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Originally Posted by OyCrumbler
NYC is the biggest, so there's a good enough argument for it overall. However, an "ethnic" capital as a whole doesn't make much sense. Yes, NYC has one of the largest Pakistani and Arab populations in the US, but what would that have to do with Persians whose largest population is in LA? Or even further apart, what does the West Indian population of NYC have to do with the Korean and Vietnamese population in Socal?
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Well, unlike LA, NYC has large numbers (though not dominating) of each ethnicity that is larger in LA than NYC, except for maybe some Pacific Islander groups, whom are small in number in LA anyways.
The 2nd largest Korean population in the US is around NYC at around 220k, and while the Vietnamese population isn't nearly as large as in SoCal, there are still around 50,000 Vietnamese in the NY area. Not a small number to sneeze at.
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NYC is hugely diverse, but maybe calling it an ethnic capital is overreaching to some extent.
It's also very arguable that given the sheer size of the US, there is almost no real dominating capital for anything save for a few modest categories. The term is primate city--where one city, generally the federal capital, is much larger than any other city in the nation with very few in contention even in the second tier. The US simply does not have that (i.e. politically, DC is probably bigger; tech and venture capital in the Bay Area; higher education in Boston; entertainment in LA, etc. along with previous examples of how different ethnic groups are based strongly in other cities as well as sheer population size where NYC's metro is not twice as large as LA, is only around twice as large and Chicago, and is about three times the size of the DMV, Bay Area, the Delaware Valley, and DFW).
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I can see that and agree for the most part. We do live in a very special, very decentralized country where our largest strengths aren't relegated to one or two areas, but throughout the country.
However, I think in this metric, though there are ethnicities that exist everywhere, the fact is that NYC makes an impact and is part of the conversation in almost all of them. It isn't a slight against anywhere else, but rather a real world fact I feel like.
It doesn't mean that anywhere else can't be diverse, or anywhere else can't be ethnic, since I feel that's far from the case. However, New York City seems to just have it all.
Maybe its because I grew up in the Northeast I feel like I'm spoiled, but when it came to ethnic things, NYC had it all.
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