Blacks and Hispanics in the United States, 2010

Although the two principal minorities in the United States are scattered over the whole of the country, their proportion of the population in the counties is very variable. The explanation for these differences is partly historical: the “Great Migration,” or the exodus of black people from the former slave states of the south toward the northeast and midwest over the course of the 19th century; but it is also due to the effects of proximity (Hispanics, for example, are more numerous along the Mexican border). However, the third map shows that their numbers increased in the east and center in the first ten years of the 21st century.