Explores settlement patterns of the United States' major racial and ethnic groups. Activity relies on the U.S. Race and Ethnicity Project within ArcVoyager and is based upon 1990 Census data.
ArcVoyager (ArcView) Software
The United States is a nation of many races and ethnic groups. From pre-Columbian time to present, people of many heritages have come to this land under a range of circumstances. The result is a rich human mosaic. As a single nation approaching 270 million inhabitants, the United States is not necessarily a geographic melting pot. Where different racial and ethnic groups live today is, in part, a legacy of their histories in this land and more recent settlement choices. What do these patterns look like? How do they vary across differing levels of geography?
Failsafe: If you have a technical problem with an ArcVoyager project, don’t panic. Simply use the QUIT button (or if need be, the EXIT feature in the FILE menu) to quit out of that session of ArcVoyager and reopen a fresh copy of the project from the ArcVoyager Guide.
Critical step! ArcVoyager (ArcView) skills already in place? This exercise assumes that you are familiar with a few key ArcVoyager (ArcView) operations. These include: turning themes on and off, making a theme active, reordering themes in the table of contents, using the identify tool, navigating within a view, and working with the legend editor. If these are not familiar, review the How to Use the Atlas section of the ArcVoyager Guide and practice these operations using the World Atlas. For more practice, work with the Exploring Earthquakes and Related Processes exercise prior to this lesson. It will help you learn the basics of legend editing.
Detailed help also can be found in the ArcView online Help system. To open the ArcView help, click the HELP TOPICS menu. Pay particular attention to the topic CREATING AND USING MAPS. (To see a listing of topics, click on the CONTENTS tab.)
Using wall maps of the United States, atlases, and ArcVoyager’s United States--Race and Ethnicity project (Designing Global Adventures: Point Me), you will:
Task 1. Hypothesize about the areas of concentration for the nation’s major race and ethnic groups. (Where do you expect to find the greatest numbers or proportions of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanic Americans. Why? What mental maps and other knowledge are you using?)
Task 2. Explore and describe the actual geographic patterns of racial and ethnic residence for differing levels of geography (i.e. across states and counties).
Procedures for Task 1: Hypothesize about the areas of concentration for major race and ethnic groups.
1-1. You will examine where different groups of people reside in the United States. The groups of interest are those directly identified in the U.S. census--African Americans, Native Americans, Asian and Pacific Islanders, and Hispanic Americans.
1-2. Discuss and describe what you know about historical and recent settlement patterns of these groups. Using wall maps, atlases, and similar tools, make predictions about the recent patterns (1990 census) in the nation’s states and counties. Record these in some manner for use during the discussions in Task 2.
Procedures for Task 2: Explore and describe the actual geographic patterns of racial and ethnic residence.
2-1. Use ArcVoyager to evaluate your hypotheses. Open ArcVoyager’s United States--Race and Ethnicity project found in Designing Global Adventures: Point Me.
2-2. Focus your attention on the Native American population. The map of the 48 contiguous United States presents the distribution of Native Americans as a proportion of the total population.
2-3. Describe the map display (the VIEW). It shows the distribution of Native Americans (American Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts) as a percent of the total population measured in the 1990 census. What states have high percentages of Native Americans? Does the pattern match their hypotheses?
What’s that list in the gray area on the left? This is also a good time to notice the list of theme names in the legend (the TABLE OF CONTENTS) and identify which themes are currently visible in the map. (These have a check mark next to their name in the TABLE OF CONTENTS.) Scroll down the list of themes in the TABLE OF CONTENTS. Notice the county theme for Native Americans as well as the pairs of state and county themes for the other racial/ethnic groups.
2-4. The map is focused on the 48 contiguous states. What about Alaska and Hawaii? To change the map’s focus quickly, click the ZOOM TO ACTIVE THEME(S) button.
Wondering what each button and tool does? Without clicking, slowly move your cursor across the button and tool icons. A brief description of each is displayed in the STATUS BAR. (On a Windows machine, this is at the bottom of the ArcVoyager window. For a Macintosh, it is the line just below the ArcVoyager tools.)
Lost on the map? With a U.S. STATE or COUNTY layer as the ACTIVE THEME (“raised”), click the ZOOM TO ACTIVE THEME(S) button to get back to a full U.S. view. To get back to the previous 48- state view, click the ZOOM TO PREVIOUS EXTENT button. This button stores up to five previous map extents (the area that is visible in the display window).
