Here are the major metros of the US mapped with dots showing the ethnicity of each area’s population:
Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Yellow is Other, and each dot is 25 residents.
(via)
Reader Interactions
33Comments
Comments are closed.
Villago Delenda Est
If they did they wouldn’t break your heart.
Jerzy Russian
Cool maps. You can see where Balboa Park is near downtown San Diego.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
Small quibble: might be worth it to mention which Metro we’re actually seeing here as an example.
mistermix
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: It’s the Rochester, NY metro.
Davis X. Machina
One look at Boston and some of its fraught recent history leaps out at one.
Also, Quincy. It’s no surprise that where once Shipbuilders Local S5 was, is now a Buddhist temple.
MikeJ
The house passed a bill to get rid of the survey section of the census, so this may be the last time work like this can be done.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@mistermix:
I figured that out after some back linking, but I meant that just a minor tag under the picture or something in the post itself might be worth it.
Napoleon
For a moment I thought the map he used was Cleveland, then I realized it had black people where you would find the Poles and eastern Europeans.
ThresherK
Great addition. Several years ago I remember a time-lapse set in the NYT showing changing ethnicities in the top 10 or 20 cities (edit) over 50 or 100 years.
Suffern ACE
@MikeJ: No. This part they’ll keep. It’s the part about driving they’ll get rid of. Political parties have an interest in keeping track of this because of voting and gerrymandering.
eldorado
title
Mnemosyne
That confirmed what I already suspected — my SF Valley neighborhood is becoming less white and Latino and more Asian. I thought that was probably the case when one of the first American branches of South Korea’s answer to Starbucks opened here.
Mnemosyne
Another interesting way to show the data would be to do it by foreign-born vs. native-born. My city shows up in statistics as “mostly white,” but many of the white folks are immigrants from Armenia.
PeakVT
The NY Times excellent graphics group put together this flash map of ACS data that is similar to the static maps Kay linked to.
Quincy
Great job on the thread title.
Rathskeller
I was really startled a few years back when I moved from Manhattan to Berkeley, and started apartment hunting. Fueled, no doubt, by their experience with white college students over the years, many landlord’s first question was “Are you black?” Even in this reflexively liberal, somewhat neurotic town, you cannot get away from self-segregation, and discomfort caused by race, class, and education differences.
Linnaeus
The map of my hometown (Detroit) is unsurprising in that it still shows a sharp (but slowly changing) division between black and white residents along 8 Mile Road. The small but growing Hispanic community (if I’m reading the colors right) is interesting.
divF
These are great maps. Part of the fun is to try to interpret the details if your are a local. Some examples from the San Francisco / Oakland / Berkeley map.
(1) The population density in San Francisco / South San Francisco is much higher than anywhere else. This in spite of the fact that most of the housing stock consists of buildings of no more than three stories.
(2) The Asian concentration around Fremont probably has a large South Asian (Indian / Pakistani) component.
(3) The visible concentration of Asians right around the Berkeley campus is consistent with their substantial presence in the student population.
PeakVT
@PeakVT: er, mistermix linked to. I need more caffeine.
Linda Featheringill
@Napoleon:
Same here. I guess the shorelines are very similar.
piratedan
was nifty seeing yellow on the Tucson map indicating where the local Rez are surrounded by a sea of Orange.
Amanda in the South Bay
@divF:
Well, for me its the San Jose map. Its pretty accurate. Lots of Asian (both E Asian and S Asian) in Cupertino/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara-ish, lots of Hispanics in East PA/the poor part of Menlo Park, East San Jose pretty diverse with lots of Asians (wish that could be a bit more granular with regards to South vs East Asian) and Hispanics. White everywhere else.
Larv
I love stuff like this; I could spend hours flipping between these and Google maps. My only quibble is with the colors – with red/White, yellow/Other, and orange/Hispanic it’s hard to tell if a given area is Hispanic or White/Other. Maybe he could have used a neutral color like grey or tan for Other?
Origuy
@divF:
Also Afghan. There’s a substantial community in the Centerville district.
pragmatism
Maps. great song.
ABL
What a clever title. I chuckled. Also, if you’ve never heard this version, you’re missing out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBLrNwIzwv4
Fezzik
The most interesting thing, I think, is the sharp contrast between “established” cities and boomtowns. Consider how much more segregated things appear in the old manufacturing cities and along the seaboard than in, say, Las Vegas. There’s still self-segregation in these “newer” cities, of course, but it’s nowhere near as dramatic.
Elias
@Mnemosyne: Do you really want to let the Birthers put a foreign-born dot on the WH?
mistermix
@ABL: Nice cover.
danielx
Note:
Data presentations of this nature soon to be unavailable if House Republicans have their way, which is something that would make life difficult if not impossible for a host of businesses, nonprofits and givernmental concerns:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/sunday-review/the-debate-over-the-american-community-survey.html
Here’s the money line from Daniel Webster (R-asshat):
This guy is a dumb fuck to rival George Tierney of Greenville, South Carolina.
Yes, the Census Bureau, the EPA and bank regulators have all been making my life a living hell with their constant intrusion and harassment – not. If the EPA and bank regulators are making the likes of Enron and Jamie Dimon miserable…more of this please, and soon.
SectarianSofa
@mistermix That song makes me sad. Thanks for ruining my life, asshole!
(But for reals, nice post — and I like the surreal colors to races assignments.)
Blue is black, red is white….
Comrade Mary
@ABL: That led to a totally different song.
Did you mean this or this?
Chet
@danielx: Funny, I thought Daniel Webster was a Whig. And dead. And, you know, working against Mr. Scratch.