Map of America's Racial Segregation

http://www.wired.com/design/2013/08/how-segregated-is-your-city-this-eye-opening-map-shows-you

by Aqua_Geek • 13 years ago

299 179 13 years ago

simias2• 13 years ago

I feel like you would get a similar result if you did a map of Paris or other big european cities, I'm not sure it's an american thing. I think over here we just don't like/can't compile that kind of racial data.

I would be more interested in counter-examples: cities were the melting pot is the rule.

icecreampain2• 13 years ago

Making race maps in Europe would get you shot, your family hanged and all your friends deemed social outcasts forever.

For example: the Swedish crime prevention board (BRÅ) no longer publish crime statistics containing ethnic background information. They stopped a few years ago (2006) when the PC media found out that africans and arabs were way, way over-represented in all crime categories.

This is due to political correctness - something that the US seems to have been spared from. So far.

hearty778• 13 years ago

This is not quite true in the US, since the FBI classifies Hispanics in the "white" category, obscuring crime data between non-Hispanic whites and Hispanics.

simias2• 13 years ago

The problem with this kind of statistic is that it doesn't really teach us much: "Hey, impoverished communities have a higher rate of criminality! Who would have thought!" while at the same time giving arguments for the far right to simplify the issues and reach simple conclusions.

Maybe there are cases where these statistics could be legitimately useful, but I'm not aware of any.

noir_lord• 13 years ago

You can go too far from reality with political correctness but you can go just as far in the other direction with the "lack" of political correctness.

The US has a much higher tolerance for what in Europe would be considered pretty blatant racism.

I think that Political Correctness for the most part says we should treat everyone equally whether we like them or not which is the rational approach as I'm sure there are groups that don't like me (I'm a white middle class hard-line atheist so that probably gets me on a few lists right there).

I'd sooner live in a country with "political correctness gone mad" (a frequently cry of the right wing press here) than one where it hasn't.

We have politicians here condemning the Human Rights act because it makes them guarantee the rights for everyone even people "the majority don't like" which is exactly as it should be since the people "the majority don't like" can change so rapidly.

Of course in America you have been spared the political correctness gone mad but you are still executing mentally retarded people in some states so maybe you could do with the political correctness going a bit "mad".

“You can judge a society by how well it treats its prisoners”. - Dostoevsky

knowtheory3• 13 years ago

Or, it could be that the police are overly vigilant, or even racist against non-white Swedes, and arrest and incarcerate them at a rate disproportionate to the actual rate of crime.

Stop and Frisk in NYC overwhelmingly targets blacks and latinos, to the point where it's been declared unconstitutional, for example.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

It's interesting that if a European uses an ethnic reference as an insult or joke it's interpreted as a sign that Europeans are more racist than Americans, but if Europeans balk at racial profiling it's considered extreme political correctness on the part of the Europeans.

I would suggest the complete opposite is true, on both counts.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

spared?

Really? Where I live they don't give the race of the assailant out, but its assumed and unfortunately all too correctly as to what it is.

I am quite sure a few high up in Washington would like it as such here in the US. Two in particular, our President and Attorney General, seem to go out of their way to jump on racial issues as if its some type of popularity thing, they unfortunately come across as desperate.

Spared my butt, we just do our best to tune it out because its bombarded at us through media and government daily. Like the boy who cried wolf, when you cry wolf so many times when there is none no one will listen when there is.

ninjin• 13 years ago

They stopped a few years ago (2006) when the PC media found out that africans and arabs were way, way over-represented in all crime categories.

I would love to see a reference verifying the causality that you are implying when it comes to the decision to drop ethnicity from the statistics.

Also, I sincerely doubt that those of African and Arab ethnicity are over-represented in all crime categories. Violence, petty theft, sure, possibly. This is generally the category which the low-income portion of the population tends to dominate. But I think you will be hard pressed to find a document showing that the ethnics groups you are referencing are more prevalent when it comes to tax fraud.

pygy_2• 13 years ago

When you control for income and other social factors, it turns out that race is not a risk factor for committing crime.

Xylakant• 13 years ago

This is due to political correctness - something that the US seems to have been spared from. So far.

The reasons for such a move are mixed. Some part is certainly PC, some other part is that the segregation along "race boundaries" is actually misleading. Income class and eduction is usually a way better boundary when segregating crime statistics. However, for a long list of reasons, africans and arabs (or people moving into the country in general) are over-represented in the poorer classes and underrepresented in the richer class which in turn makes them appear stronger in crime statistics.

Another reason is that statistics are often read the wrong way, a problem that occurs very often with the official german crime stats: The most often cited statistic is the "Polizeibericht [1]", but that lists reported crimes - so everything that ever gets reported to the police. Some of those reports never get prosecuted, some get acquitted at trial, ... The police report in Berlin used to list all reports where the perpetrators nationality was unknown as "foreign", an error that seriously skewed the stats for any cursory reader. Statistics like that are a very weak datapoint - useful if you know how to read them, useless or even dangerous for most cases where they're cited. This misrepresentation of public data leads to a certain caution in publishing stats by the persons in charge.

