The most diverse U.S. cities are... (America, population, Atlanta)

[aaronstlcards]

There are quite a few threads in this forum regarding racial diversity, and most of the time the topic is something like "Which city is more diverse" or "What is the most diverse city in the U.S." So all of this inspired me to research and try to find what the most diverse cities in the U.S. are. I am very interested in spread sheets and city statistics, especially racial demographics, so a few weeks ago I made a spread sheet that included the 51 most metro populated U.S. cities. One of the categories of the spread sheet is racial demographics and the sub-headers for that is Caucasian %, African-American %, Hispanic %, and Asian % (my info is from 2000 and I got it straight from the Census Bureau web site). Then after seeing all of this stuff about racial diversity, I decided to devise a formula. The formula was very simple. All I did was add the two highest percantages for each city and that was their diversity index. The lower the diversity index number, the more diverse the city. (For example, St. louis is 42.9% white, 51.2% black, 2% hispanic, and 2% asian. The two highest percentages are 42.9% white and 51.2% black, I added them together. Their diversity index would be 94.1). I made this list mainly on the formula but the formula led to Portland being more diverse than Denver, so sometimes I might have slightly modified the order of the cities. I wanted to post my entire spread sheet here, but there was an error, so here are my top 28 most racially diverse cities with a metro population over 1,000,000:
1. Oakland
2. San Jose
3. New York
4. Sacramento
5. Chicago
6. Houston
7. Dallas
8. San Francisco
9. Boston
10. San Diego
11. Providence
12. Los Angeles
13. Tampa
14. Orlando
15. Hartford
16. Oklahoma City
17. Minneapolis
18. Las Vegas
19. Denver
20. Milwaukee
21. Rochester
22. Austin
23. Philadelphia
24. Charlotte
25. Washington
26. Miami
27. Seattle
28. Raleigh
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.

[()_T]

[415_810]

So you added the top two races and came up with the index. So the city with the lowest number is your most diverse?

IF so than it couldn't be fully accurate considering there are more than two races in every city.The list looks good, but some cities are more diverse than one you have higher? i.e. San francisco is more diverse than dallas.

[aaronstlcards]

Actually, San Francisco is not more diverse than Dallas.
Dallas
White: 34.6%
Black: 25.9%
Hispanic: 35.6%
Asian: 2.7%

San Francisco
White: 43.6%
Black: 7.8%
Hispanic: 14.1%
Asian: 30.8%

[415_810]

Maybe not, but San Fran has more races than dallas in larger %. The hispanic population is mixed with latino's from all over. As well as asian considering that it is chinese, filipino, vietnamese, japanese, thai, etc.

[aaronstlcards]

It's good that we can agree. and your point is well understood also.

[415_810]

For sure, All in all I like the list! I think it is very accurate.

[nature's message]

Oklahoma City over Washington, D.C.?? Charlotte over Atlanta?? Virginia Beach over Jersey City?? What an odd list.

[aaronstlcards]

These rankings were based off of the formula, but I still stand by my post.
Oklahoma City: 64.7% white, 15.4% black, 10.1% hispanic, 3.5% asian.
Washington: 27.8% white, 60% black, 7.9% hispanic, 2.7% asian.

Charlotte: 55.1% white, 32.7% black, 7.4% hispanic, 3.4% asian.
Atlanta: 31.3% white, 61.4% black, 4.5% hispanic, 1.9% asian.

Jersey City would have been the most diverse city but it wasn't listed on the highest metro population list. Yes, I know, it's part of NYC which has a metro of 20,000,000 but it wasn't on the list.

[()_T]

Los Angeles at number 12!?!?!!



That list is bias!