Maybe you just don't notice it. There are also a lot more Irish-Americans here. People identify strongly with it because it used to be something that was discriminated against. Many people still eat food from 'the old country' and follow cultural traditions, even if they don't recognize them as such. I am from California and got a bit of culture shock going to Boston as there is a 'UK' food aisle in the grocery store, and many pubs that play Irish music and serve Irish breakfast, which are well populated with non-tourists who've probably never been to Ireland in their life, yet think people playing fiddles in bars is 'normal'.
People aren't forced to assimilate in America. Go to the midwest and watch people eat perogi and lutefisk (EW) and go to polka dances without shame. Where do you think the Minnesotan accent came from? German was the second most widely spoken language in the United States and you could go to school in German until WWI and II, when people felt they had to cover up their German heritage.
I get a bug up my ass about it because I honestly prefer it when white people in this country recognize that they too have something 'different' about them, rather than thinking of themselves as 'normal' and 'American' and thinking of us brown and black people as upsetting the order of things by not conforming, whether by having a different cuisine or religion or cultural tradition. The bringing together of all these things is what makes America, not their obliteration.
Edit: I know you're probably like 'why won't this woman shut up' but here is a really fascinating book on Irish American culture and their acceptance into American society/white privilege. http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
How is that not what they're talking about? Race is a social construct, and for a long time, the Irish and Italians (among others) weren't considered white enough.
Catholics have only been white since the 60s. Read this. http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251
I think you may not have read the article I posted.
>We tested all these ideas. In our 2010 study, we not only found a very strong relationship between levels of infectious disease and IQ, but controlling for the effects of education, national wealth, temperature, and distance from sub-Saharan Africa, infectious disease emerged as the best predictor of the bunch.
A taxonomic distiction? A squirrel is most basically defined as an animal that is the product of two squirrels. What is a black person? What is a white person? Variations within a species DO NOT necessitate a different taxonomic classification. One side of my family all wear large hats because we all have big wide heads. This information gives you NO idea about how to racially categorize us based on skull size and shape. Aliens would NOT speciate homo sapien sapien because there would have no good criteria to do so. You're suggesting that a biologist would go to the park and come back with 100 different squirrel species because some are large, some small, and with a huge variety of fur patterns.
"White" as a race, or "Caucasian" has throughout history been a fluid societal construct, with no basis in biology. This is clear from an even cursory examination of historical discourse on race (E.g., it was commonly 'known' that the Irish were not white 300 years ago, I'm sure you, back then, would point to their aberrational red hair as evidence of speciation). (http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251)
You must recognize that you're arguing from a point which society left behind 50 years ago. Bearing that in mind, the onus is on you to cite your statistics. Considering the quality of your previous citation, I'm not going to consider any unsubstantiated stats you bring up.
I read a good chunk of your ridiculous link, I challenge you to listen critically to the the youtube link of Stuart Hall's lecture.
How the Irish Became White: http://www.amazon.com/Irish-Became-White-Noel-Ignatiev/dp/0415918251