The Colors of Our Communities

My hubby was doing a little demographic digging*. For your amusement, here are a couple of multiple choice questions. The answers may surprise you. They will surely be thought provoking:

1. Which is the most ethnically diverse city in the Pacific Northwest?

a. Vancouver, B.C.
b. Seattle, WA
c. Tacoma, WA
d. Portland, OR

2. Which city is whitest?

a. Vancouver, B.C.
b. Seattle, WA
c. Tacoma, WA
d. Portland, OR

3. Which city is least white?

a. Vancouver, B.C.
b. Seattle, WA
c. Tacoma, WA
d. Portland, OR

4. Which city has the most African Americans?

a. Vancouver, B.C.
b. Seattle, WA
c. Tacoma, WA
d. Portland, OR


Answers:

1. Tacoma, 2. Portland, 3. Vancouver, 4. Tacoma

Here are some interesting stats on the ethnic makeup of some of our NW cities:

Af Am Asian Latino Native Pac Isl White
Vancouver 0.9% 45% # 1.9% # 51%
Seattle 6.6% 13.1% 5.28% 1.0% 0.5% 73%
Tacoma 11.24% 7.5% 6.85% 1.96% 0.93% 69.08%
Portland 6.69% 6.33% 6.81% 1.06% 0.38% 77.9%

Tri-Cities-
Pasco 3.2% 2.9% 56.6% 1.8% 0.14% 52.76%
Kennewick 1.1% 0.11% 15.6% 2.12% 0.11% 82.9%
Richland 1.4% 4.06% 4.72% 0.8% 0.11% 89.6%

Only Vancouver is less white than Tacoma, but much of their non white population is Asian, so Tacoma is more racially "balanced".

Perhaps not surprisingly, Portland is whitest, but somewhat surprising to me was that Seattle is not far behind.

For some reason, I was surprised to see that Tacoma has almost twice as many the African Americans as Seattle has.

# = unknown (Canada doesn't have a census like ours and apparently it was harder to figure out how they calculate some groups. Further investigation needed).

I think this is interesting stuff. What do you all think?

*from wikipedia.org