Week 9

The series of maps presented below is from data based on the U.S. Census Bureau collected during the 2000 Census. With this data we see that there is a degree of spatial autocorrelation in all three maps, showing that there is a relationship between ethnicity and real estate. The maps broadly reveal that Asian-Americans are concentrated on the coasts; African-Americans live mostly in the South; “Some Other Race,” is largely synonymous with Hispanic reside primarily in the West, particularly in the Southwest and California.

There are approximately 37 million Blacks in the U.S., the second largest minority in the country. African-Americans have have strong concentrations in the South; from Virginia down through the Gulf Coast to eastern Texas. In these areas there are high degrees of poverty, undereducation, and high crime rates. Almost all of the African-Americans are descendants of the Columbian Exchange.

The “Some Other Race” category aggregates all people whose responses did not fall into the categories of “”White”, “Black or African American”, “American Indian and Alaska Native”, “Asian” and “Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander” [1]. The largest group within this category is Hispanic. 97% of respondents within this group were Hispanic or Latino, yet only 43% of Hispanics or Latinos checked the box to declare themselves as belonging to this category [2]. This creates a problem of under-representation of Hispanics. The largest concentration of this demographic is along the West Coast, along the border with Mexico in California. This is natural because that is the closest link to Mexico. There is actually a sizable population in inland Washington State and southern Idaho, these are likely migrant laborers working on the fertile region’s orchards and farms. There is also a large proportion in Florida, likely of Cuban descent.

There are large, burgeoning populations of Asian-Americans in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York. This began during the the 19th century when many Asians began to settle there before the iimplementation of a quota system in 1924. The use of a quota system for immigration was removed in 1965, since then Asians have migrated to large metropolitan cities and suburbs. Within these cites Asians tend to create their own communities leading to sprouting Japantowns, Koreatowns, and Chinatowns. You can see that a heavy settlement on the West Coast is a direct result of geography: many Chinese and Japanese immigrants came by boat in the 1900s across the Pacific Ocean to the other side of the Pacific Rim. Asian Americans have the lowest poverty rate, the highest educational attainment levels, and median personal income of any racial demographic in the country.

Works Cited

[1] “Census Quick Facts,” US Census Bureau

[2] “Some Other Race,” US Census Bureau