Talk:Anglo-Celtic Australian

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[edit] Merge

Should this not be merged with Anglo-Celtic as a subcategory? Enzedbrit 03:51, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I concur. It could be slotted in easily.139.230.245.20 03:59, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

No, and why would you want to? Grant | Talk 12:00, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] erroneous

i'm going to change this paragraph:

"Unlike the American term Scots-Irish, "Anglo-Celtic Australian" does not carry any specific religious connotations. Sectarian divisions played much less of a role in Australia than the USA, perhaps due to the convict, as opposed to pilgrim roots of early settlement. An "Anglo-Celtic Australian" is equally likely to be Catholic, Protestant or Atheist."

While the first and last sentences are correct, the middle part plays down alot of important history without a source. Sectarian divisions were EXTREMELY important in Australian history, as many of the convicts were Irish. Many of these were convicted for rebelling against the English. There is no source for the article. Instead I've changed it to:

"Unlike the American term Scots-Irish, "Anglo-Celtic Australian" does not carry any specific religious connotations. An "Anglo-Celtic Australian" is equally likely to be Catholic, Protestant or Atheist." This is because the term "is of recent coinage and only started to have meaning after the sectarian conflicts between Irish Catholics and British Protestants lost salience - perhaps partly in the face of large scale non-British immigration, which produced another outgroup of “New Australians”."

With a source for the quote. IMO the "Anglo-Saxon" page should be deleted. 150.203.223.155 05:22, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Is this what they really call them?

If so, seems like a sort of strange name.--Filll 19:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

  • Yes, it is somewhat odd. Anglo-Celtic Australians once viewed themselves as simply "Australians". However, the introduction of multiculturalism and the resultant emphasis on ethnicity over nationality has led to an absurd situation where "Australians" now must be defined in ethnic terms. ZwickauDeluxe 17:06, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Skip"

I am aware of Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, but I could swear the use of "skip" as a term for Anglo-Celtic Australians originated with Skip the cook on Acropolis Now. Am I completely wrong? Thor Rudebeck (talk) 22:36, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ridiculous

According to ABS stats, 80 per cent of the Australian population speaks a language other than English at home. You have to therefore wonder about stats that say 85 or 90 per cent of the the population is Anglo-Celtic. There are two assumptions I'm making here: a) that only a tiny handful of the Anglo-Celtic population would actually speak Celtic languages at home. b) that many families of non-Anglo heritage are likely to speak English at home (Malaysians, Singaporeans, Maori etc). I'm reluctant to guess what percentage of the population is actually Anglo-Celtic as the "Australian" ancestry is as ambiguous as the "American" ancestry category in the US census. If you just take the English, Irish and Scottish, the the proportion is around 50 per cent. 203.4.189.121 03:52, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Umm, which ABS stats say "80 per cent of the Australian population speaks a language other than English at home"? That has never been the case in Australian history. The proportion of NESB people is higher now than ever before but nowhere near that high. Grant | Talk 04:38, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Oops, talk about ridiculous. Yes, that should be 80 per cent of the Australian population speaks ONLY English at home (the stats are at the ABS's labrynthine website). Notwithstanding that silly error, I maintain my position: a conservative estimate would have the NESB population at 15 per cent if you were to measure it only by language spoken at home (about 4.8 per cent are "not stated"). But we know that the number of people of non-British heritage who speak English only is also very high. Most estimates I've heard (and they vary) for the proportion of non-Anglo Australian are between 20 to 25 per cent NESB, which makes that 90 per cent figure look as dodgy as my original 80 per cent gaff.

