Thanks to feMOMhist I discovered this interactive map that shows you the racial makeup of your zip code area. Mine is: 98,1% of population is white. What’s yours?
The data in the map is based on the census. Press here to access the map and enter your zip code.
According the the Census Bureau my zip code is 90% white, 7.6% hispanic, 0.4% Asian and 0.2% black. There are 5,229 people in the zip code so that is 10.46 blacks, 20.92 Asians, 397.4 hispanics and 4,706.10 whites. We have 213 square miles in the zip code, so that is a population density of 24.5 people per square mile, fairly rural. Although the “racial” designations used by the Census Bureau is ridiculous and has no scientific basis, it is useful since people do self-identify.
My question is where the 10.46 blacks are in the zip code. There are a couple of white single moms in the area with black bi-racial kids, so maybe that is where the numbers come from. But there haven’t been any adult blacks living in the area for at least 5 years. I am also highly dubious about the “hispanic” category. We have a number of migrant hispanic farmworker families who may have been somewhere else on April 1. But, illegals don’t respond to Census requests anyway and there are a number of illegals in the area.
My youngest boy’s natural father was Filipino. Did he put that down for himself and the 4 grandkids? He has a Spanish surname and he hates being called Mexican, so he might have. That would make 5 that might have been categorized as Asian. There is a Japanese fellow with 2 bi-racial kids, so between the 2 families we might have 8 of the 20.92 Asians in the zip code.
I want to know why I count as white. In 1970 a friend of mine was a teacher in Detroit. They sent out a “racial survey” of employees that my friend was sure would be used to fire non-minorities. He checked “Oriental”. When his black prinicpal called him in to demand that he change it to white, he refused. He said that he was a Jew and the Jews have always been known as an “oriental people”. Besides his parents emigrated to this country from Vladivostok, which is about as eastern as you can get. Of course, these days “oriental” is a slur, so despite milennia of being known as “an oriental people”, the Census Bureau says that we no longer are. Does my Israeli ex-wife count as African since her father was born in Algeria? I am sure that your students will have lots of entertaining comments on this one, Clarissa.
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I believe they perturb the census counts a little because of privacy. That may account for your 10.46 blacks.
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I entered my hometown, out of curiosity. 43% white, 17% Hispanic, 16% Asian. I get the feeling this data is a bit skewed because there’s no category for Pacific Islander.
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My group of blocks: Black 52%, White 44%, Hispanic 3%, 0% Asian/Pacific Islander (that’s one category for Census purposes). Next group of blocks over in one direction it’s much whiter, and in the other it’s much blacker, I’m in the borderland.
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There are counties where the Category ‘Others’ are the vast majority and yet they don’t get properly named ? Or do they assume that people can’t deal with more than 4 different ones ?
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Tim – It’s this piece of software & also the attempt to group for sake of trying to figure out who to serve. In actual records there are many more names. “Hispanic” doesn’t mean just one thing, for instance, but the concept is that they’re likely to speak Spanish at least ancestrally.
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My immediate neighborhood is 49.3% white, 19.3% black, 18.9% Asian and 9% Hispanic. The entire zip code area seems to be about 80% white, with variation amongst the different census blocks.
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My group of blocks in St. Louis is 70%. In Kansas, more than 90%. My one short street in St. Louis, one block long, has Asians, Jews, people from Kenya, a guy who is half Mexicans, Whites, and African Americans. That’s just in 12 houses.
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We’re 53% white, 37% Asian, with less than 4% each Latino and black. Sounds pretty accurate.
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It seems like the area where I live is the whitest so far in this thread.
No surprise the food is so boring around here.
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93.5 white, 2.5 black, 2.5 hispanic, 1.5 asian, but perhaps it should be 93.4 white because once again my students yesterday told me that I am not white 🙂
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Wow, if you are not white enough for those kids, then I can only imagine what their life experiences have been like. 🙂
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When I was in Kentucky I was told I was not white, and also in Grad school on a couple of occasions.
The funny thing is that my students who think I am not white are from Spanish America.
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In Lat Am and also Louisiana, depending on who you talk to, you may or may not be considered white if you have brown eyes, or are Jewish / Mediterranean, etc. In US Irish, some Eastern Europeans, etc. weren’t considered white originally. To be sure always to qualify you have to be really light and also have a certain set of mannerisms and/or cultural attitudes. I figure out at one point that “race” was a practice — it is also a visual marker of difference, but there’s much that goes into it since it’s not a scientific category.
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My students at Cornell asked me, “So are you saying that black people are no different from us except for their skin color? How is that possible?” That was very sad to me. Of course, that was a campus where you rarely saw a black student. here, at least, we have a more diverse racial make-up among students.
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A few years ago I was working with the local Mexican consul to help Mexican immigrants who had difficulty reading and writing fill out forms for identity cards. One of his assistants was explaining Mexican skin color classifications for the card to the Anglo helpers. You had “blancos”, “morenos”, and “negros”. However, these were not the same as in the US. The negros were not necessarily of African origin. The example given to me was some of the darker “indios”. The speaker, who had black hair and pale white skin, described herself as “moreno”. Her example of “blanco” was the consul who was clearly mestizo with a caramel colored complexion. It seemed to be more a social class than a color or facial feature system of classification.
While I don’t deny racism in Brasil, one of my friends who understood US racism because he went to the University of Oklahoma explained to me that “in Brasil, we don’t discriminate based on skin color; we discriminate on the basis of poverty.” His family was very wealthy and I had dinner with about 20 family members once. Appearances ranged from very Nordic to very African, including one cousin who was very dark, almost blue, with amazing green eyes. I asked another friend about his ethnic background, I thought he was Italian, and he just laughed and said, “Puro Brasilero”.
Of course, as we say in Brasil, “Ser negro en Bahía é ser médico.”
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Yeah — and next news: my most recent pre-Katrina N.O. neighborhood is now 78% Black, 15% white, and 7% Hispanic! I am betting those Hispanics are mostly post-storm! (My earlier neighborhood was historically more Hispanic, but where I was just living, it wasn’t.)
And, once again, it is right next to a much whiter set of blocks — 70% white — and a much Blacker set — 95% Black. All of this must make me “muito mestiça” … 🙂
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OK, I’m fascinated with it and must quit.
My earlier place in N.O.:
59 white, 22 Black, 16 Hispanic, 1 Asian.
My favorite of my apts in college and grad school:
57 white, 26 Asian, 8 Hispanic, 4 Black.
Where my parents live now:
90 white, 7 Hispanic, 2 Asian, 1 Black.
My parents’ last address in the town I grew up in:
84 white, 10 Hispanic, 2 Asian, 1 Black.
This shows, I started out whiter but then got darker and darker, and I am now a mixed Creole and Mexican. 😉
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I’m glad you are enjoying this. 🙂
I swear, I’m so tired of the unrelieved whiteness in my area that it’s getting to annoying. It feels like I’m back in my country where you only see people of other races and ethnicities on television and rarely at that.
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My area is 100% brown. It’s also the most diverse place I’ve lived in, just not racially. Whatever race might be, exactly.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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