The counties with the greatest percentages of Asians are grouped on the west coast, mostly in California, and a little on the east coast. This could be because the west coast is the closest to Asia, and more asians populate the west coast since there is already a high percentage, probably comming all the way from the California goldrush and when laborers were brought to work on the transcontinental railroad.
Whites are the majority in many counties, especially the whole northern part of the U.S. Again, i think the reason is mostly people tending to remain and move to areas where they are surrounded by people of similar race and culture.
The counties with the greatest percentages of blacks are in the South. This is probably from when slavery was legal and many blacks were forcefully brought to the South.
The clumping of races into certain is a very obvious phenomenon. There are many possibilities on why this happens. Maybe people tend to live and have families where they were raised, so the next generation contains the same homogeneity. Another factor might be when someone moves to to a new area, whether from another country or another area in the US they might find a area that is already populated with people of their same culture and race more appealing that a area where the majority of people are of a different race. So areas that have some sort of race dominance will slowly get a bigger percentage of that race overtime with less people from other races moving there and an increased amount of the race that is already dominant.
This course has been a good introduction to the power and utility of GIS. I got a foundation in using the software as well as many general geographic concepts. I think GIS is easy, I find amazing the amount of transformations and data manipulation it can do with a few clicks. It uses are so varied and important because of its power and flexibility.
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