211.30.67.244 09:29, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have now revised that figure for Anglo-Celts in the text to "at least 75%" which is the figure for "Australians" + "English" + "Irish" ancestries claimed in the 2001 Census. The figures claimed for "Scottish", "Welsh" etc are so small as to be insignificant.
Personally I found it odd that the ABS will only allow people to claim two ancestries, when so many people claim three or more different ethnicities. Grant | Talk 12:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
A combination of "Australian", "English", "Irish" and "Scottish" (four of the ten most common Australian ancestries) equals approx. 82.9% of the population. ZwickauDeluxe 20:47, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I get 80.05% for those (15.54 million/2001 pop of 19.413 million). They don't provide an exact figure for "Welsh", which was 150-499,999 people. Even if Welsh was 499,999 (16.04 million Anglo Celts), that is 82.6%. Whereas if there were 150,000 Welsh we don't even get 81%. I think the current figure of 80% is reasonable. Grant | Talk 01:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] White Australia POV

Anglo Celtic covers people with British and Irish ancestors who ticked the correct box on the census form. A broader definition can also include other parts of the United Kingdom, Scots, Welsh etc. However, these ancestries are claimed by only a tiny minority of the Australian population. The ABS survey says this about British and Irish (Anglo-Celt) ancestry:

"From the beginning of the colonial period until after the Second World War, people from the United Kingdom and Ireland made up a large majority of people coming to Australia. They continue to make up a substantial proportion of immigrants (for example 10% of those arriving between 1986 and 2001 came from England, the second largest group after New Zealanders). Therefore, many Australian-born people can trace their origins to these countries. In 1986, 8.2 million people (57% of the population) reported at least one British or Irish ancestry. Despite continued immigration from the United Kingdom and Ireland, in 2001 the total number stating a British or Irish ancestry decreased to 7.7 million, or 44% of the population. However, different trends were observed for the two ancestry groups.[1]"

This is quite clear - the proportion of the Australian population who claimed Anglo-Celtic ancestry in the last census was 44%. This combined ethnic grouping is no longer the majority. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to a diverse and multicultural Australia.

I will give this a day or so for comments, then I'm updating the article (and Anglo-Celtic) to accurately reflect the ABS figures. Paxse 07:08, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

A few years ago I had a conversation with a woman who was a recent immigrant. She asked what nationality I was. When I said "Australian", she said "yes, so am I, but what nationality are you?" She had no conception of an Australian-ness other than citizenship, and would have been flummoxed by the Census responses, if she heard about them. Anyway, when given as an ancestry/ethnicity, "Australian" means "Anglo-Celtic", because most people don't make a distinction between the two. In fact, I doubt if most people have even heard the term Anglo-Celtic. But it's no exaggeration to say that 80% of the population are Anglo-Celtic. It's a truism. Grant | Talk 18:21, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
G'day Grant howzitgoin? Mate, I'm from Sydney while you're from WA - how can we ever agree on anything :D
Still, let's give it a go. We're talking about Ancestry here, not Nationality. The census doesn't contain 'Anglo-Celtic' as an answer (Wot the hell does that mean!) but British, Irish, etc are all possible answers - just not as common as they used to be :->
Oh, and the interesting thing about truisms if you read down the article carefully is that: "Often the word is used to disguise the fact that a proposition is really just a half-truth or an opinion, especially in rhetoric." C'mon, let's put some facts and sources in this article - not opinions. Paxse 18:27, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
You're right that the census doesn't have "Anglo-Celtic" as such, but the term does mean an "Australian" of the majority ethnic grouping, i.e. someone of predominantly "British" &/ "Irish" descent/culture. It seems you don't accept that "Australian", given as an ancestry in the census means "Anglo-Celtic". Nevertheless, it is a term that has been around for a long time (please trust me on this) to describe the majority ethnic grouping in Australia. Since I have studied immigration history a bit, I can agree that the proportion of Anglo-Celts has declined significantly, but only in the sense that it has gone from over 90% of the population in 1945 to just over 80% now. There would not be many countries where the majority ethnic group has declined by 10%, relative to the rest of the population, in that time frame. If any. But it looks like we may need more references to satisfy you on these points. Grant | Talk 16:46, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