Back to the Topic: I don't think that maps of that kind would get you shot, hanged or made outcast in Europe. Quite to the contrary, such maps exist and do provide valuable insight - though the same caveats that apply for the statistics apply here as well. As an example here's a map of how many non-germans live in berlin by quarter: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/de/7/7d/Bev%C3%B6lkeru... (top left). It's not as fine-grained as the one discussed here, but that's probably more due to unavailability of finer data. More maps of germany in the official report by the "Statistisches Bundesamt" https://www.destatis.de/DE/Publikationen/Thematisch/Bevoelke...

[1] The official name is Polizeiliche Kriminalstatistik (PKS) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polizeiliche_Kriminalstatistik...

newnewnew15• 13 years ago

Steve Sailer found out that American schools are really good when you break down test scores by race[1]. For example, the white American population does better on international tests than most European populations, American hispanics do better than all Latin American countries, and etc. Unfortunately, the original article is not available because VDARE is having a fundraiser[2], but why not drop a dollar to keep Steve in business?

Since then, US government has stopped publishing PISA test scores by race. It's embarrassing for people on all sides of the aisle, including right-wing school reform movements that need the purported terribleness of American schools for their political momentum.

[1] http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_4ify7vDXrDs/TRFeGl7ocuI/AAAAAAAAGz...

[2] http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is...

ris• 13 years ago

"Making race maps in Europe would get you shot, your family hanged and all your friends deemed social outcasts forever."

My heart bleeds for you persecuted middle class whites. Oh, the pain and injustice you must endure!

wozniacki• 13 years ago

Some findings from the European Minorities and Discrimination Survey:

(The results present the first EU-wide comparable data on selected ethnic minorities and immigrants’ experiences of discrimination and criminal victimisation, including experiences of policing)

• On average, every second Roma and 4 in 10 Sub Saharan African interviewees was discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity at least once in the last 12 months.

• 82% of those who were discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity/immigrant background in the last 12 months did not report their last experience of discrimination anywhere – either at the place where it occurred or to a complaints body.

• On average, 1 in 5 Sub-Saharan African and Roma respondents were victims of what they considered to be‘racially motivated’assault or threat, or serious harassment, at least once in the last 12 months.

• Depending on the groups surveyed,between 57%and 74% of incidents of assault or threat were not reported to the police.

• Of those who were stopped by the police in the last 12 months, on average 17% of North Africans and 14%of Roma considered that they were stopped specifically because of their ethnic or immigrant background.

Source:

http://fra.europa.eu/en/press-release/2010/first-ever-eu-wid...

http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/664-eum... [ PDF ]

Edit: Formatting

rayiner4• 13 years ago

The overriding trend in American cities is that whites will not live in predominantly black or hispanic neighborhoods.[1] But the reverse is generally not true. So you see much less segregation in predominantly white cities like Portland than in cities like Chicago that have an even mix of races, which have less segregation than predominantly black cities like Detroit or New Orleans.

As far as I can tell, most European cities are predominantly white, so I wouldn't expect as much segregation in those cities as you see in say Chicago or Detroit or Philadelphia. London is one of the more ethnically diverse (large) Western European cities, and is roughly 60% white. LA is the whitest large American city at 50%. New York is 45%, Chicago is 30%, etc. New Orleans is around 25% white, and Detroit is 8% white. At the other end of the scale, Portland is 75% white. If you look at the map, the ordering by level of segregation follows that pattern: Portland is the least segregated, Detroit is the most segregated, and LA, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans are between, in that order.

[1] You can argue about whether this is racism or classism. As a practical matter, in American cities the two are tightly linked. Middle class people of both races tend to move to the suburbs, and of the people that are left, whites skew wealthier and blacks and hispanics skew poorer, even more so than in the general population. E.g. The median income of a white Chicagoan in 2009 was $64k (substantially above the national average). The median income of a black Chicagoan in 2009 was $29k (substantially below the national average). http://www.chicagonow.com/chicago-muckrakers/2011/02/second-....

doktrin2• 13 years ago

As far as I can tell, most European cities are predominantly white

I think your impression is flawed. Many European cities are racially diverse and quite a few are segregated. Paris comes to mind as a particularly good example of both.

rmc7• 13 years ago

As far as I can tell, most European cities are predominantly white

This is both true, and yet misleading and hence false.

Yes, by US racial/ethnic definitions the majority of european cities are majority 'white'. But we don't use the US categories (of white/black/latino/etc.) here in EU because it's not accurate. In fact EU law claims "The European Union rejects theories which attempt to determine the existence of separate human races."[1], and anti-racism law talks about "racial or ethnic origins"[1]

Let's take the UK and their main point of ethnic conflict, Belfast in Northern Ireland. Both the "nationalist/catholic" and "unionist/protestant" communities would be counted as "white" under US racial terminology, but they are 2 different ethnicies.

So yes, "most EU cities are white" by US standards, but by EU standards there's a lot of racial/ethnic mixing and conflict, including full on wars (look at what happened in Yugoslavia!)

[1] EU law on discrimination http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:...

michaelt2• 13 years ago

Here's a map of the UK displaying areas' most popular surnames: http://www.uncertaintyofidentity.com/GB_Names/Mapping.aspx

It's Smith and Jones almost everywhere, but in cities like London and Birmingham there are distinct groupings of Patel, Kaur, Begum etc.

newnewnew15• 13 years ago

You can argue about whether this is racism or classism.

