America Is Still Really Segregated
The Racial Dot Map is a data mapping tool created by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center that is really under-utilized. The map places a dot for every American on a U.S. map, each colored according to the person’s race.
With this representation, we get a pretty, rainbow-colored view of the gritty reality of segregation in America.
This tool can lead to a lot of stunning (and depressing) findings about modern-day segregation and racial gaps in America, many of which I’ve already written about. For instance:
- There are 56 majority-black neighborhoods in Wisconsin. Of these black neighborhoods, 21 are low-income housing, two are homeless shelters, and 31 — more than half — are jails.
- Black and Latino neighborhoods in Madison, Wisconsin are directly correlated with struggling schools, fast food joints, payday loan outlets, and heightened usage of free/reduced lunch.
But there’s even more to uncover. I’ve compiled a list of shocking findings from the Racial Dot Map about modern-day segregation and racial disparities in America. Let’s get right into it.
It’s Hard to Find a Single Blue Dot on New York City’s Rikers Island Jail Complex
According to reports, the jail complex at Rikers Island is 57% Black and 33% Hispanic. Accordingly, practically every dot above is green, orange, or brown. This is heavily incongruous with New York City’s general population, which is 44% white.
Jails and Homeless Shelters in LA Are Almost Exclusively Black and Hispanic
Men’s Central Jail and the Skid Row homeless shelters of Los Angeles seem to lack a single blue dot.
Native Hawaiians Are Incarcerated Disproportionally
Hawaii doesn’t have any actual jails on its islands. Instead, the majority of Hawaiian prisoners are flown out to Arizona to be held in Saguaro Prison, located in the bottom left corner of this image (the other prisons in the complex hold Arizonan prisoners). Although only 10% of Hawaii’s general population is native, Native Hawaiians make up nearly 40% of the state’s inmates, as can be seen with the plurality of brown dots above.
Streets Often Serve As Explicit Racial Borders
Quite commonly, streets and other physical barriers like rivers or train tracks serve as explicit racial dividers. This is the case with Eight Mile Road in Detroit:
This phenomenon also appears with Austin Blvd. (vertical white-black border) and Roosevelt Rd. (horizontal white-Hispanic border) in Chicago:
And check out this bizarre layer cake in western New Orleans:
Many Burmese Refugees Are Sent to Kansas to Work at Tyson Foods
If you’re unfamiliar with the xenophobic persecution of the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, called “the world’s most persecuted minority” by the UN, please read my blog post on the subject. Many Rohingya refugees, as well as refugees from Somalia, are sent to Garden City, Kansas (the patch of red dots towards the top) to work for Tyson Foods.
These refugees make an already-poor city even poorer. Largely due to the influx of refugees, 341 children in Garden City were homeless in 2012 — up from 43 just five years earlier, in 2007.
Native American Reservations Have Some of America’s Highest Mortality Rates
The second image is a map of mortality rates from FiveThirtyEight. You do the investigating yourself. The correlation seems pretty clear.
Even Towns of 343 People Are Segregated
Congratulations Fredonia, Arkansas.
Analyzing Ten Random State Prisons
I used a randomization tool to select ten U.S. states. From each of these states, I used the randomization tool again to select a prison from that state. I then found that prison on the Racial Dot Map and screen capped it. This is what I found.
Not all of these prisons indicate a clear disparity in incarceration, which is to be expected from a randomly-sampled analysis. But in every example above — save Nevada, possibly — the proportion of blue dots is in contrast with the proportion of non-Hispanic whites living in the state.
Conclusion
I recently watched the gruesome, gut-wrenching video of Philando Castile, a man who followed the law better than most of us would in that situation, getting shot six times after being pulled over for a broken taillight and following the officer’s orders to a tee. And yet, the officer who murdered him was supported by Blue Lives Matter folks across the country and was given a verdict of “not guilty.”
These dot maps immediately flashed into my mind while watching that video. We can have all the evidence under the sun of the racial gap in America — studies showing higher marijuana arrest rates for blacks despite equal marijuana usage, analyses of vastly higher poverty rates among communities of color, a video of a Walter Scott posing zero threat to anyone and getting shot in the back, and the maps you saw above — and yet so many of us still don’t see a problem.
The way to change the horror of the dot maps above is twofold. We must mitigate the segregation of residential neighborhoods, which is largely perpetuated by different levels of socioeconomic standing. To level the socioeconomic playing field, we must invest in economic development, mental health services, and affordable access to human rights like food, health care, and housing in communities of color. We must also end the disproportionate makeup of minorities in American jails. To chip away at this issue, we should end the Drug War, divest from police militarization, and support initiatives that put community members in the decision making seat over police jurisdiction.
The data is out there. We understand the problem. Now, let’s work together towards the solution.
