The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S.

crazy how less dense western US is, when disregarding california...

This is fascinating. It really shows how racially segregated a lot of cities are. But from my knowledge of a few cities where I've lived, all the "cool" places to live are very mixed. Not sure if that says more about my idea of desirable places to live or the effects of gentrification, but this map is definitely very thought-provoking.

Thanks for sharing.

What a clickbait title

Indeed, I have never seen such a collection of slow-loading pictures.

The actual title of the submitted resource is "The Racial Dot Map: One Dot Per Person for the Entire U.S." I'm pretty sure that this has been submitted to HN before. It loads rather slowly on my computer here. A zoomed-out view does do a good job of showing the remarkably low population density of the Great Basin in the western United States, which was formerly known as The Great American Desert. Presence or absence of sources of abundant fresh water has a huge influence on population distribution in the United States.

A zoomed-in view of my metropolitan area, the Twin Cities of Minnesota, shows the overall conurbation of the two cities and their suburbs reasonably clearly, but with some rather odd blank spots on a closely zoomed-in view that appear to correspond to census tracts with few actual residences, not matching the actual distribution of built-up or undeveloped areas in quite the way that most residents of this area would expect. (Some of the blank spots in south Minneapolis correspond to lakes in the City of Lakes.) Of course an industrial park can have a high daytime occupancy of interacting human beings while being almost empty at night, and the other way around for a residential zone.

For any data collected by the United States federal government about race, one has to go to the definition statements from the Bureau of the Census: "The U.S. Census Bureau collects race data in accordance with guidelines provided by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and these data are based on self-identification. The racial categories included in the census questionnaire generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country and not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically. In addition, it is recognized that the categories of the race item include racial and national origin or sociocultural groups. People may choose to report more than one race to indicate their racial mixture, such as 'American Indian' and 'White.' People who identify their origin as Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish may be of any race."[1] All of the definitions are arbitrary, and some are very arbitrary indeed and imply divisions of personal behavior that don't exist in actual practice. (My household is poorly defined by the Census data gathered under the OMB rules, and I live with people of another "race," whom I prefer to regard as my fellow human beings, every day of my life.) In Minneapolis, it's not a big surprise to see concentrations of "black" people (historically African-American people in north Minneapolis and recent Somali immigrants in south Minneapolis). In St. Paul, the "Asian" people are mostly recent Hmong immigrants. Hispanic people (mostly recent immigrants from Mexico) have increased greatly in number in this area in my lifetime. A typical set of signs at a public library in the metropolitan area will be written in English, Spanish, Somali, and Hmong here.

[1] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/meta/long_RHI525211.htm