Or it could just be avoiding high-crime areas. Given the vastly different propensities of people of various races to commit crime, avoiding crime tends to make you look racist[1]

[1] http://www.ronunz.org/2013/07/20/race-and-crime-in-america/

bostonvaulter22• 13 years ago

Honolulu would count in my opinion, which is partially because I would break out "Asian" into at least Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and other Asian. Even without that breakdown Honolulu doesn't have any majority (although Asian is really close at 46%). And 19.93% of people with two or more races (compared to 4.7% for SF and 3.9% for Boston)

Map: http://i.imgur.com/Z0X8Prs.jpg

A little hard to see from the map but although Asian is obviously predominant, the other races are sprinkled throughout besides for a few exceptions: a rich area in the bottom right and a few military bases/housing which have much higher white/black and very little asian.

Demographics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honolulu_County,_Hawaii#Demogra...

danso• 13 years ago

HN has a policy against numbers in titles as they come off as link-baity...I wish a similar policy applied to titles with such absolute statements as "the best ever" or "what you never knew about..."

This map is not the "best" map ever of racial segregation, though it may be the most comprehensive. I'd argue that a more effective map would include some kind of time element, to show how formerly integrated areas slowly became segregated.

knowtheory3• 13 years ago

If that data could be collected/found/cross referenced. I doubt that is a possibility, and thus this probably is one of the 'best' maps of segregation (for some definition of best).

Also, this is what a history of segregation looks like. Its worth remembering that small towns, at least in places like Ohio, were so inhospitable to African Americans that they were referred to as "sundown towns" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town ).

When people think that racism is over, maps like these serve as a pretty good starting point for asking them to reevaluate their POV.

Of course, there's always this you could start with too:

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/13/white-definiti...

mumbi2• 13 years ago

Oregon looks like a nice place to live </sarcasm>

Cool and interesting maps.

davidw• 13 years ago

Oregon looks like a nice place to live

It is, thanks, if you don't mind the crappy weather.

doktrin2• 13 years ago

Oregon looks like a nice place to live </sarcasm>

Not sure why you applied a sarcasm tag. I can't speak for all of Oregon, but Portland is quite nice.

mumbi2• 13 years ago

The sarcasm tag was because Portland is all white. I didn't want to offend anyone.

spodek• 13 years ago

Here is the actual map, which you can zoom into, scroll, pan, explore your neighborhood, etc. -- http://demographics.coopercenter.org/DotMap/index.html

EDIT: Exploring, I see the island I live on -- Manhattan -- has the four main dot colors well represented, though mainly in blocks. The main mixing is between whites and Asians and between blacks and Hispanics. Notably parts of the Upper West Side, East Village/Lower East Side, and Midtown west show significantly more mixing, at least by eye -- it would be interesting to quantify the data.

Some parts of Queens and Brooklyn show mixing of all four dot colors within the same city block.

Still, on the whole most dot colors remain in blocks with less mixing on the edges. Some dot colors rarely mix with other dot colors.

EDIT TWO: How they made the map is here -- http://www.coopercenter.org/demographics/Racial-Dot-Map -- which describes the data sources and links to the code on Github.

xntrk• 13 years ago

The Map is really cool. I wish you could zoom in more. It's hard to find my actual block on manhattan.

3JPLW• 13 years ago

Very fascinating. I wish you could link to specific map views. I'd love to send direct links to different areas.

tootie2• 13 years ago

Neighborhoods doesn't tell the whole story in New York because we have a subway. We are integrated at the breating space level on a daily basis.

mkopinsky3• 13 years ago

Riding the subway means that as a white New Yorker, you will twice a day share a room with a black person. Whether you interact with them is another story - I'd venture that most people never say a word to anyone in the subway. To understand (likelihood of) interaction, neighborhood maps are one piece of the story, as would be (as mentioned elsewhere in the thread) workplace data.

qwerty_asdf• 13 years ago

The website mentions extracting "308,745,538 observations" (21 GB in size) and transforming it to some custom CSV files, for processing via Java. I don't see any of the Java code on GitHub.

...he mentions use of a summary file, "SF1", and there's some kind of PDF here:

--> http://www.census.gov/prod/www/decennial.html#y2010tecdoc

--> http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/doc/sf1.pdf

It's more or less, a user manual for roughly 300 other tables, but where are they? Is the actual census data itself available freely, in detail?

I think this is it:

--> http://www2.census.gov/census_2010/04-Summary_File_1/

New York, as an example:

--> http://www2.census.gov/census_2010/04-Summary_File_1/New_Yor...

Is this the original, actual source data?

ubercore• 13 years ago

I have some admittedly old Python code to work with Census data here: https://github.com/peterlandry/django-census

The small talk I gave introducing python geeks to census data is here: http://files.meetup.com/3119472/census%20data%20for%20python...

BrandonMarc2• 13 years ago

I'm glad the code is available. I'd like to see this visualization applied to previous census data, so that we can visually compare two points in time (or more). So, say:

* the 2000 census data

* the 1990 census data

* the 1980 census data

... and so on. If this can be visualized, and then maybe animated, that would provide some insightful results.

unwind• 13 years ago

Paging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling, paging Hans Rosling. Animated visualization of statistical data required, please respond ...

flexie• 13 years ago

Notice how there is often a latino or Asian neighborhood between the white and african american neighborhoods.

