The Interactive Racial Dot Map of the United States

I posted Check Out the Census Dotmap - Can You Find Your House? on 24 January 2013, but it was all in black and white.

The Demographics Research Group at the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virginia has now published a "Racial Dot Map" with each person represented by a dot on the map according to racial information in the 2010 census.  Here is the page with the link to the Interactive Map:

Here is the Interactive Map for the entire USA (except for Alaska and Hawaii in the view below):

The Racial Dot Map has colored dots for each White, Black, Asian, Hispanic and Other/Multi-Racial person.

I zeroed in on the San Diego area:

And zeroed in on the Chula Vista area (maximum zoom on the website):




I can identify several features on the map above, including the strip of I-805 running vertically through the image.  I can also identify several relatively clear areas to the left of the freeway, and can see the general street pattern of Chula Vista (generally a quarter mile grid west of I-805).

If I open the screen image file above, and zoom in further in my Photo viewer, I can see individual pixels.  By identifying the freeway, and the small relatively open area to the left of the freeway (just to the left of the center of the image below), I can figure out where our house is situated.  I've drawn a black circle around a dot that represent my wife and I:

The website says:  "Each of the 308 million dots are smaller than a pixel on your computer screen at most zoom levels. Therefore, the 'smudges' you see at the national and regional levels are actually aggregations of many individual dots. The dots themselves are only resolvable at the city and neighborhood zoom levels."

Apparently, each pixel on my screen above represents one to several persons.  The circle approximates my location.  

I love maps... this one is especially colorful - it shows the racial diversity and concentration of the USA, and the housing patterns across the country.  I'm not making any judgments, just stating what I perceive to be reality. 

My thanks to Tamura Jones for alerting me to this map in his post on Google+ on 1 December 2013.

Can you find the representation of yourself on this Interactive Dot Map?

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/12/the-interactive-racial-dot-map-of.html

copyright (c) 2013, Randall J. Seaver