I can't work out Dearborn though.

From the Milwaukee map:

To match his map, Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, and Orange is Hispanic

What's missing?

My neighbors are completely mixed, which is why I love my hood so, so much. I will say that they're all middle class, though - so it's not mixed in that way.

What's missing?

Dearborn has the largest Arab population in the US. I'm not sure how that is depicted, but from the comments and squinting at Google maps it appears Dearborn is not coloured in.

That's what I'm saying - if they don't have a color assigned for Arab (or Middle Eastern or what have you) a lot of the population in Dearborn won't show as anything.

I am ashamed to say I had no idea there was a large black population in Milwaukee. Was there industry that attracted people there during the Great Migration? I don't know a damn thing about Milwaukee, I realize.

They could be part of "Asian".

They could be part of "Asian".

Yeah, or Caucasian, depending. That was what I was wondering. It took me a while to decide Dearborn was just less dense.

I was disappointed there was no Minneapolis. Minneapolis has large black and native-American populations.

I wish Salt Lake City was there. I know it would be a huge swath of red dots, but I'm curious about the distribution of everyone else.

Something like not eating meat, or some category of meat, I think I'd just say "I'd love to come for dinner. I don't eat red meat though - I hope that's not a problem?". For an actual bbq, telling them "I'm happy to bring something I can grill" would also be nice, but I'm betting nine times out of ten the response would be "oh don't worry about it, we can take care of you." Or it ought to be.

What Brenda and Jessica and...well, everyone else! said. I think these days "vegetarian" (or even pescetarian) is pretty darn common, and nobody should be shocked and it shouldn't be too hard to work around. If someone is specially inviting you to an opening of a new steak restaurant, then maybe more of a "I might not be the right person for that..." but, really.

Kate P, that's like a nightmare dish for me! Eggplant AND mushrooms?! Ew. But like you said--unless it's a close friend and/or it's just the two of us doing dinner, I wouldn't normally mention the mushroom thing, figuring it's probably going to be a side dish or I could eat around it.

If your issues are super complicated ("I am allergic to A, B, C, D, Y, Z" like one of my friends, whose list I can never remember even though we've been friends for years...) or drama (as in "I might die if I eat something that touched X"), then yeah, maybe to offer to bring something. Or just go out. (This is why I usually make my vegan friends pick the restaurant when we go out--I figure they know where there is good vegan food, *I* sure haven't been paying attention to that, generally, except when out with other vegan friends!!)