American Notes: Ethnicity

Once you let the Wisians in, the neighborhood goes to pot. That might be one conclusion of a study of polling data on ethnic attitudes sponsored by the American Jewish Committee. About 1,500 Americans were asked to rank the social standing of 58 groups, from Italians to Chinese. "Wisians" were added as a fictitious entry to help gauge the responses.

While 61% of the respondents said they didn't know enough about Wisians to rank them, the rest expressed no qualms about giving them a relatively low rating: 4.12 on a 9-point social scale. "Many people ranked them low because they thought they were strange sounding," says Tom Smith, director of the General Social Survey, adding that some of those questioned in the surveys may have assumed that Wisians hailed from a small Slavic nation in eastern Europe.

The Wisians' mixed reviews were an exception to a trend toward greater tolerance among Americans. Blacks (4.17) and Spanish Americans (4.79) are still rated well below, say, the British (6.46), but their standings have improved by as much as 41% since 1964, the survey's first year. "Younger generations have learned to judge people not by race and ethnicity," Smith says, "but as individuals." Unless those individuals just happen to be Wisian.