Diversity traces: an interactive lens on multi-racial families in America

The live footage of the talk, including the Q&A, can be viewed on the session page, VISAP: Papers 1.

Abstract

When looking at diversity from a racial perspective, homogenous communities are still the norm, as they remain siloed not only locally, but in their very own households as well. This visualization project comes as a celebration of the fringe couples and families who have a multi-racial identity, effectively embodying the intermingle of races, and dissolving the systemic barriers put on their very own existence. According to the census, there are only vestiges of these multi-racial families until 1960. More recently, there as been a surge of these families in the data, but they are still a rarity, still mere traces of diversity in America. In this visualization you can see every registered multi-racial couple in America, for recent periods in 1-5% samples of the population, and for older periods in 100% samples of the population. Each couple is represented as a colorful animated chromosome, enabling to see the races within each family, their ages, sexes, and children.