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View Poll Results: Most Diverse Countries in the World(in terms of people)
Brazil 23 14.94%
South Africa 2 1.30%
Venezuala 1 0.65%
United States of America 87 56.49%
United Kingdom 14 9.09%
France 4 2.60%
Netherlands 1 0.65%
Canada 19 12.34%
Australia 3 1.95%
Voters: 154. You may not vote on this poll

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Old 01-07-2013, 09:31 AM
 
Location: In the heights
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This would be considered pretty vague since diversity can come in very many forms.

The US is very diverse in some ways, but the vast majority of people have been assimilated into an American mainstream culture with English as a primary language and Spanish as a language of a large chunk of the population and all other languages are far smaller in terms of use. As such, a lot of popular culture media is basically shared and reference points are fairly similar for all people despite having varying sorts of ancestry from far flung areas and a fairly diverse foreign-born population.

Brazil sides even greater on racial diversity (as well as mixing), but at the same time is also even more linguistically homogenous than the US. It also brings to mind if the large amount of mixing in Brazil is equivalent to Brazil becoming more homogenous overall and therefore more diverse despite the more "balanced" ancestry contributions.

In contrast to that, you have a country like India which has a collection of very different languages and the cultures behind them, many of them linked to wildly different religions, language families and cultural practices which are still intact and massive in number--and large enough to produce a viable popular media industry within those languages. Yes, most of these folks have been here for centuries if not millenia, but they are still culturally quite distinct.
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Old 01-07-2013, 10:29 AM
 
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I agree that the USA should top the list but the other countries on the list are also diverse.

If one wants to look at a small diverse country I would add Israel to the list as it has Jewish immigrants from all over the world who brought with them the cultures of the countries that they immigrated from.
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Old 01-07-2013, 01:06 PM
 
Location: Both coasts
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in order:
the US
Brazil
Canada
Australia
the UK
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Old 01-07-2013, 10:12 PM
 
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Maybe not so in overall numbers as we aren't a large populated country, but per capita Australia would have to be up there, we just about have everything here.
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Old 01-08-2013, 03:58 AM
 
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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I'd say it would actually be Canada. Canada has a far higher % of people born overseas, is almost as diverse as the States in nationalities represented (Toronto is almost as diverse as NYC and more international with more people who actually practice different cultures) and Canadians are much more likely to also have a foreign born parent and retain some of their culture. Large swathes of America are pretty much just black/white/hispanic and pretty American. You can't judge America by NYC, LA, SF, Miami, Chicago, DC. The vast majority of Americans do not live in those cities.
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Old 01-09-2013, 09:32 AM
 
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
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India, Switzerland and South Africa.
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Old 01-09-2013, 09:49 AM
 
Location: São Paulo, Brazil
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Quote:
Originally Posted by f1000 View Post
in order:
the US
Brazil
Canada
Australia
the UK
Diversity in Brazil, only about skin colour. All of the brazilians speak portuguese and almost all as native language, and the overwhelming majority are christians, most Roman Catholic.

Brazil can be culturally divided in three regions: Amazon, Northeast and Central-South. The people from Northeast is in general very religious and traditionalist, as if they lived in the 19th century, specially in the countryside. Most of them are very poor and live under social help of the government. This region is also the electoral basis of Lula. The Central South, on the other hand, is more secular and modern. Most of the southern brazilians think and act like europeans and americans in general. It's like Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. The Amazon region is little populated, and many of the few inhabitants of the region are indians or mestizos (caboclos), living in rural areas.
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Old 01-16-2013, 08:35 AM
 
Location: Paris, France
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For me it depends how one defines the term "diversity". If one takes it to mean "diversity of immigrant communities" then of course the U.S. wins hands down. As previous posters have rightly pointed out, there is no significant ethnicity or nationality on earth that lacks a community in the United States. There is probably a Madagascan-American community somewhere in Queens, or a Tajik-American hub somewhere in the vast sprawl of Los Angeles. Previous posters have rightly pointed out that other main contenders lack certain types of immigrants, eg. Britain/France have virtually no Mexicans. Canada and Australia have relatively few black people. America has a bit of everyone.

Also, another factor worth considering is that America is unique as it has always been diverse and continues to this day to attract vast diasporas of people. Britain, Canada, Australia or the Netherlands are diverse now but were pretty ethnically homogenous as late as the 1960s. Argentina and Brazil were immigrant melting pots in the early 20th century but are now quite homogenous, with only a tiny fraction of their modern populations being immigrants. The U.S.'s ability to attract new arrivals however endures from century to century.


