as central to the culture of southern European Americans. This family-based value system may be a contributing factor to Southern European Americans on average co-habiting with parents for longer than other groups, before purchasing a home in the US.

Academic research

In 1989, little research had been conducted regarding the nutritional intake of Americans with heritage from Southern Europe, versus other European Americans.
A 2006 PLOS Genetics study showed that 7 out of 11 tested Southern European Americans, who reported themselves as only of Southern European descent, showed significantly closer clustering of base pairs, when using a genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism, in comparison to individuals who disclosed a mixed Southern and Northern European heritage.
Sociolinguist Walt Wolfram has researched a similarity in pronunciation of American English between African Americans and Americans descended from South Europe living in similar regions. A separate study published in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, noted the same parallel distinction. However, the Linguistic Society of America has noted that Southern European American English has shown signs of transitioning into a rhotic dialect.

Discrimination

Americans of Southern European heritage have been subjected to discrimation in the United States. This has included the perception of not meeting a certain criteria of whiteness.
The slurs wop and dago has been directed at the group historically.