California may be our future, but Illinois is the present...

... which, given that they top the list among states in the worst financial shape in the country, isn't too comforting. What I'm referring to here, though, is racial composition, exclusively. The following table* ranks each state by its racial disparities with the US on the whole:

State	Variance
1. Illinois	4.1
2. New Jersey	10.3
3. New York	13.4
4. Connecticut	15.7
5. Florida	17.2
6. Virginia	17.9
7. Colorado	20.7
8. North Carolina	21.4
8. Delaware	21.4
10. Rhode Island	25.5
11. Arkansas	26.2
12. Nevada	27.1
13. Washington	27.2
14. Massachusetts	27.6
15. Michigan	27.8
16. Oklahoma	28.0
17. Kansas	30.3
18. South Carolina	30.7
19. Tennessee	30.8
20. Pennsylvania	31.4
21. Oregon	31.5
22. Alaska	32.8
23. Alabama	33.2
24. Utah	34.0
25. Missouri	34.1
26. Georgia	34.6
26. Ohio	34.6
28. Maryland	34.9
29. Indiana	35.4
30. Nebraska	37.1
31. Arizona	37.2
32. Louisiana	38.5
33. Wisconsin	39.1
34. Idaho	40.4
35. Minnesota	40.5
36. Texas	41.6
37. Kentucky	44.4
38. New Hampshire	45.5
39. Wyoming	45.7
40. Mississippi	48.6
41. Iowa	49.6
42. Montana	51.6
43. South Dakota	56.2
44. West Virginia	56.7
45. North Dakota	57.6
46. California	59.2
47. Maine	59.9
48. Vermont	60.0
49. New Mexico	75.6
50. District of Columbia	81.7
51. Hawaii	91.1

The nation's capital isn't at all representative, nor is our putative future, California. Instead, the Midwest's most upstanding, exemplary state, where the level of moral rectitude is matched only by the transparent, civic-mindedness that so accurately describes its political scene, is the veritable "real America" of today. Hawaii and New Mexico are leaders in the realm of the exotic, yet only one is celebrated for being so, while the other is perhaps the state Americans know, think, and care about the least. Why are Maine and West Virginia near the bottom of the list? They're overwhelmingly white, of course, while the nation they belong to no longer is.

* The variation index values are calculated by taking the population of each state that is non-Hispanic white, black, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American, and finding the absolute difference with the country as a whole in each of these five categories. For simplicity's sake, presume the US is 70% white, 15% Hispanic, 10% black, 3% Asian, and 2% Native American. The state of Eagleland is 55% white, 25% Hispanic, 5% black, and 15% Asian, and 0% Native American. So Eagleland's variance index value is 39 ([55-70]+[25-15]+[5-10]+[15-3]+[0-2]). Figures are calculated from 2009 US Census data.