West Indian Ancestry in Brooklyn

Mapping West Indian heritage in Brooklyn, NY

library(tidyverse)
library(tidycensus)

## Warning: package 'tidycensus' was built under R version 4.4.1

library(sf)

## Warning: package 'sf' was built under R version 4.4.1

library(scales)
library(viridis)
library(plotly)

Methods

Purpose: Understand concentrations of population with West Indian heritage in Brooklyn, NY

Data sources:

• 5-year American Community Survey, 2018-2022: total population reporting heritage in Kings County, NY; population reporting West Indian Heritage in Kings County, NY

• NYC Open Data: Borough boundary shapefile

Methods:

• West Indian population calculated as portion of all individuals reporting heritage
• Removed all census tracks with no residents

boros <- st_read("~/Documents/Grad School/Methods 1/part2/data/raw/geo/Borough Boundaries.geojson")


raw_ancestry <- get_acs(geography = "tract", 
                        variables = c(ancestry_pop = "B04006_001",
                                      west_indian = "B04006_094"), 
                        state='NY',
                        county = 'Kings',
                        geometry = T, 
                        year = 2020,
                        output = "wide") 

## Warning: • You have not set a Census API key. Users without a key are limited to 500
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## ℹ For best results, get a Census API key at
## http://api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html and then supply the key to the
## `census_api_key()` function to use it throughout your tidycensus session.
## This warning is displayed once per session.

west_indian <- raw_ancestry |> 
  mutate(pct_west_indian = west_indianE/ancestry_popE,
         pct_west_indian = ifelse(is.nan(pct_west_indian), NA, pct_west_indian))

Results

ggplot()  + 
  geom_sf(data = west_indian, 
          mapping = aes(fill = pct_west_indian,
                        test = paste0(NAME, ":", 
                                      "<br>Percent West Indian Ancestry: ",
                                      percent(pct_west_indian, accuracy=1))),
          color = "transparent") +
  theme_void() +
  scale_fill_distiller(breaks=c(0, .2, .4, .6, .8, 1),
                       direction = 1,
                       na.value = "transparent",
                       name="Percent West Indian Ancestry (%)",
                       labels=percent_format(accuracy = 1L)) +
  labs(
    title = "Brooklyn, West Indian Ancestry by Census Tract",
    caption = "Source: American Community Survey, 2018-22"
  ) + 
  geom_sf(data = boros |> filter(boro_name == "Brooklyn"), 
          color = "black", fill = NA, lwd = .5)

## Warning in layer_sf(geom = GeomSf, data = data, mapping = mapping, stat = stat,
## : Ignoring unknown aesthetics: test

As demonstrated in the map above, West Indian populations are highly concentrated in the Canarsie, East Flatbush, and Flatlands neighborhoods of Brooklyn, with lower density in East New York and Crown Heights as well. There are very low concentrations of population with West Indian heritage in other Brooklyn neighborhoods.