My census tract (sort of)

Our assignment for Week 3 is to discuss the information available from the US Census website regarding my census tract. However, the house where my family currently lives lies on a subdivision that did not exist prior to 2005 and thus there is no census information for the surrounding area. From 1998 to 2005 I lived in Streamwood, IL in a house that my parents now rent. Moreover, I worked for the Village of Streamwood this past summer so I feel that discussing the census tract where I resided in the year 2000, in which I attended high school and did a whole lot of growing up will be acceptable for this assignment.

In the year 2000, Census Tract 8045.03 had a population of 8,372, with an almost even male to female ratio (49.5% to 50.5%). Most of the population (83.1%) lived in family households, reflecting the fact that Streamwood is made up mostly of single-family homes. There was a significant amount of households headed by single mothers (13.6%), which reflects national trends but was roughly equal to people living alone (13.3%). The median age was 29.6, reflecting a rather young population, children under 14 made up almost a third of the population, which is exactly as I recall the town. 76.1% of the houses were occupied by its owners with the rest (23.9%) being rentals. This is a reflection of the fact that Streamwood was at that point mostly a blue-collar community. Since then, there has been extensive construction of bigger houses to the West Side of the village that have attracted persons with higher incomes and created two distinct sections: one made up mostly of blue collar workers (many being immigrants) and one made up mostly of white collar professionals, but I digress.
The census tract was majority white (74.6%) with Asians accounting for 13.9% of the population, African Americans accounting for 8,9% and Hispanics (who are not counted as a separate race but rather as an ethnic group) accounting for roughly 29.9%. If one is to add up these numbers they will come out to more than 100%. Many of those Hispanics also chose White as their race in much the same way my family did. These ethnicity discrepancies surely create headaches for those whose job it is to figure out which groups to target/which groups to serve within a census tract.