The 2020 Census is out. Sorta. So far the Census Bureau released the summary files used for legislative redistricting and an interactive visualization of racial diversity for states and counties. But I want to know the racial diversity of each municipality in NJ. And here it is.1

Credit where due: Disha Raychaudhuri, then at NJ Advanced Media, did this first in 2019. I’m just updating the numbers using the latest census.

First, how do we measure racial diversity? The Census Bureau uses a very intuitive index that answers the question: If you randomly pick 2 residents of a municipality, what is the probability that they’ll identify as different races? I use that same index here. If a town’s index is over 50%, then 2 random residents are more likely to have different races than not.

Don’t mistake diversity for integration. Nate Silver found that the most diverse US cities are often the most segregated. Chicago is one of the most diverse places in the country, but by far the most segregated. Philadelphia is not among the most diverse but is one of the most segregated. Jersey City is the most diverse city in Silver’s sample, and while it’s well-integrated compared to others, that’s not saying much since few US cities are close to being as integrated as they are diverse. I’ll explore how segregated or integrated NJ counties and towns are in another post.

New Jersey has a racial diversity index value of 65.8%. Pick 2 random New Jerseyans; they’re very likely to identify as different races. In the tables below, counties and municipalities that are less diverse than the state overall are highlighted red.

Counties

Middlesex County is the most racially diverse, followed closely by Essex. The chance that 2 random Middlesex County residents identify as different races is 72.2%. Bergen, the most populous county, falls in the middle. Cumberland, more rural, ranks surprisingly high. Even though counties like Camden, Atlantic, and Bergen have scores well above 50%, they’re still lacking in diversity compared to the state as a whole.

Municipalities

Thanks to Boroughitis and the home rule myth, NJ has tons of municipalities–565 in total. Some, like Pine Valley and Tavistock, are incorporated golf courses with populations in the double or even single digits. It’s too easy to be diverse if you’re only 9 people, so it’s fair to exclude such tiny places, but where should I draw the line?

I chose to exclude municipalities with fewer than 1,000 residents. That means 533 municipalities appear in the rankings table below.

Check out the Camden area.

Camden is less diverse than the state overall and especially its neighbor Pennsauken, but any 2 residents are still likely to differ by race. Its closest suburbs are just plain not diverse. Anything with “Haddon” in its name is at least 85% white. Same for Audubon and Mount Ephraim. Collingswood, Oaklyn, and Gloucester City aren’t much better.

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  1. Hey nerds, if you want to work with the redistricting summary files, too, here’s how to do it with R, or just use this API with any language except COBOL. Here’s the code I used to clean NJ’s data for this post. Here’s the code for this post, including the tables and maps.↩︎