I'm not saying that conclusion is incorrect, but I'm not convinced by the article's preemptive rebuttal to the population heatmap counterargument. To its credit

I'm not saying that conclusion is incorrect, but I'm not convinced by the article's preemptive rebuttal to the population heatmap counterargument. To its credit the article mentions it: > The sociologist Kieran Healy has joked that most data visualization maps of the US show one of two things: population density or the percentage of the population that’s black. This is decidedly one of the latter maps, with the notable additions of heavily Latino counties in southern Texas and Indian reservations in South Dakota and Montana. However...statistics are pernicious. This is an extraordinary accusation, and before I accept it as true I'd like to see more due diligence to ensure there isn't (for example) a stray, superfluous correlation between population density and Hispanic/Black demographics at play here. With that aside, this looks like something that should definitely be investigated more thoroughly. Even if this is ultimately a side effect of minority groups being correlated with greater population density (and I don't know if that's true, to be clear), the ultimate consequence looks pretty negative.