2-5. What does the 50-state perspective show? Are the percentages for Alaska and Hawaii higher or lower than those in other states? Which of the contiguous 48 states have similarly “high/low” Native American percentages? What are the top ten Native American states?
Wait a minute, something’s changed! Notice that the menus, buttons, and tools are now different. By clicking the OPEN TABLE button, you have left the map area (VIEWS) and have now opened the database area (TABLES). Notice that the TITLE BAR for the map is “grayed out.” Something called ATTRIBUTES OF % NATIVE AM. 1990 (STATE), the TABLE of information about the states, is now the ACTIVE WINDOW.
Tip: Moving between windows. To toggle between the map and table, click the WINDOW menu. In the list near the bottom, select UNITED STATES--RACE AND HISPANIC ORIGIN. The map is now the ACTIVE WINDOW. To return to the table, click the WINDOW menu again, select ATTRIBUTES OF % NATIVE AM. 1990 (STATE) (or click the OPEN TABLE button again). The table is in front and active again.
Long list! Is there a way to move fields? Yes, you can click on a field name, hold, and drag it to a new location. For example, you can move the STATE_NAME field to a location in the list nearer to the data you are reviewing. Although it may seem so, you are not permanently moving the item. The move remains in effect only during the current ArcVoyager session. The next time you open this project it will return to its original location.
You also can remove (again, temporarily) fields from the list by changing a field to “invisible.” Simply click the TABLE menu, select PROPERTIES, and click the checkmark next to the name of any field you don’t want to see in the data table. Turning off a number of fields is a good way to avoid information overload. Also in this area, field names can be given aliases. So instead of P_AMERI_ES, a field can be named “% Native American.”
Do this by clicking the cursor on each of the top ten states in the ranked-ordered list. Click first on the Alaska record in the table. It becomes YELLOW in the table and on the map. Hold down the SHIFT key on the keyboard and click the next nine states in the list.
Safety tip! Do not click your cursor on a record inside the data table unless you want to change the items selected. With the SELECT tool (cursor) engaged, an errant click will change the selected set.
2-6. Describe what you expect to see on a map displaying the same information for counties.
Note: the county layer will “overwrite” the state data. Watch this. It may be useful to display it again. Turn off the county layer. Wait a moment and turn it back on. Compare the differences between mapping this field by state and by county. What areas change, disappear, or appear?
2-7. What do you see? How is this geographic distribution by county different from or similar to the distribution by state? How does the map match your predictions?
2-8. To see regional and state variations better, use the navigation buttons and tools (ZOOM and PAN) to move around the map. For more geographic context, turn on city, highway, lake, and river themes. (Note: These layers are currently below the race/ethnicity themes, they will have to be moved toward the top. Click on a theme name, hold, and drag it to a new location. )
To find out more about individual counties use the IDENTIFY tool. The theme of interest must be made the ACTIVE theme (by clicking on its name). When finished, close the IDENTIFY RESULTS window.
To rank the top Native American counties, use the discussion in Step 2-5. Open the data table for counties
and sort the counties on percent and number of Native Americans. The results may surprise you.
2-9. When this portion of the exploration is complete, hide the legend for both of the Native American layers (using the HIDE/SHOW LEGEND button) and turn both off. Finally, use the ZOOM TO ACTIVE THEMES button to get back to a U.S. view.
2-10. Discuss and explore the other race/ethnic groups, repeating the steps described above with the themes % African America (State), % African American (Cnty), % Asian American (State), % Asian American (Cnty), % Hispanic (State), % Hispanic (Cnty).
2-11. To make comparisons between different racial groups, it might be helpful to print some of the maps. You can create a LAYOUT that includes the map, a title, a scale and the legend.
Going further and reinforcing concepts.
3-1. As you discovered earlier in this exercise, there are many fields in the state and county data bases that can be mapped. To do so, use the theme COUNTIES (U.S.) or the theme UNITED STATES near the bottom of the TABLE OF CONTENTS.
Can’t read the entire name in the TABLE OF CONTENTS? You can adjust the width of the TABLE OF CONTENTS. To accomplish this, drag the cursor slowly across the border between the map display portion of the window and the gray TABLE OF CONTENTS box. When the cursor becomes a doublearrowed pointer, click, hold, and drag the TABLE OF CONTENTS frame to the right. Let go.
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