Lab 7

In this lab we were asked to plot the percentage of a specific race in each county of the continental United States.

In the first map one can see the percent of the population that is “Pure Black” in each county. “Pure Black” means that these are people that are purely African American. People who are purely black are considered to not be mixed with any other race. This map uses red to represent higher percentages of African Americans in each county and blue to represent lower ones. This allows one to distinguish areas of low population density from those of high population density and to draw conclusions about where a particular race tends to inhabit. From the map it is clear that the largest percentages of African Americans are located in the south east states. This map shows exactly what one would expect. It shows that there are still a fair amount of African Americans in the south, however, it shows that many who were driven out by racism and lack of economic opportunity have migrated toward Chicago and New York in search of a better life.

The second map shows the population of “Pure Asians” in each county. Again “Pure Asian” means those that are mixed with any other race. In this map yellow represents counties with a low percentage of Asians, while the darker colors, up to blue, represent areas of a “high” Asian population density. This map shows that the Asian population spread out much more than did African Americans. I say this because there are many more dark spots located throughout the united states than there were in the “pure black” map. This map also shows the highest concentration of Asians are located along the west coast counties. This again is exactly what one would expect to find because immigrants coming from Asia would have ended up on the west coast.

The third category shows the populations of “Other” races in each county. This is very ambiguous and feels completely pointless. Green represents counties of low population density while dark blue represents areas of high percentage of “other” races in that county. The map show us that “other” races have immigrated mainly to the southwest states. These include California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. If I were to offer a guess, I would assume that these immigrants are mostly from Mexico. There are also several blue spots located in Washington/Idaho/Montana and one is located in Nevada/Idaho. These are points that I am unclear of and thus if this map were being used for something of importance this would have to be looked into.

It is interesting to note that there is a huge discrepancy in what constitutes a “high” race population density between all three maps. This is very misleading at first glance. I say this because when one examines the legends for each map one discovers that the “pure black” legend goes all the way up to 86% while the “Pure Asian” legend only goes up to 46% county population. The “other” category is limited even further, down to 39% for the highest population density per county.