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

demographics.coopercenter.org

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

#81

Post by araes »

So many great data analysis exercises that could be run with such a set. Effectively, you could create scalar variables representing lots of different population statistics on a country, state, city, ect level.

Density: http://i.imgur.com/bfVdrbK.png

Racial Density / Clustering: http://i.imgur.com/pQDJLtX.png

Terrain / Feature Clustering: http://i.imgur.com/AH9f2KW.png

City Homogeneity: http://i.imgur.com/Lo3X6KI.png

City Racial Mixing: http://i.imgur.com/VBzLPI6.png or http://i.imgur.com/ldIgYaw.png

City Cluster Homogeneity: http://i.imgur.com/2TLabMj.png vs http://i.imgur.com/LlsAMx4.png

Cluster to nearby dot gravity (how much do dots spread from a nearby loci): http://i.imgur.com/LlsAMx4.png vs http://i.imgur.com/qNkMCcu.png

And that doesn't even cover stuff that's harder to show like gradients, edge analysis (who's likely driving between two towns?), or migration patterns if multiple census years are available.

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

#82

Post by rayiner »

aetherson wrote: post #78
rayiner wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a state institution, and only 17% of state prisoners are there for a drug offenses. 83% of those dots are in for something else. There is some sort of weird need for certain groups of people to ascribe all crime to the drug war. I assume its a result of their holding worldviews incompatible with the fact that the world has lots of bad, antisocial, people.

A fair amount of crime which is not narrowly "drug crime" is at least partially ascribable to the drug war. In decreasing order of being "drug caused," we have: 1. Violence over territory from drug dealers can lead to various violence-related charges. 2. Drug addicts may commit monetary crimes in order to pay for drugs. 3. The general mess that the black market drug trade makes of some neighborhoods creates an enviro…

I think the kinds of people who engage in gang violence or monetary crimes over drugs fit into the category of "bad, antisocial" people I mentioned. Society would have to deal with their proclivities whether or not their energies were directed towards illegal drugs or something else.

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

#84

Post by rayiner »

dragonwriter wrote: post #80
aetherson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fair amount of crime which is not narrowly "drug crime" is at least partially ascribable to the drug war. In decreasing order of being "drug caused," we have: 1. Violence over territory from drug dealers can lead to various violence-related charges. 2. Drug addicts may commit monetary crimes in order to pay for drugs. 3. The general mess that the black market drug trade makes of some neighborhoods creates an enviro…

Also consider that some imprisonment may be attributable to the drug war even if the crime itself is not. Crime does not inevitably lead to imprisonment, or even prosecution -- whether a crime leads to prosecution, and what kind of punishment is sought, doesn't just depend on the crime itself, or whether the prosecutor can prove it, but also on what effect the prosecutor wants to have on the potential target of prose…

I think the opposite situation is more common, in fact. Drug offenses are easy to prove and invoke federal jurisdiction. That makes it more likely for someone to be prosecuted and incarcerated on a drug offense when in reality they were of interest to the police for other reasons.

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

#87

Post by thornygreb »

lotharbot wrote: post #71
thornygreb wrote: post #35

http://synthpopviewer.rti.org/ has better locations and the points are households, not people.

On the down side, this appears to show "white Hispanic" as white, which makes Denver look like a giant sea of sameness instead of one of the most diverse cities in the country.

That is because hispanic is not a separate race according to the census it is an ethnicity. There are white hispanics and black hispanics, etc.

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

#88

Post by Gracana »

rayiner wrote: post #82
aetherson wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fair amount of crime which is not narrowly "drug crime" is at least partially ascribable to the drug war. In decreasing order of being "drug caused," we have: 1. Violence over territory from drug dealers can lead to various violence-related charges. 2. Drug addicts may commit monetary crimes in order to pay for drugs. 3. The general mess that the black market drug trade makes of some neighborhoods creates an enviro…

I think the kinds of people who engage in gang violence or monetary crimes over drugs fit into the category of "bad, antisocial" people I mentioned. Society would have to deal with their proclivities whether or not their energies were directed towards illegal drugs or something else.

The other article that was posted here today about the US prison problem noted that crime went down significantly after prices of crack cocaine dropped, which would be a counterpoint to the conclusion you've drawn.

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

#89

Post by sp332 »

kefka wrote: post #50
sp332 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I mean, they're still of European descent, why not call them white? I know, race is fuzzy. Edit: For the US Census, Hispanic people are of "Spanish culture or origin regardless of race."

That may be partially true. But this topic gets very murky, very quick. Spanish are just as white was the rest of the Europeans. It was back about 450 years, when the Spaniards came over to the Americas and made what is called the Hacienda. Just like when the USA had their racial times regarding Africans, the Spanish did so to the natives here. What happened was a mixing between white Spanish and Incans, Aztecs, and…

Hm, so among other Central Americans, what makes them stand out is their Spanish heritage. But in America, they stand out for being Central-American.

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

#90

Post by ecdavis »

I don't know if it's the color choices, the dot placement, or some combination of the two, but this appears misleading to me. Looking at the Central District in Seattle, one could be forgiven for thinking it is a majority black area.[0] In fact, African-Americans only make up ~20% of the population there (very high for the PNW, but hardly a majority). The New York Times census map gives a far more accurate image of the racial demographics of that neighborhood.[1] I believe the NYT map only has one dot per 100 people, which means the dots are larger and less crowded. Notably, the NYT map uses green dots for white population and blue dots for black population - the reverse of the map linked here. That means if the color choices are having an impact on the way we perceive mixed neighborhoods, the effect is the opposite depending on the map you look at (i.e. you are more likely to think a mixed area is majority black when looking at the OP map, majority white when looking at the NYT map). It's worth thinking about color perception and optical illusions when viewing maps like this.[2]

I love map-based visualizations - they're interesting and fun to look at. Nonetheless, I don't think they're the best way of conveying demographic information.

EDIT: Groxx has a fantastic comment about the order in which the dots are drawn. This could explain my observations.

[0] http://imgur.com/SWmuX1b

[1] http://imgur.com/lEwahHd (http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map)

[2] http://www.illusionspoint.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Col...

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