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.
