To 7-year old Dick Mansfield, it was a simple enough question at the time: “Mommy, where did Chisko and Sumi go?” The blunt, straightforward answer: the Manzanar War Relocation Facility. The in-depth explanation of course, would be far more convoluted, and would take years of anger, probing, and examination to uncover. There was no hard evidence of an impending homegrown threat-- just a gripping fear that seized the American population in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attacks.

The purpose of compiling social statistics for the US census is to capture screenshots of its rapid evolution and to create a sense of what present-day America is like. After all, public policy is forged based on our needs; if we just created policy based on what our impression of America looks (or should look) like, minority groups would most likely be marginalized within the system. The census documents changes all across the board: racial makeup of regions, fluctuations in urban and suburban populations, socioeconomic levels.

By now, everyone is familiar of the sweeping, romanticized narrative of America as the greatest country in everything possible. It has permeated the air waves and swallowed up zillions of pixels on the Internet. But the numbers reflect something more sobering.