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Comment by Avicebron | Hacker News Reader

> Baltic and Mediterranean, the cheapest properties on the board, correlate to historically ethnic neighborhoods (even in name), while the historically rich, white enclaves

Am I missing something? I just googled "baltic people" and I think some of these people are whiter than me..

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Workers from the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) were for a while near the bottom of the immigrant worker totem pole. The protagonist of Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle" (1905), meatpacker Jurgis Rudkus, was Lithuanian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle

If we look at American history, we see a pattern of various ethnic groups immigrating, getting low paid jobs, being discriminated against, then slowly becoming "white" as they assimilate. The Irish and Italians immediately come to mind. I have a suspicion that this pattern will continue with Latino people.

This other article says around Baltic Avenue was an African-American neighbourhood, not a literal ethnic Baltic neighbourhood. https://medium.com/galleys/behind-the-cardboard-streets-6f1d...

They're talking about neighborhoods and streets in Atlantic City, NJ. Not the actual regions of Europe.

I'm guessing that they were poor immigrant enclaves in the past. My understanding is that people have also sometimes differentiated between Western Europe versus Eastern Europe with Western Europe being considered more similar to American culture and perhaps by extension "less backwards".

Ah, based on the sibling comment sounds like I was mistaken.

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