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Wellsia wrote:

Spanish-American or Hispanic is the only recognized ethnicity in the US, when filling out official paper work you are asked your race and your ethnicity (either Hispanic or not Hispanic). As far as English-American or German-American, I think since those were the two largest groups at the time of the revolution (10% German), they care more about being Americans then where they came from. The first Speaker of the House, Fredrick Muhlenberg was German. There was some talk of making all official papers to be written in English and German. There was another major influx of German people in the 1850s and 1860s following the failed 1848 revolutions in Europe and the annexations of Prussia after 1866. In fact there were so many Germans living in the US that entire Corps in the Union Army spoke nothing but German. The Irish didn’t really start coming to America till the mid 1800s, and were looked down on as inferiors (Watch the movie ‘Gangs of New York’). The Italian-Americans were not very many till the 1890s and early 1900s, and once again were looked down upon by the German-English Americans. I think they maintained that pride of where they came from as a defense mechanism against the prejudices thrown against them. In Louisiana, we have the Irish Canal, dug by Irishmen living in New Orleans, the reason Irish dug it because it was through the swamp and no one cared how many of them died digging it. In the antebellum social level of New Orleans, the Irish ranked below slaves, in other areas they were the po’ white trash.

Have seen some old posters with stuff like "Irish Need Not Apply".

At first, I thought it was like "this stuff is free for them so they don't need to apply". Only later on did it occur to me that it was entirely different issue.