I'd like to see figures on racial division in the labor market. When I lived in NYC I couldn't help noticing how I would rarely see white people working in stores, on the streets or driving cabs (and if they were white they would be immigrants). Diners were mostly staffed with Greek people, except the guys who poured water and cleaned up after you - they would be latino. White New Yorkers mainly work in offices. Waiters in restaurants or bars are often white as well.

bane• 13 years ago

Interestingly, in the D.C. area, you'll see large areas to the West (Virginia) with Asian/Hispanic mixes, large areas to the East (Maryland) of all racially Black areas, and North (Maryland) non-mixed densely packed blocks nearby for all races.

In the Western areas, there are very large Korean and Latin mixed population areas, so much so that most Korean restaurants are owned by Koreans, but all the cooks and staff are Latin American and the staff speaks Spanish and a little Korean, but no English and the owners are the reverse. In some ways, it's a little like K-Town in LA, known as "Korea town" but with large Hispanic minority groups mixed in. Also the home of the "Bulgogi Taco".

It's a very unexpected integration that somehow works pretty well.

ebspelman2• 13 years ago

The actual map is an amazing piece of work, but let's give credit where credit is due!

Bill Rankin posted maps in this exact visual style back in 2009. You can see them (and many other amazing maps he's done) at his blog -- http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots

Eric Fischer picked up Bill's project and ran with it, composing maps for most of the major US cities with census 2010 data. You can see them all on his Flickr page -- http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496....

I love great maps, but it's a little disheartening that these precursor projects aren't mentioned anywhere in the article/comments.

mkopinsky3• 13 years ago

Thank you. I saw this article and had a feeling of "Hmm, where have I seen this before? The URL says 2013, but this is definitely old..." I think it must have Eric's flickr.

(Link somehow got truncated; it should be http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/sets/7215762481267496... )

amerika_blog• 13 years ago

Stop trying to force people to like one another. Social engineering is not like other forms of engineering; it depends on values outside a count of interchangeable parts. Many of humanity's worst outcomes have emerged from such well-intentioned but oblivious social engineering.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

Stop projecting.

Jgrubb2• 13 years ago

That's hilarious, I was wondering if my hometown (ATL) would be broken down, and it's the second one. When I moved back there after college I wanted to do some sort of study of the racial segregation in that city. It's totally along that east-west axis, more precisely at Ponce De Leon Ave. All these upper-class streets that run through the nicest neighborhoods in north Atlanta even change their names as they cross over Ponce.

God, I miss that town every now and then. I'd kill for a hot Krispy Kreme right now.

Jtsummers• 13 years ago

Road name changes often happen at city/county lines where the roads actually changed ownership or used to be separate and ended up joined at some point. Not knowing the history or breakdown of the Atlanta area well, would this make sense there?

GrantS• 13 years ago

Also from Atlanta here and I'm always most aware of this when riding MARTA to the airport. Once you get south of downtown, it becomes hard to ignore the strange fact that the only white people still on the train are those with luggage.

And in case it consoles you to know that others are living your dreams, I just had two donuts at the Krispy Kreme on Ponce earlier this morning -- in fact right around the time of your comment. They were delicious but I should really stop going so often.

Jgrubb2• 13 years ago

Aww man. I used to live right around the corner on 3rd street. I don't know if midtown is still as colorful these days, but about ten years ago if you saw an attractive female walking around after dark you could rest assured it was a man. Rural Jersey is slightly less exciting..

k2enemy• 13 years ago

Thomas Schelling [0] has shown that even if your most preferred neighborhood is a perfect mix of races, it is a dynamically unstable equilibrium (assuming that if the balance tips one way or the other, you prefer it to tip towards your own race). That is, segregated neighborhoods are not necessarily a sign that people prefer segregation -- it is also a natural outcome when people want to live in a mixed neighborhood. There are many interesting simulations of the phenomenon. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_XtboyO8jc&noredirect=1

bentcorner• 13 years ago

Here's an implementation of Schelling's model:

http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/Segregation

revelation• 13 years ago

Do people pick their dwelling by racial mix? I would expect this to be much more of a function of income and means.

michaelt2• 13 years ago

Obviously you can't pay more than your means, but the housing market has people bidding against one another for products that differ in dozens of different dimensions.

Me, maybe I'm willing to pay more for my favorite architectural style and off-road parking for my motorbike. Maybe you're starting a family, you'll pay more to live in an area with a quality public school, and a park where you can walk your dog. Another person might pay a premium for a safer neighborhood with lower crime rates and more local shops.

We all take our preferences, decide what we're willing to pay, and you outbid me because I wasn't willing to pay any premium for that public school (or whatever).

auctiontheory• 13 years ago

Apparently you have never tried to "rent while black."

hedgew2• 13 years ago

Is segregation really the appropriate word here? Separation of the races is coded into our genes and happens naturally without any malicious intent too. It's not much different from the fact that all of us prefer to surround ourselves with people who are similar to ourselves, usually in terms of thinking, hobbies, and interests. Physical attributes influence us as well, whether it's bikers and leather jackets or punks and black spiked clothes. In evolutionary biology this is referred to as "kinship".