HOWEVER, in a wider, less Western-centric way, when considering "diversity" more broadly – not just taking into account immigrant or immigrant-descended communities but the actual diversity of the indigenous population in terms of language, culture, traditions etc... the US and the other great "melting pot" rich countries like Canada, Brazil, France, the UK are actually quite homogenous. They tend to attract but then assimilate immigrants, who down the generations lose their language and traditions until all that's left is a surname and the odd dish cooked on a special occasion from the old country. America, for all its "diversity", is actually largely monoglot English-speaking, with one culture, cuisine and way of life that there is a strong push to assimilate into – the American way. Same for Britain/Australia. Particularly for France – it's even state policy to assimilate migrants. Canada less so as it has two languages and probably the strongest commitment to multiculturalism, but even here, the pressure is to assimilate into the dominant Anglo- or French-Canadian culture.

So for true diversity I'd pump for a developing nation with a huge variety of indigenous cultures and languages of its own – say Nigeria, India, or Indonesia. Probably I'd pump for India – over 1,500 indigenous language (the UK has only about 4), vast variations in cuisine, religions, ethnicities, cultures... you could go on. Of course, to Westerners, the differences between Indian cultures and ethnicities are not that perceptible, but to those from the subcontinent, a Punjabi is as different from a Gujarati as a Polish-American is from a Mexican-American.
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Old 01-17-2013, 05:19 AM
 
Location: The western periphery of Terra Australis
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Good point, India doesn't even have a dominant language - Hindu is the official language but most Indians don't speak it as first language (many not even as a second). In fact many South Indians are loathe to speak Hindi unless they have to.

The point I was trying to make, but went over some people's heads, was the percentages of foreigners. While Canada's immigrant community might be slightly less diverse than the States', a far greater PROPORTION of Canadians are immigrants or have immigrant parents, so shouldn't that count for something? In the US, you might talk about all these diverse communities, but only a handful of cities really have living foreign cultures in large numbers, NY, SF, LA, Chicago, Miami, DC, maybe Houston, Philly, Boston, Seattle to an extent. There are many many more cities in the US, say in the Midwest, which are firmly American and mostly just white and black. All large Canadian and Australian cities are pretty diverse so I got the feeling they were more international than American cities.
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Old 01-17-2013, 06:07 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Trimac20 View Post
Good point, India doesn't even have a dominant language - Hindu is the official language but most Indians don't speak it as first language (many not even as a second). In fact many South Indians are loathe to speak Hindi unless they have to.

The point I was trying to make, but went over some people's heads, was the percentages of foreigners. While Canada's immigrant community might be slightly less diverse than the States', a far greater PROPORTION of Canadians are immigrants or have immigrant parents, so shouldn't that count for something? In the US, you might talk about all these diverse communities, but only a handful of cities really have living foreign cultures in large numbers, NY, SF, LA, Chicago, Miami, DC, maybe Houston, Philly, Boston, Seattle to an extent. There are many many more cities in the US, say in the Midwest, which are firmly American and mostly just white and black. All large Canadian and Australian cities are pretty diverse so I got the feeling they were more international than American cities.
Nope, it's the least diverse of all major American cities (and Phoenix too) by FAR.

Houston, Dallas, Seattle, & Boston are definitely in before it. So is San Diego. Philadelphia's predominant white-black population (89% of it's metro) and complete lack of Latinos (besides Puerto Ricans-- it has only 140,000 other Latinos combined) as well as paltry Asian population sets it below the other cities. It's "European" population was prominent in the mid-1900's but now it's mostly "all American" born Irish & Italians that speak English rather than Italian. Seriously though, it doesn't belong in a sentence with the other cities, on immigration it gets outpaced by the half-sized Seattle & San Diego. Philadelphia's foreign born population is the only one of the 11 largest cities below 1 million and it wont be crossing that line anytime soon. It's half that of Dallas, Houston, Washington, Chicago, or Boston's. Less than a quarter of that of New York, Los Angeles, & Miami. It's smaller than even Seattle's.

It's honestly what I dislike most about it, other than the dirt in most places and the noticeable lack of internationalism there.

Last edited by Trafalgar Law; 01-17-2013 at 06:16 AM..
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