Map Gallery of Ethnic Groups in US: The rouge, off-white, and French blue

What do you get when you cross the U.S. Census Bureau with Don Rickles? A country-by-country breakdown of America’s ethnic groups, and God’s own gift to political consultants, history buffs.

These PowerPoint-friendly PDFs are color-coded, and the colors themselves are home-country metaphoric: The ubiquitous Irish are clover green. The Mexican red belt reflects the hot flush of sentiments boiling up in our border states. The French are French blue, of course, and red-blooded Americans will be pleased to learn that the Russians are, in fact, yellow. According to the Census Bureau, whites — that is, actual Caucasians — will become a national minority by 2042. But these maps, which are based on the 2000 Census, are a timely reminder that America never was that white to begin with, and that — demographically speaking — the future is nowhere we haven’t been before.