I looked to see if the population had two or more races to determine how diverse the area was. I heard that the Michael Lau’s pharmacy got mostly Asian (specifically Korean and Chinese) customers. Thus, I wanted to understand how mixed it was. New York City has all sorts of immigrants, and thus, these immigrants could either create families within their own culture or mix with other races. From the data on Social Explorer, it seems that the Asian population makes up 50% or greater in the area, depending on what part of the area, and that the White population makes up 50% or less. This shows that Asian tends to be the majority and the dominant populations are the White and Asian population. Even so, the races do not seem to mix. When comparing if residents are two or more races in the area between 2000 and 2015, there is little difference. I remember during the interview with Mr. Lau, he specifically stated that they made labels with Korean, Chinese, and English labels. Thus, they cater to these different populations but imply that they do have a decent amount of customers that cannot speak English and need Korean and Chinese services. Thus, this small percent of the mixed population is most likely due to the large language barrier between the two races. In addition, businesses in the area assist populations with these differences and seem to benefit from them. Should MJ88 only sell drugs in English, then they neglect the Asian population that needs medicine and surely another pharmacy would open up to cater to the group. I believe that MJ88 was opened and was able to prosper because of the large Asian population as well. Being a mom and pop pharmacy, they are able to be personal with their customers, and thus, create a popular image among the White population. However, what made them even more prosperous was being able to offer the same service to a population with needs. Since the races are not mixed, they do not share a common language. There is a large population of Asian residents that cannot speak English since they are not mixed easily with the other populations. Thus, the Asian residents who speak other languages come to MJ88 and allow the pharmacy to prosper from the non-English speaking population. Even so, when comparing the White populations and Asian populations, the Asian populations seem to be the majority (in the map the Asian population is blue and the White is green and MJ88 can be found around) of the area where MJ88 is located (along the Long Island Expressway to the left and a south of Little Neck Bay [which is the water body to the shown around the right side of the image]). The neighboring regions may have a larger White population than Asian, but because the Asian population outnumbers the White by over 20 to 30 percent in MJ88’s area, the contrast may allow the little room for mixed White and Asian populations to benefit MJ88 and give them the advantage of a language barrier for a while. The question now is if and when the White population in the neighboring areas may spread and soon diversify the population in MJ88’s area. Seeing as how there was little growth in residents that had two race between 2000 and 2015, I would believe that either the two populations would either mix exponentially or steadily and slowly. This may weaken MJ88’s future profit as the populations mixing might cause there to be less of a need to accommodate non-English speakers.
