Percentage of African American population 1990 (GIF Image, 572x413 pixels)
Found at the GIS Data Bank via caught In between. I was wondering what more recent data might look like, so I went searching.
African Americans make up the largest racial minority group in the United States, numbering 34.7 million individuals, or 12.3 percent of the U.S. population in 2000. The 2000 Census was the first census to give respondents the option of reporting more than one race. An additional 1.8 million people (0.6% of the population) reported black in combination with at least one other race.
...Geographic Perspectives:
Over half (53.6 percent) of black Americans live in the South; 18.8 percent live in the Midwest, 17.6 percent live in the Northeast, and 8.9 percent live in the West. The largest black populations are in New York (3.2 million) and California, Texas and Florida (2.5 million each)...
The PRC map and data offer a somewhat more nuanced picture, if not directly comparable. The 1990 map looked only at people identifying as African-American; because the racial categories changed, the PRC summary looked at "people indicating one or more races including Black or African American as a percent of total population by state"; the breakdown of percentages is also finer (and frankly, makes somewhat more sense). Additionally, the PRC map contains only a statewide picture, rather than using county by county data. Nonetheless, you can put together an interesting overview of the whole, assuming that residence patterns didn't change too drastically from 1990-2000.
There are some interesting and peculiar variations -- for example, it seems that New York City and a couple of the larger cities within New York state apparently have so many blacks that they deform the results for that state. It also seems to be true of Detroit and a few other areas in Michigan, California with San Francisco and Los Angeles, and Chicago and a few cities in Illinois (Peoria, Rockford, and East St Louis, at a guess). Other than that, the two maps are more or less consonant. We're apparently a very localized bunch of people, not terribly surprisingly given history.
(You do wonder what the heck is going on with West Virginia, though.)
The PRC paints an unexpectedly cheery picture for education and other demographics, based on 2000 data. I wonder if 2010 data will show the same unexpectedly cheery trend. It's likely that both education and poverty will be affected by the recent recession, for example.
Posted by iain at April 07, 2004 12:41 PM