"White Australia" POV? Paxse, please dispense with the politically correct nonsense. It's akin to claiming a "Viet" or "Kinh" POV exists simply because they comprise the majority ethnic group in Vietnam. The reality is that the majority of Australians still trace their ancestral origins to to the British Isles. Australia was, after all, founded and build by British and Irish settlers. In terms of ethnic and cultural composition, Sydney is largely a demographic aberration compared to the rest of Australia due to its large Asian population. ZwickauDeluxe 09:44, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] British and/or Irish

The usage "British and/or Irish" is jarring and does not make for a good encyclopaedic article. The terminology seems to have been introduced by an editor with a grudge against the term "British Isles". That particular term is a geographic label that is well suited to the current article, embodying as it does, all the countries of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I suggest we re-introduce it. 86.27.191.225 (talk) 17:44, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, nice to hide behind an anonymous tag when name-calling. I made the change, but I have no grudge against the term "British Isles". I do find that the term "British Isles" is not used accurately in most articles, and where I find it to be so, I change it. There is a minority of mischievous editors that seem to delight in using the term where-ever possible - many times inaccurately. I removed the term "British Isles" from this page because the term "British and/or Irish" is used in the opening of the "Usage" paragraph (not penned by me), and agrees with the article Anglo-Celtic. If you actually took the time to research the topic rather than name-calling and conclusion-jumping, and read the statistics produced by the Australian government, you would see that they also describe Anglo-Celtic in terms of "British and/or Irish". (I'm probably a bit sensitive still to the recent unjustified knee-jerk attack (see my talk page), so please excuse me, but I find your comments offensive and trolling.) Bardcom (talk) 22:04, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Anonymous - and you are who, precisely? I came upon your work here after having read the comments about you at the British Isles article, which seem, by and large to be accurate. I stand by the comment that "British and/or Irish" is jarring. In fact, it's plain bad writing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.27.191.225 (talk) 22:38, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've got an login for start, so it's easy to see what edits I've made. You on the other hand are just an IP address for Virgin. You *could* be anybody, and I can't check to see what your edit history is, whether you like starting arguments, have a history of trolling, etc. The accusation of my systematic removal of the "British Isles" from wikipedia has now been shown to be a baseless accusation, which has largely been implicitly retracted - although an explicit retraction would be nice, and an apology would be miraculous (although due). Still, leopards, spots, change, can't....
You point about the phrase being jarring ... actually I agree. It doesn't read well. But I didn't create that phrase, although I am guilty of replicating it - partly because my earlier choice of phrase - which I think was better - was reverted by Waggers as part of the knee-jerk reaction to the baseless accusation. The phrase "British Isles" is not accurate though, because it also include other crown dependencies which are not recognized as part of "Anglo-Celtic". And I didn't make that up either... Bardcom (talk) 23:26, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

Do you have a suggestion to replace British and/or Irish?. I'll read the article in more detail, but British Isles may be relevant in some cases. Silas Stoat (talk) 10:59, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

My only suggestion would be to phrase it a little better - perhaps something like "from Britain and Ireland". Bardcom (talk) 11:18, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[Moved from my Talk Page]

