After my good friend Vincent took me to task for the comment about Alaska's racial makeup I sent him this reply:
The remark about Alaska's racial makeup was - like the crack about disability - just an aside and not of great relevancy. When you start talking demographics there all sorts of qualifiers and footnotes, but the point that I left undeveloped is that even in racial composition it is a wholly different place. In general, the "white" racial category includes the subgroup White Hispanics and varies greatly across the country. Of the total population, White Americans make up 76%. Non-Hispanic whites make up about 68% of the population. White Americans are the majority in every region, but attain their highest concentration in the Midwest, where they account for 84% of the population. African Americans make up 12%, Asian Americans 5%, and Hispanics 15%. 45% of American children under the age of 5 are minorities. Alaska breaks down to blacks 3.7%, Asians 4.6% and Alaskan natives 15.4%. I'm sorry that it distracted from the real point that Palin comes from nowhere with no apparent credentials save her gender and nutty politics. In contrast to Alaska, the United States is urbanized. 80.8 percent of its 300 million population residing in cities and suburbs. With a population of 670,000, Alaska is ranked 48th out of the 50 states. But ranked by population density, Alaska is the least densely populated at 2.849 people per square kilometer (1.1 per square mile), with the next nearest ranking state, Wyoming, at 13.208 (5.1 per square mile).
No comments:
Post a Comment