An overview of Los Angeles/ Wikimedia Commons

The report, entitled “The End of the Segregated Century,” was illustrated by the most comprehensive map of race in America to date, which pinpointed and color-coded all 308,745,538 citizens recorded by the 2010 U.S. Census. 

The 2010 census found that whites accounted for just over 56 percent of the U.S. population, followed by Hispanics and Latinos at a little more than 16 percent, African-Americans at more than 12 percent, and Asians at just under 5 percent. American Indian, Pacific Islander, mixed races and other ethnicities accounted for the remaining 10 percent of the nation. 

In California, the most populous state in the nation with more than 37 million residents, whites represented approximately the national average at just over 57 percent. However, Asians represented 13 percent of the state's population and Hispanics and Latinos nearly 38 percent, both increases from the previous U.S. Census in 2000. 

Nationally, California is one of only four states, and the District of Columbia, in which whites are no longer the majority, a population threshold which it first surpassed in 1999, according to a report by the Census Bureau. In 2010, 60 percent of California's population was comprised by minorities. Los Angeles, meanwhile, earned this distinction several decades before the state. 

“Los Angeles has been a majority minority city for longer than most,” said USC Sol Price School of Public Policy Professor Dowell Myers. “The country as a whole is not expected to reach this threshold until 2043, so we're more than 50 years ahead of pace.”

The map, created by the Dustin Cable at the University of Virginia's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, represents whites with blue dots, Latinos with orange, Africa-Americans with green, Asians with red, and all other races with brown. An overview of Los Angeles reveals that, though there are distinct clusters of different ethnic groups, many regions of both the city and county show overlaps between the groups, creating gradients of yellow, purple, brown and gray. 

By contrast, in some of the nation's most segregated cities, including Detroit, Chicago and others across the Midwest, city blocks and major thoroughfares create strict and surprisingly exact divides between racial groups, suggesting a contradiction to “The End of the Segregated Century” as the Duke University reports suggests. 

“We have greater spatial integration than most cities that only have blacks and whites, there's a reduced binary of a black and white divide,” said Myers, who is also a demographer and urban planner. “However, spatial integration is somewhat old-fashioned. Social and economic integration should be taken into account too.”

According to the map, among the most racially diverse areas of Los Angeles are Mid-City, Koreatown and West Lake, though certain areas are still primarily populated by certain races and ethnic groups. South Central Los Angeles, for example, is known for many historically African-American areas, while Asian-Americans comprise much of the population in the San Gabriel Valley, Chinatown, Koreatown, and Westwood, and East LA is largely Latino. 

And according to even more recent data, both the city and county of Los Angeles are becoming increasingly diverse. In 2012, non-Hispanic whites comprised only 27 percent of the county's population, and less than 40 percent of the state's population. Ethnic minorities—including Latinos, Asians and African-Americans, and Native Americans—comprised more than two thirds of the county's racial demographic. Much of this, according to Myers, has less to do with new residents moving to the area, and more to do with the the increased integration of the existing population. 

“Immigration has bypassed LA in the past decade,” said Myers. “It's scaled way back since the level seen in 1975; newcomers are not coming here as much. But LA is the country's principal melting pot and children and younger generations are more and more likely to be multi-racial.”

According to Myers, one of the authors of a 2012 USC Price School of Public Policy report entitled “Racially Balanced Cities in Southern California, 1990 to 2010,” many of the demographic techniques used to map other cities aren't always applicable to a population as diverse as Los Angeles. 

“Los Angeles is far more complex than many demographers are used to, so some of these standard techniques don't describe us very well,” said Myers. “It's hard to verbalize what [the Cooper Center] map says; it doesn't really lend itself to analysis.”

The Price School of Public Policy's report states that “racial balance is measured by local representation of the four major population groups in the five-county region of Southern California,” but found that the county of Los Angeles has become less racially balanced in recent decades due to increasing populations of Asians and Latinos, and decreasing populations of blacks and non-Hispanic whites.”

Among the most balanced “four way” cities, in which all four major population groups were represented, include Los Angeles, Long Beach, Pasadena, Loma Linda and Rancho Cucamonga. The report concluded that Los Angeles County is one of just two counties, along with San Bernardino County, in the five-county region of Southern California to have so-called four-way cities. 

Still, on the whole, Myers said, Los Angeles as both a city and county have one of the most dynamic and diverse populations of any region in the country. 

“We have more of a racially balanced city approach,” said Myers. “Because there are really all types of cities in Los Angeles County.”

Reach Staff Reporter Olivia Niland here.