[edit] Anglo-Celtic Australian statistics

Hi Bardcom. The 17.6 million (or 85%) figure of the number of "Anglo-Celtic Australians" could not have been derived from the cited website, or for that matter from the Australian Bureau of Statistics at all. Persons can nominate up to two ancestries, so if you used those stats you could necessarily be double-counting English-Irish for example. Furthermore a large number of respondants simply identified themselves as "Australian", and it is impossible to garner any more ancestral information from this figure, although one would expect the majority would be Anglo-Celtic. In other articles on different ethnic groups we use other statistics like country of birth. Kransky (talk) 13:24, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I've reverted your latest revert because your replacement statistics were incorrect as you stated that you counted people born in the UK (and ignored Ireland?). The article also discusses ancestry, not just place of birth.
They are not incorrect; I just merely did not include Irish born since they are already in Irish Australian. This article is the most logical place to put the number of British born. Would replicating the number of Irish born in this article make you happy?
eh? This article is called Anglo-Celtic Australian, not Anglo Australian. Bardcom (talk) 15:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
But I agree that the current number is in all probability equally as incorrect. I agree with the assertion that you can't infer ancestry from the people who don't identify their origins, and I agree that it's probable that the original article editor either inferred ancestry from those that stated "Australian", or double-counted those that nominated two ancestries. I calculate from the opening paragraph and from the statsReference for Stats that the correct number (adding up the stats in the opening paragraph) should be around 9,707,519. What do you think? Bardcom (talk) 14:00, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
I have no idea how you arrived at the figure of 9,707,519 (which implies less than half the Australian people have an ancestral tie to the UK or Ireland). We are in agreement that we cannot determine how many part British or Irish exist amongst te 6.7 million persons who declared their ancestry as Australian. If you cannot find reliable data, it is best not to include it! Kransky (talk) 14:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Apologies for earlier tone - I misread one of your comments. For both our benefit, here are the stats:
At the 2006 Census of Australia website where citizens could self-select their ancestry, 6,283,647 (31.6%) Australians selected English ancestry, 1,803,740 (9.1%) selected Irish ancestry, 1,501,204 (7.6%) selected Scottish, 113,242 (0.7%) selected Welsh, and 5,686 (0.3%) selected British ancestry (respondants could nominate up to two ancestries).
Also, the census reports that For those who reported Australian ancestry, the second ancestries reported were mainly English (17% of the total Australian ancestry group), Scottish (4%) and Irish (3%), so this would probably additionally calculate an extra 3,375,401 English, 294,872 Scottish, and 221,154 Irish. Adding up all of these numbers gives a total of 13,598,946 - 68.5%. What do you think? Bardcom (talk) 15:30, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
68% sounds more realistic, but it is still an approximation (it double-count persons who say they are (for example) English-Irish). Note also the Census includes Permanent Residents, not just "Australians". I do not think we should make our own estimates, but rather we should use a reliable source. Can we agree not to include ancestry data as an aggregation of English/Irish/Scottish/Welsh/etc groups? Kransky (talk) 10:41, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
The stats used here are from a table that still adds up to 100%, indicating only single counting. Since this article is on Anglo-Celtic Australians, I don't see the problem with including permanent residents, although if you can suggest a mechanism for removing those that are not citizens, I'd welcome it for accuracy. I do not understand your reasoning for not aggregating the data - your original edit only included English people, to the exclusion of everyone else. This is patently wrong. Can you suggest a more reliable source that the official census information as compiled by the government? Can you suggest an alternative method for calculating the numbers? Bardcom (talk) 14:13, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
(1)The stats add up to 119.8%, not 100% (I assume you are referring to chart 14.42, the only chart with ancestry data in your link). This is because some people give more that one response for ancestry (as footnote (c) explains, and what I have said on more than a few occasions in this thread).
(2)My original writing/stats were not exclusively about English people
(3)The Census stats use citizens and permanent residents - it might be possible to get some stats for citizens only, but it may be tricky. It depends on what data has been released.
(4) The ABS is the most reliable source of data. I think you are trying to ask me if there is another government source that has the data we want. The answer is no - other agencies get their raw data from the ABS rather than make their own statistics (cf Single version of the truth)
(5)It would be rash to think one could count the exact number of Australians with an ancestral tie to the British Isles given the limitations of the data. Instead I suggest we summarise some of the data at the top of this fact sheet. Kransky (talk) 12:32, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[outdented] (1) Well spotted - now your earlier comment makes sense too - apologies for being slow. I assumed that table was totaled to 100% (seeing as it says 100%) at the bottom. The only problem with using summaries that split out the totals is that the article is on Anglo-Celt, so the population number should represent this. But in the absence of a single number, then I agree that the only remaining alternative is to list the numbers as they are presented. Go ahead with the edits you were planning - I understand and agree with your reasons. Bardcom (talk) 13:47, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I see the article only counts where only Irish and English were born. We should include the other countries in the British Isles too, and the people who registered these countries as their ancestral countries. Bardcom (talk) 18:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)