Racial Maps of the United States

O NE of the most difficult problems in the political geography of European countries, that of national minorities, is happily lacking in the United States. We have no areas in which the majority of the residents are both culturally and nationally associated with outside countries rather than with the United States. Indeed, there are few areas in which the language of the majority is other than English (American). However, in place of this problem of national minorities the United States has more permanent problems of racial minorities-problems in a form essentially unknown in Europe. The differences between French and English, Germans and Poles, or even Swedes and Finns, Rumanians and Magyars are essentially cultural, not biological. Germans have become French and Poles have become Germans in two generations. So far as appearance is concerned, the barber and the tailor can make the change in a day. But no amount of education can change into white Americans the descendants of the negroes who arrived in Virginia before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, just as no beauty shop can make a fullblood negro look like a white person. The problems of our racial minorities are regional. The presence of a large proportion of negroes in the population is the feature that most distinguishes the southeastern United States. Indeed, if one considers any of the problems of the South-whether of crop systems, soil erosion, farm tenancy, settlements, or industrial development, not to mention social and political problems-one must agree with the popular conception, that this population characteristic is the single most important factor in the geography of the region. It is not so generally known, however, that many areas in the South have but few negroes, proportionately fewer than certain areas in the North.' Likewise, people who know that there are relatively more Chinese and Japanese in our Pacific States than farther east may have an exaggerated idea of the actual proportions. Probably fewer people realize the importance of another racial problem-that of the Mexican Indians in our Southwest. The purpose of the accompanying maps is to depict the relative importance of these different races in the various sections of the United States. The chief interest is in the regional differences; conse

Geography · Political science · Diverse Educational Innovations Studies

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• Richard Hartshorne, 1899–1992

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