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I think assimilation removes diversity. As such you assimilate into the new culture, and just become one new culture. Now if you travel from one side of the USA to the other, you will see lots of different groups of people, sure, however each state will still be majority Christian and the majority of the population in each state will also understand and speak English.
On the whole I do not associate "I'm considering how America became so successful at taking such large amounts of each ethnicity over the years and assimilating them into a highly productive whole" as an example of diversity. I would consider India diverse because the main language, dress, religion, traditional food and dress etc, can vary greatly from state to state.
I would also consider most of those "Croatians" and "Germans" etc you talk about to be just American, as they speak mostly speak English only, and are also mostly Christian/non religious. My kids for instance have a Korean born Mother (my wife), an English born Grandmother (my Mother), and German born Great Grandmother (Dads Mum). Come census time is just mark myself and my kids as been of Australian ancestry, as we were all born here and speak English as a first language.
1) When discussing ethnic diversity, degree of assimilation doesn't really matter. I don't think it "removes diversity". I'm not calling Croatian Americans Croatian, I'm calling them American - I'm merely recognizing their ancestry, which is still an important part of the equation - it helps to reveal how Americans got there. There's still a unique cultural element to that. That's all I really need to do to consider ethnic diversity. If I was discussing cultural diversity in regards to ethnicity, I suppose that might be a different discussion
My last paragraph was meant to spark a discussion about how the US was so successful at creating such a distinct and accomplished society with all these different ethnicities and racial identities living in the same country - which could've been a recipe for societal chaos.
I also think it's kind of frustrating that you're saying "I only see them as American" in response to our stated ethnic diversity, if only because I know it's a common tendency of British posters (and non-American CD posters in general) to want to minimize the diversity of the US and at the same time claim it's extremely English/British in some bizarre attempt at appropriating American culture as theirs ("American culture is basically just British culture"), which insults and minimizes, or erases, what makes America unique and successful - it's an especially insulting statement considering Britain and other countries happily consume our culture, but often never seem to want to credit it as American.
I've seen it so many times: British people across Reddit and CD get bizarrely passionate about the "underreported number of British people in the US", and often go out of their way to understate (and even insult) the presence of other ethnic contributions to American society. I've heard so many British people say things like "how can he be American, he has a Polish/Italian/Swedish/Chinese/Korean/Croatian last name?" Like, how can you be that clueless? They make up a lot of resentful, petty, flat-out inaccurate or projectionist generalizations and lies about "Americans" and American society, and it seems like they feel that if they make out America to be more homogeneous than it is, then their unflattering, nasty generalizations and insults will hold more water.
2) India is not diverse - it does not contain millions upon millions of people from radically different ethnicities and races from all over the globe. Sure, it's very diverse - in a different sense. On a "domestic/national" scale. Not really on an international scale.
Last edited by magicinterest; 02-12-2021 at 01:51 AM..
If the only thing that matters to you when considering diversity is how many different ancestries the population is made from, and the total numbers of people from each of those ancestries, then the US is almost certainly the most diverse country. What other posters are telling you though, is that your measure of diversity is NOT the only way to measure it. In fact, some of what you say is the opposite of what most people say when they mean diversity - such as saying linguistic diversity is irrelevant.
Also just looking at total population figures without considering percentages is not how many people measure diversity. Another poster mentioned Suriname which most people would consider an extremely diverse country. If you just look at the overall numbers of people of different ethnic backgrounds, then Japan (known as one of the most homogenous countries in the world) is actually more diverse than Suriname. I don't know anyone (other than you) who would say Japan is more diverse than Suriname.
Residents of Japan (populations over ten thousand)
Japan approx. 124,000,000
China 813,675
South Korea 446,364
Vietnam 411,968
Philippines 282,798
Brazil 211,677
Nepal 96,824
Indonesia 66,860
Taiwan 64,773
United States 59,172
Thailand 54,809
Peru 48,669
India 40,202
Myanmar 32,049
North Korea 28,096
Sri Lanka 27,367
United Kingdom 18,631
Pakistan 17,766
Bangladesh 16,632
Cambodia 15,020
France 14,106
Mongolia 12,797
Australia 12,024
Canada 11,118
Malaysia 10,862
Residents of Suriname (populations over ten thousand)
East Indian 148,443
Maroons 117,567 21.7
Creole 84,933 15.7
Javanese 73,975 1
Mixed 72,340 13.4
Amerindian 20,344 3.8
Looking at a "Residents of Japan" is not the same thing as looking at the ethnic makeup of the Japanese population - those are all expatriate populations, not ancestral ones.
You kind of keep deliberately missing my point - I brought up the solid numbers rather than the proportions because it's far more revealing when your dealing with comparing countries of massively different size and scale - a nearly 20% Asian population in Canada might LOOK impressive from a "diversity" standpoint, then you have to consider that the only reason the proportion is higher for Canada than it is for America, which has a way more diverse and plentiful array of ethnically Asian people, is because it's one slice of a smaller, less diversified pie. An even more apt comparison would be Australia, in this case. Suriname is diverse, just on a much smaller scale - it certainly doesn't have near as wide an array of diaspora/ancestral populations as the US does.
Clearly it's not the way most people on City-Data want to measure diversity, because not measuring it that way allows you to pretend that a place like New Zealand is super diverse and the US is not at all.
1)
I also think it's kind of frustrating that you're saying "I only see them as American" in response to our stated ethnic diversity, if only because I know it's a common tendency of British posters (and non-American CD posters in general) to want to minimize the diversity of the US and at the same time claim it's extremely English/British in some bizarre attempt at appropriating American culture as theirs ("American culture is basically just British culture"), which insults and minimizes, or erases, what makes America unique and successful - it's an especially insulting statement considering Britain and other countries happily consume our culture, but often never seem to want to credit it as American.
