Are we really this rare?

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There has been a lot of speculation about the most famous grunger Kurt Cobain who who was diagnosed with bi-polar. His wife Courtney Love was diagnosed as autistic as a child. Autism and creatitivity have been linked
http://www.disabilityscoop.com/2015/08/18/study-link-autism-creativity/20557/

Add that to the list of Conspiracies about Kurt Cobain. I know people try to characterize him as Bipolar, but I secretly think he was ASD, I understand his music a little to well. The "Grunge" movement began in Seattle so I made the Pacific Northwest connection.

I need a little more of that aspie creativity

As far as minorities go, we really aren't that rare. For example, we are much more numerous than jews.

wow I had no idea there were so few.

Of course society is no homogeneous, so whether people you know actually approaches the expected depends greatly on where you live and what social circles you belong to.

See? Pretty accurate! I would imagine some of those populations, like black and gay people, would vary depending on your specific region. For example, I live in a small city that has a higher population of people from the LGBTQ community, so it makes sense that I know a lot of gay people and am acquainted with too many to count. I probably know/am acquainted with 20 people who I know are LGBT or Q. Maybe closer to 30. When I lived in a different city, I knew way more black people than I do now, because the other city had more racial diversity.

As to the Pacific NW...autism rates could be higher in a particular place because it is easier for autistic people to live there, for whatever reason, because there's an autism panic and it's diagnosed more often out of fear, or because it used to draw autistic people a long time ago and their descendants are more likely to be on the spectrum. Or...it might happen because the place is LESS friendly for autistic people, so the negative autistic traits that often bring an official diagnosis are occurring more frequently as a coping mechanism.

I used to teach an Asian and African refugee population. My students would ask me why people in the US are so fat. They seemed to have an idea that Americans were genetically disposed to fatness, especially the poor ones. Of course, that's not true. Americans are fat because we have a terrible diet and don't exercise. Most people who move here from other places gain weight in their first couple of years. America is a place that makes it easy to get fat, so most people experience fatness as a result of living in our culture. In this same way, negative autistic traits could be expressed more often by people who would otherwise blend in, because the environment is geared toward neurotypicals.

I wonder about the aspie rates in silicon valley also, as well as the research triangle in north Carolina. as for the great northwest it seems like a friendly place for aspies like me, to a certain extent, at least compared to other places I've been such as AZ or TX or SC/DC. part of the Northwest's aspieness has to do with the "elephant in the living room" presence of Redmond's Microsoft Meadow [Northwest's version of palo alto's silicon valley].