Not to say that racism isn't worth fighting against, but the more free our societies become the more people on average will follow their natural instincts. A non-racial example of this is Norway, which is likely the most gender equal country in the world, but has also extremely skewed gender distributions in professions such as engineering and nursing; with almost only men in engineering, and women in nursing, despite massive attempts to balance the situation. This could be easily misinterpreted and claimed as evidence that Norway does not respect gender equality, but in fact it's more likely evidence of the opposite! People in Norway are more free to pursue what makes them happy.

When we use terms like "segregation" for cases where it might actually be just "separation", we risk causing unnecessary hatred and overblown illusions of racism - misleading us from what actually matters: freedom and equality.

sophacles2• 13 years ago

Can you point to sources that answer any of these questions:

* What mechanism does this racial separation take?

* What sort of evidence shows that skin color or other ethnic identifiers in genetics are the thing that causes tribal separation vs them just serving as a simple proxy to more complicated factors?

* What explanations of exigent factors are there... for example why are there black and hispanic republicans, or white members of traditionally "black gangs". How do these less common (but not rare) group membership issues override the claimed genetic selection?

* What genetic factors explain the fracturing of groups within groups of seemingly genetically similar (at least on a racial/ethinc level) people?

The claim made here doesn't actually answer any of those questions - I'm not sure the validity of "separation of races is coded in our genes" makes sense given the scenarios highlighted in my questions.

pessimizer2• 13 years ago

Why bother with research when everything can be explained by the natural tendencies of the blood? Research just perpetuates racism by allowing for the possibility that it may exist.

hedgew2• 13 years ago

What mechanism does this racial separation take?

It's not racial separation. It's all attraction in general. Like attracts like. Hackers tend to like other hackers.

Race is simply one factor that affects us. Being aware of this can help you avoid racism. If you don't recognize that your brain tends to prefer people who are similar to you, you're more likely to accidentally discriminate others.

What sort of evidence shows that skin color or other ethnic identifiers in genetics are the thing that causes tribal separation vs them just serving as a simple proxy to more complicated factors?

The real extent of its significance is impossible to say, but based on these maps, it's obvious that such separation happens. The lack of any legislation in the US that requires people of certain race to segregate means that it has to be caused by other factors.

What explanations of exigent factors are there... for example why are there black and hispanic republicans, or white members of traditionally "black gangs". How do these less common (but not rare) group membership issues override the claimed genetic selection?

The fact that there are black republicans is only evidence that race does not limit people into any certain categories.

What genetic factors explain the fracturing of groups within groups of seemingly genetically similar (at least on a racial/ethinc level) people?

Why do brothers and sisters fight? Even if you're from the same family, you're not immune to conflict. Inarguably, family members are on average closer to each other than non-family members. I really doubt race is such a significant factor that it would make us immune to conflict. If you really get down to it, we're all basically identical and we still fight all the time. That's the real stupidity.

If you want to learn more, you can start with evolutionary psychology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

We really don't know understand ourselves that well yet, but it's obvious that we discriminate each other. It's important to understand why, so we can become better.

jccalhoun2• 13 years ago

"Separation of the races is coded into our genes" What? How so?

"Physical attributes influence us as well" But which physical attributes matter and which don't is cultural. I'm tall. I don't only or even mostly hang around other tall people. I'm left handed. I don't hang out with left handed people.

"but has also extremely skewed gender distributions in professions such as engineering and nursing; with almost only men in engineering, and women in nursing, despite massive attempts to balance the situation. This could be easily misinterpreted and claimed as evidence that Norway does not respect gender equality, but in fact it's more likely evidence of the opposite! People in Norway are more free to pursue what makes them happy."

Or gender stereotypes which predated attempts at gender equality still persist and encourage people to think that certain jobs will make them happier than others even though this may not be true.

eevee• 13 years ago

Unless it's the norm for people to cross-reference the races of all their potential neighbors before deciding on a house, I'm gonna go out on a limb here and suggest that the issue is a little more complicated than who sits with who at lunch.

A much more likely factor is your socioeconomic status (which is, granted, also related to your career), and race/class are not at all proportional in the US.

People in Norway are more free to pursue what makes _them_ happy.

And why does engineering make men happy but women not? Put another way: are there women who are being made _unhappy_ with engineering? And vice versa for nursing? Is that not worth speculating upon and addressing, rather than taking for granted that the penis is the part of the brain responsible for enjoying math?

WA2• 13 years ago

I watched once a lecture on Coursera about Schelling's model of segregation, which I found extremely insightful.

If you see maps like that with strong segregation, one of the first attempts to explain it is "racism". However, if you divide your neighborhood in 9 blocks such that you are in the center, you have 8 neighbors.

Schelling's model now shows that even in cities where most people say:"I'd like to live next to only 35-40% of people who are similar to me (whatever that means exactly, could be ethnical background, skin color, income, ...) and I'd accept 60% of neighbors who are different from me", you would still get a segregation of 80-90% in the city.

So, the reason for strong segregation is not necessarily that people are racists. People can be very tolerant, but if you try to fulfill the minimum requirement (40% like me), you end up with strong segregation patterns just because there's no other way to fulfill the minimum requirement for most people.