I've seen it so many times: British people across Reddit and CD get bizarrely passionate about the "underreported number of British people in the US", and often go out of their way to understate (and even insult) the presence of other ethnic contributions to American society. I've heard so many British people say things like "how can he be American, he has a Polish/Italian/Swedish/Chinese/Korean/Croatian last name?" Like, how can you be that clueless? They make up a lot of resentful, petty, flat-out inaccurate or projectionist generalizations and lies about "Americans" and American society, and it seems like they feel that if they make out America to be more homogeneous than it is, then their unflattering, nasty generalizations and insults will hold more water.
I find it kind of funny that people who have never been anywhere near Germany, and do not speak a word of German can claim they are of German ancestry that is all.
Its American ancestry that is way under reported in my opinion, not british. That is not to say Americans are not a diverse bunch, of course the are, however at some point they become Americans.
How far can you go back? Would you say Italian should be a dominate ancestry in the UK, because it was full of Latin speaking Romans for over 400 years? How about french, because of the norman conquest in 1066? Should the queen be considered of German ancestry, because she is directly descended from a king who was born in Germany in 1660?
Looking at a "Residents of Japan" is not the same thing as looking at the ethnic makeup of the Japanese population - those are all expatriate populations, not ancestral ones.
Not entirely correct, Peruvians and Brazilians are ancestral ones or at least near-century old populations in Japan.
1) When discussing ethnic diversity, degree of assimilation doesn't really matter. I don't think it "removes diversity". I'm not calling Croatian Americans Croatian, I'm calling them American - I'm merely recognizing their ancestry, which is still an important part of the equation - it helps to reveal how Americans got there. There's still a unique cultural element to that. That's all I really need to do to consider ethnic diversity. If I was discussing cultural diversity in regards to ethnicity, I suppose that might be a different discussion
Not really. I have Italian ancestry, my wife has English ancestry. Both of us are native Spanish speakers with a strong Rioplatense accent who also speak English but as a secondary language. I don’t even speak Italian. Both of us have the broadly similar customs expected for the urban middle class of Central Eastern Argentina.
There’s nothing culturally unique about us which is directly derived from our specific origins. There is no clue about us belonging to different ‘ethnicities’. We actually don’t. There’s nothing screaming diversity out of us. We are just different people with different lives, different family backgrounds, different parents, and different childhoods.
You’d only see us as Argentinians.
Quote:
Originally Posted by danielsa1775
I think assimilation removes diversity. As such you assimilate into the new culture, and just become one new culture. Now if you travel from one side of the USA to the other, you will see lots of different groups of people, sure, however each state will still be majority Christian and the majority of the population in each state will also understand and speak English.
This.
I also support the idea of India being up there.
It only may look homogeneous from an outsider's perspective.
I believe that the United States is one of the most racially diverse countries in the world. Even though there are some advantages to this, there are also big social problems.
The United States had to fight a bloody civil war related to this diversity of its population. And there are ongoing political and social divisions in this country because of it. Different groups have become Balkanized. Human beings probably weren't meant to live with others that are very unlike themselves.
This is why I say you need to be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
Because they're not Arab. They're Assyrians, who are an indigenous ethnic group in the Arab countries.
It is completely false to explain away Arab Christians in the United States by saying the above. There are Assyrian immigrants and their descendants in the United States, of course. But there are many people in the US who trace their roots to Arabic-speaking Christian Arabs who immigrated from Arab countries, primarily Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, and Iraq, and they are distinct from the Assyrians. Christian Arab-Americans are not especially hard to find; I have known several personally.
It's also, to my knowledge, not at all true that most Arab immigrants to the US are Christian.
It may well be that Muslim Arab immigrants to the US now outnumber those who are Christian, but that would be a relatively recent development. Traditionally and up to perhaps 20-30 years ago, the majority of Arabs who immigrated to the US were Christian.
Looking at a "Residents of Japan" is not the same thing as looking at the ethnic makeup of the Japanese population - those are all expatriate populations, not ancestral ones.
You kind of keep deliberately missing my point - I brought up the solid numbers rather than the proportions because it's far more revealing when your dealing with comparing countries of massively different size and scale - a nearly 20% Asian population in Canada might LOOK impressive from a "diversity" standpoint, then you have to consider that the only reason the proportion is higher for Canada than it is for America, which has a way more diverse and plentiful array of ethnically Asian people, is because it's one slice of a smaller, less diversified pie. An even more apt comparison would be Australia, in this case. Suriname is diverse, just on a much smaller scale - it certainly doesn't have near as wide an array of diaspora/ancestral populations as the US does.
Clearly it's not the way most people on City-Data want to measure diversity, because not measuring it that way allows you to pretend that a place like New Zealand is super diverse and the US is not at all.
I'm not deliberately missing your point. In my first post I agreed that by the metric you are using the US is almost certainly the most diverse country in the world, and I further said that by a number of different metrics the US would still be considered one of the most diverse countries in the world. I certainly never suggested it is 'not at all' diverse (maybe some other posters did - I didn't read all the posts). What I *did* do was point out that your way of measuring diversity is not the only one, and in fact much of what you said is not how most people would measure diversity.
In your original post you stated that you wanted to "start a discussion on how the US managed to be so successful while balancing so many different ethnic, religious, and racial elements that no other country remotely has in anywhere near the same amounts." Great topic. But you gave your thread the title "Is America the most diverse country in the world?" so that is the direction that the thread steered. And all most of us on here are doing is pointing out to you that it is not so clear cut that the US is the most diverse country in the world. My own meagre contribution was pointing out that there is not really any such thing as the 'most diverse country in the world' since there are so many different possible ways of measuring that and each one gets a different result.
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