Although we used social explorer primarily to determine our exploratory paths for our Brooklyn and Manhattan Chinatown research, out of curiosity I decided to explore census information for the United States as a whole, and was astonished.

Having grown up in New York City, I seldom thought any more of the diversity around me than I did of the paint on the walls or the plumbing in the bathroom; yeah, sure, they’re nice, but they’re just part of living in America, right?

Wrong.

If I had checked US census data with no prior first-hand experience, I would’ve been convinced that America were some isolated land of Caucasian-Americans and nothing else, (and that the immigration trends we’ve been discussing in school all these years were merely some sort of fairytale.

Its true, there were a few speckles of diversity in the North-Atlantic region and Southern California, but across the nation, finding a visible Hispanic, Black, or Asian cluster was like finding a needle (or perhaps, chopstick) in a haystack. This isn’t the 1800s; we have 747s and high-speed railways now, why is it that so few ethnic immigrants (or people at all, for that matter) so rarely venture past the coast?