How integrated is Sacramento?

One thing, at or near the top of the list, of the many things we Sacramento lovers love about our city, and the metropolis it hubs, is the diversity of the population. And we love how well we all get along with each other — that is, if you ignore the politicos and a diversity of problems.

Famously, the city of Sacramento was a featured story in a 2002 issue of Time magazine with this spiffy title: "Sacramento: Where Everyone's a Minority." But, certainly, things were not then and are not now unmitigatedly perfect. Per always, there's some ugliness and rivalries and claims (relating to realities) of institutional racism here and there.

The Sept. 2, 2002, article told us, "… while Sacramento approaches an ideal for integration, it certainly isn't paradise. Beneath the multicolored surface, the city's 407,018 inhabitants vacillate between racial harmony and ethnic tension."

New news, but from an older source, is a map of Sacramento's diversity. It's based on the 2000 census, but it does show — as compared to maps of other metropolises — that Sacramentans of different ethnicities are mixed in together. Red dots stand for 25 white people; blue dots stand for 25 black people; green dots for 25 people of other ethnicities.

You can click on the map posted here, and switch to higher or lower resolution.

The maps of Sacramento and 39 other major American metropolitan areas were made by a fellow named Eric Fischer. They are posted to an article about it all in the current issue of Utne magazine.

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