Lab 7: Racial Population Distribution

The picture above shows the percentage of black population across the Continental US. We could easily see that the major population is located along southeastern coast. It reminds me of the Atlantic slave trade from 16th to 19th. At that time, there were numerous plantations in south part of US (only part of today's US) and owners needed a huge amount of labor, so black people were sent to these places. Although black Americans got freedom after American Civil War, most of them did not move around or relocated. Probably because of the discrimination, they did not receive high level education and were lack of skills and technology. Fortunately, things get better after Obama took office. It not only reveals the social recognition for black people, but also brings US to a real multicultural country.

 

This map shows the Asian population across the Continental US and most of these Asian people were originally from China. Asian people, unlike black people, were located along southwest coast with less population density. People always remember the black slavery trade, while ignore the Chinese slavery trade, because it last much less time, transported much less people and the most important reason is that Chinese or say Asian people seldom complain about that and seldom organize demonstrations. The US merchants bought Chinese slavery after the State banned the black slavery. Because merchants and government needed a huge amount of labors for railroad construction (the main reason as the most of Chinese know), they deceived Chinese that they need many miners to dig gold in today’s San Francisco. Their real purpose was to let Chinese built railroad for Westward Movement. Therefore the great honor of Westward Movement, technically, should be given to Industrious Chinese people. Unfortunately, most Chinese workers did not speak English, so they did not even know their right or speak for themselves after they found they were cheated.

The third map is about some other races population across Continental US. From the map we can see that most of these people covered a huge land in southwest. I guess these people should consist of many Mexicans and Latinos. Most of them may come through the border between US and Mexican. Since they live near US and some of their ancestors were born in US (their birthplace may be not the US territory at that time), they face nearly zero discrimination. Therefore they could easily move around US and their language has been the second popular language in US.

Knowing the racial population distribution is crucial for a country’s policy and development. Therefore producing, understanding and analyzing this kind of distribution map are a group of competitive ability in today’s society. Geography knowledge and information may not come only from geography. They may also come from history and many other humanity sciences. Hence, in order to analyzing geography data extremely specify and comprehensively, especially like this, we need not only know how to use computer and ArcGIS well but also search enough information or gain plenty of background knowledge. Moreover, this map looks very helpful for economy study. In a long run, producing this kind of map could also help students to build high level interdisciplinary integrity.