Note: Numbers aren't exact, but pretty close.

Edit: Link to lecture: https://class.coursera.org/modelthinking-003/lecture/16

acchow2• 13 years ago

Any chance you have a direct link to the lecture without having to register for a course?

WA2• 13 years ago

This is it: https://class.coursera.org/modelthinking-003/lecture/16

twic2• 13 years ago

Reminds me of a similar thing in developmental biology, where if you have two populations of cells, each having a slighly higher affinity for other cells of its own type, then they will very efficiently sort themselves into separate compartments. This is thought to be a pretty important mechanism in the formation and maintenance of structures in the body.

In case anyone's interested, here is a nice (if now rather old, although to be honest scientific writing was so much better back in the '90s) review on the whole business:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0092867400...

In which we find a paragraph describing this process:

"The selector genes do more than specify the pattern and the structures that the compartments will eventually make—they also specify, indirectly, a surface property. This property has been termed cell affinity, meaning that cells that share the same affinity, owing to the same binary code of selector genes, will intermingle during growth. There are a number of different experiments that lead to this conclusion, but perhaps the simplest is the observation that when the selector gene engrailed is removed, in vivo, from a posterior clone of cells in the wing, those cells gain anterior affinity: they now sort out from posterior cells and, if they are in contact with anterior cells, will sort into and mingle with them. Cells from neighboring compartments will have different affinities and tend to minimize their mutual contact, so that where the two compartments abut, there is a relatively straight line across which the cells do not stray."

chrischen• 13 years ago

Is true in physics as well. That's how stars are formed... Gravity is extremely weak, and so the affinity for one atom and another is extremely small, but after millions of years they still cluster together so hard sparks fly.

jtfairbank• 13 years ago

Why do you say that scientific writing was better in the '90s? I'm just curious, not challenging your claim.

ryusage• 13 years ago

I saw that lecture also. Wish I'd had more time to go further with the Modeling class, it was really cool.

Anyway, the equally interesting alternative to what you explained is what happens when everybody actually is super racist. If every person's requirement is that they refuse to live near anyone that is different, then you actually get a weird pattern where things are as mixed as they could be. The neighborhoods never stabilize, because there's always going to be border areas where each group can't help living next to a different group.

Actually, it just occurred to me that the model might not be accurate at that point, though, because people can't always move away like the model implies. Instead of people moving around chaotically, I wonder if the real result is violence intended to force the others to move.

EDIT: changed 'counterpoint' to 'alternative'

samatman• 13 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5560480146/in/set-721...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore_riot_of_1968

http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/5559896701/in/set-721...

SiVal• 13 years ago

Yes, this is a "map of America's racial distribution". Calling it a "map of America's racial segregation" means someone is pushing a political agenda. Calling it a map of racial integration would be just as accurate but probably didn't support the right narrative.

As a map of distribution, you would expect significant clustering from randomness alone. We've all seen the "which of these dot patterns is actually the random one?" tests, where few people guess the correct answer: the one with all the clusters.

If you take that clustered map as a seed, then add any affinities, you get positive feedback, increasing the clustering. Those affinities don't have to be racial selection but can just be in the general form of, "I make decisions based on what I hear, and I hear more from people I know than from people I don't know."

So, you hear from your cousin that there is a new apartment building opening across the street from him. You hear from several members of your church that X is the best school district. A factory in your town closes and the laid off employees discuss their options and decide to go check out a company in the next town that is hiring (with lots of reasonably-priced apartments nearby).

Just getting more information from people you know than people you don't know could be sufficient for Schelling's model, but add to that the tendency to get more information from people from your background (whether you actually know them or not), because it's likely to be more relevant to you, and you magnify the effect significantly. An urban liberal and his soccer-loving Mexican gardener don't have to dislike each other for the former to read more NY Times and the latter to watch more Univision, and the information about where the opportunities are as presented in those two media outlets are not the same.

This doesn't mean that there is no race-based component in deciding where to live. It just means that, as the Schelling model demonstrates, you can't tell how much there is by looking at how much clustering there is on a map.

paganel• 13 years ago

So, you hear from your cousin that there is a new apartment building opening across the street from him

That's the thing,in a truly color-blind society your cousin could be "black" while you could be "white", but this seems not to be the default setting in the States.

If it matters I have "light" skin (after my father) while my brother has "brown" skin (after my mother). I hadn't notice that until recently when my brother visited me (I live in an Eastern European capital city) and there were a couple of people in the tram who looked at me, and at us, differently compared to when I was just by myself. I only realized the probable reasons (my brother has the skin-color of a "gipsy") later on.

VladRussian22• 13 years ago

Yes, this is a "map of America's racial distribution". Calling it a "map of America's racial segregation" means someone is pushing a political agenda.

isn't racial segregation is a very significantly skewed racial distribution?

This doesn't mean that there is no race-based component in deciding where to live. It just means that, as the Schelling model demonstrates, you can't tell how much there is by looking at how much clustering there is on a map.

you very well described why race may be not a direct (or a reliably traceable at all) cause of observed segregation. And i'd agree that claiming strong causation here would require more strong arguments than just a map which to me clearly shows correlation.

gcb02• 13 years ago

(40% like me)

yeah... you know, the definition of racism is when you even take those categories as a differentiation attribute in people. So, it's racism after all.

If you'd say singles vs big families. rich vs poor. etc. it would be personal preference. The things you listed, racism.

newnewnew15• 13 years ago

If that's racism, then it is a lot less virulent of a thing than we normally think of. Almost everybody in the world has some sort of affinity for their own cultural group, practices and norms. Maybe we should develop another term for active inter-racial hatred?

erikpukinskis• 13 years ago

I'd accept 60% of neighbors who are different from me

How is that not racism? Why do you care if your neighbor is a different race than you? Isn't it more relevant whether they're someone you'd enjoy living near?

johnbburg• 13 years ago

I'm surprised they didn't use Washington D.C. as one of the featured images. The contrast is nearly as start as Detroit's.

sputknick• 13 years ago

What would make the DC map even more interesting would be to watch it over time as more "blue" moves into those "green" areas around Columbia Heights, Petworth, Shaw etc.

flatline• 13 years ago

Me too - for the lazy:

http://i.imgur.com/dBIBuCD.jpg

The Rock Creek Park divide is just as noticeable on the map as it is driving around the area. On a larger scale, the SE/NW divide is exactly what you'd expect. Keep in mind that the city itself is (or at least was, before gentrification) predominately black, and the SE areas are the poorest.

rak• 13 years ago

D.C over time would be a great thing to see.

Pxtl• 13 years ago

Oh god, I read the comments. I know comments on news sites are awful, but I didn't expect that on Wired.

acchow2• 13 years ago

Rookie mistake. Standard rules apply https://twitter.com/AvoidComments

shawnee_• 13 years ago

One of the interesting things about this map is that it shows not just distribution, but also density. Non-Caucasian ethnicities are not only concentrated in certain "neighborhoods", they also tend to live in households with far more people per square foot than whites.

From the map, overview of the Bay area: http://hackeress.com/ethnic-distribution-bay-area.png

guard-of-terra3• 13 years ago

Russian here. We won't see a similar map of Moscow for two reasons:

1) Immigrants can't afford any housing.

2) Most rent is private and not reported anywhere; most immigrants are illegal and not accounted anywhere.

Moscow won't segregate because people are awfully un-mobile.

If this changes, we may share the fate of cities in USA/Europe.

The problem is that a lot of immigrants are flowing in (from central asia) and there is no political will to limit their influx / control their quality.

Right now all the immigrants work and only resort to crime in dire situations, but I'm afraid this is bound to change if measures are not taken.

jebblue2• 13 years ago

I ran a check with Google using "define: segregation" and the definition included, "the act of setting". The title uses the term segregation perhaps innocently but incorrectly. People live where they choose. If the government said they had to live somewhere then it would be segregation. So it's really a map of where people tend to settle. HN should not have allowed the title to stand as is. Perhaps HN feels it's necessary to engage in sensationalism like some of the other similar sites I never or rarely go to any more for technical news.

mkr-hn• 13 years ago

Words rarely have a single definition. Those definitions often have substantial history behind them.

jebblue2• 13 years ago

I gave you the step to find the top level, world-wide definition in Google. You say there are other definitions. Ok let's check the Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation

"Segregation itself is defined by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance as "the act by which a (natural or legal) person separates other persons"

If people separate, or group, themselves according to their own desires then that is not segregation according to Google and according to the Wiki which sites at least the "European Commission against Racism and Intolerance".

You may disagree with me but I've provided two worldwide known references both in agreement with each other and with me. The use of the word segregation was wrong by the original author and wrong by HN for posting it that way.

_bfhp• 13 years ago

Before this comment forum devolves into the usual level of strife trying to grapple with what race "is," I'd like to offer two articles.

What We Mean When We Say 'Race Is a Social Construct' - http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we-...

The Point Is Not To Interpret Whiteness But To To Abolish It by Noel Ignatiev - http://racetraitor.org/abolishthepoint.html (the stuff about "White Studies" (obviously contextual) and Marxist tie-ins are totally optional to understanding the central points, I believe)

daigoba66• 13 years ago

I'd like to see a similar map that explores other attributes such as income, family size, etc.

karlkatzke• 13 years ago

Dang. I have been looking for a GIS/BigData project, and this was one of my ideas.

BrandonMarc2• 13 years ago

Try doing this for previous datasets, so that you can compare maps and extrapolate trends over time. Say, the 2000, 1990, 1980 census data.

ozh• 13 years ago

"African American" and "White". This is grotesque. Either say black & white, or african american & caucasian american. Pick one.

protomyth• 13 years ago

Given the reservations in the US, it would have been nice to see Native Americans have their own color. It would be a nice touch to compare reservation vs. urban conclaves.

cfesta92• 13 years ago

This is a really cool map! I have a few questions about it though. Racial Segregation are very strong words to use when describing this map. I have lived in Chicago for my whole life. I have heard people say that Chicago is the most segregated city in the US. That line might be true. But when I look at this map it is very hard to draw the assumption that Chicago is incredibly segregated. Looking at this map you could easily say white people live here african american live here and asian / hispanic live here etc... But it is much deeper then the top overview. Chicago has a huge polish , german, irish community. I'm talking about people who have moved from their home country to live in the US. I notice a trend that when polish people move to chicago they move to where polish people live not any old "white" neighborhood they move to a place where they feel comfortable and have common ground. Never in my life have I or the city say white people need to live here and african american live here. There must be a reason that Chinese live on the south side Vietnamese live on the north side and Korean live on the further north side. Latino is the same. I forgot where i was going with this point. But I feel the way we see racial segregation is that some higher power says that we must not live next to each other. When in truth people want to live by their people.

tptacek• 13 years ago

When people talk about segregation in Chicago, they are mostly referring to the black south and near west side, and to a lesser extent the hispanic near-southwest and Little Village areas.

Look closely at the map on this thread, and match it up to a Chicago neighborhood map. Look at the border between Beverly (where I grew up) and Gresham and Brainerd. Look at the borders around Hyde Park. Look at the border between Austin and Oak Park (where I live now). For that matter, look at Lawndale vs Little Village. The borders are sharp, they follow regular lines, and generally involve a 90+% majority black neighborhood on one side.

There are a bunch of reasons this happened:

* The Great Migration, during which Chicago was a giant magnet for rural black southerners

* Redlining, the overtly racist/segregationist practice of refusing home loans to black families in "non-black" neighborhoods

* The construction of the Ryan, which displaced black families who ended up moving to places like Englewood

* The construction of the CHA high rise housing projects, which were concentrated in areas that would eventually become majority-black

* The subsequent flight of white families from places like Englewood, which went from 10% black immediately after WW2 to 98+%(!) black in 1980

It's important to note that with the possible exception of Beverly, which really is a white Irish enclave, the non-black non-hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago aren't intolerant, and have black representation roughly in line with their representation in the population as a whole. If you live in Avondale or Rogers Park or Lakeview, it probably doesn't look at all segregated.

Also, Chicago isn't the most segregated city in the US.

cfesta92• 13 years ago

Thank you for responding. I just feel that "racial segregation" are the wrong words to use when describing this map. and yes the reasons you have posted are for the most part true. They are now a little outdated but they were things that happened in the past that have contributed to our present. I would like to believe that chicgoans have made many strides in certain areas of the city to become more diverse. But who knows. If we continue to try we can hopefully change our present to a better future.

munificent• 13 years ago

It's interesting that you can almost always spot the university areas in a city on this map by looking for the cluster of asians.

frogpelt• 13 years ago

If there was not hatred (not gonna happen, by the way), would segregation still be a bad thing?

Is there something inherently WRONG with people gravitating toward and feeling most comfortable around people who look like themselves?

jccalhoun2• 13 years ago

Interesting project but it seems only useful at all for large cities. I zoomed in on the rural area I live in and there wasn't anything. They mention toggling between color and black and white but there still wasn't anything there.

nonce42• 13 years ago

Looking at the Bay Area in this map, I noticed a very dense African-American region near Dublin CA that looked out of place. I investigated what it was and was shocked to discover it was the Santa Rita Jail. The map really made it clear how racially skewed the jail population is.

cutie• 13 years ago

After seeing Los Angeles and the map of the west in general, I believe the Latinos are significantly under-counted.

I had anticipated this to some extent in daily life but it was driven home a few years ago. I lived in a very "latino" neighborhood, unusual to see anyone else...

When election time came around, I got in line of perhaps 50-100 people at a very busy polling place. Bored, I looked down the line at each person. Gone were the folks I was used to seeing every day, in fact I was hard-pressed to find any. I counted one or two latinos in the whole line, and they were not from the migrant-worker class... i.e. poorer Mexican or Central American Indians.

It is probable a larger percentage of these folks will submit to the Census bureau than registering to vote, but how much? As a whole they are not well integrated.

wahsd• 13 years ago

What I find interesting is that the racial breakdown is still so racist.... White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Other/Multi-racial ??? It's shameful! It's racist because only the White cohort shares any measurable uniformity. Blacks are African-Americans of slave decent, North, East, South, West, and several other groups in between Africans, Asians are even more differentiated. Really??? Tadjiks, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Malaysians are all just Asian?

It's such a degenerate, lazy, white-centric breakdown. It's a disgrace.

Nice map though!

setitimer• 13 years ago

Italians, Germans, Russians, Irish are all just White? It's such a degenerate, lazy, anti-white breakdown. It's a disgrace.

cjensen• 13 years ago

I love this map, but really hate the implementation. Dots overlaid on white makes dots really hard to see. I'd love to be able to set the background to black or something.

Also, last time this was featured on Fark the map became quickly unusable. Would be nice if they could generate some KML files or something that could be used outside of their website.

ebspelman2• 13 years ago

These guys did an amazing job with the interactive element, but a lot of this is borrowed work! Let's give credit where credit is due:

Bill Rankin posted maps in this exact visual style back in 2009. You can see them (and many other amazing maps he's done) at his blog -- http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?chicagodots

I love great maps, but it's a little disheartening that these precursor projects aren't mentioned anywhere in the article/comments.

humbyvaldes• 13 years ago

Hispanic isn't a race

helipad• 13 years ago

Take a guess where 8 Mile Road is in Detroit:

http://cl.ly/image/2m0u3y282M1H

Map of America's Racial Segregation

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