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What the OP is describing really struck me when I visited Toronto. People who live there tend to bleat on and on about how wonderfully diverse their city is, but what I saw what that each group tended to live within its own very monochromatic neighborhoods. My wife and I visited a Korean friend in North York during our visit, and it felt like we were the only non-Asians there.
Oh don't get me started on Toronto. They haven't even elected a mayor from a diverse background yet and the economic and political power in the city is old guard Upper Canada College prep-school like - wholly under-representative of what they market and like to smugly cite to Americans.
Churches tend to be segregated? Can't say I'm surprised.
In a bigger city, people tend to segregate in some ways but not in others.
The best urban districts tend to be a mix of old and new, with all sorts of people doing all sorts of things.
Sidewalks are always good at mixing people. You need an urban city or town where people walk.
Work tends to be mixed.
Stores can sort by price range, but many are mixed.
PS, I've always seen small towns as more hive-minded than cities.
Of course a church, like a nightclub, needs a large enough base, about a hundred active members to survive and larger urban areas can provide lets say a large enough group of Nigerians from the same indigenous language group and the right sect of Christianity or Islam as seen in the TV show Detroit area church on Bob (hearts) Abishola on CBS or the Korean evangelical church on the current Netflix series Beef. I have seen strip malls with a collection of ethnic churches right next to each other with a different ethnicity and/or specific flavor of church right next to each other. And in service as small community organizations they play a role while other Nigerian and Korean immigrants and their progeny crossover to the legacy local community mixed ethnicity churches.
On the other hand the mega church has its problems. I had a cousin leave the Joel Osteen and back then Israel Houghton led Lakewood among the largest congregations in the world because the crossover music styles produced by Houghton and the New Breed was too mashed together pop and not full on with another ethnic based genre of music. You can produce okay for everybody, but there is always someone else nipping at your heels to pick up those who want something focused directly at them and not trying to serve the masses on their own instead of in concert with other smaller providers.
Oh don't get me started on Toronto. They haven't even elected a mayor from a diverse background yet and the economic and political power in the city is old guard Upper Canada College prep-school like - wholly under-representative of what they market and like to smugly cite to Americans.
Toronto didn't start becoming diverse until the 60's. In the U.S the black and latino populations were much more prominent at a much earlier time. So Toronto's/GTA's diversity is still very new and it takes time for groups to find their footing. Indeed though they are and the run for mayor of Toronto this month will most likely see the first Asian Canadian female Mayor or the first black Canadian male mayor of Jamaican descent. They are both 1 and 2 in the running. So your notions of the city are becoming rather tired and antiquated.
People have spoken about segregation in Toronto which sure there are majority Asian, South Asian areas etc but that is a natural thing to occur among groups. Especially when you have such prominent groups in Toronto/GTA. They are big enough to establish their own sizable nodes due to sheer number. This isn't to say that there isn't intermixing - because that is very common as well. I think it's just sentiment from individuals who aren't that familiar with the city.
The election is June 26 and btw - Olivia Chow the frontrunner was Married to a prominent White Canadian Politician Jack Layton who unfortunately passed away from Cancer in 2011. Point being - segregation isn't as prominent in the city as some in here are making out and it is changing by the year.
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Originally Posted by bus man
What the OP is describing really struck me when I visited Toronto. People who live there tend to bleat on and on about how wonderfully diverse their city is, but what I saw what that each group tended to live within its own very monochromatic neighborhoods. My wife and I visited a Korean friend in North York during our visit, and it felt like we were the only non-Asians there.
So you come to such a conclusion about an entire city and metro based on an observation in one area of it during a small period of time. Seems reasonable to me.
A brief note about New Mexico (as Taos was cited as an example). It is an anomaly in the US. The state is nearly majority Hispanic and is probably majority Hispanic outside of five or six major cities. Even Albuquerque is 49.8% Hispanic. The Spanish arrived from Mexico in about 1595 and before that there were several large Indian nations occupying various parts of the state going back thousands of years. The Pueblo towns of Acoma and Taos are 1,000 years old. The Anglo/Americans arrived in the mid 1800s. New Mexico was (is) quite isolated for much of its history. The three cultures learned to work together in many ways but there are still rough patches. It has not been a simple cultural blending as it might seem now but actual hard work. I've heard outsiders tout New Mexico as a model for diverse cultures to reach a common relationship. It took 200+ years to get to where we are today. New Mexico belonged to Mexico for about 25 years before becoming a US territory. It belonged to Spain prior to that but largely grew up in isolation. I live in the Albuquerque metro, and I personally don't know anyone that has been here for a period of years that does not have friends, coworkers, or maybe neighbors from the three main cultures. Having Black friends is not as common due to the small number. The state has only 2.07% black population with Albuquerque having 3.9%.
There is not much generational separation. This is the most family oriented place I have lived, and many families are "extended" in ways that are less common in other parts of the country. Three or four generations in the family are not uncommon.
Very true. It wasn't that long ago that the governor got shot full of arrows and people were getting burned down inside a church. And it's the same story in America's cities now known for diversity such as NYC and San Francisco, there was a lot of group tension before people actually learned how to work together. Some places decided to live together and others stayed self segregated.
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Originally Posted by PHILLYUPTOWN
great point. In some ways segregation preserves diversity; and we want diversity lest we turn into 1984 type society. We can strive to come together in other ways while still preserving the culture of individual sub-groups. I actually think, despite the topic, America does this quite well.
Like in Philadelphia, there are many different subgroups but a few things unite us, Sports and Civic Identity and Pride come to mind, and an overarching American culture (which is more prevalent in the younger generations). And I know this is true in a lot of places, so in fact I question the premise of the topic.
Although I wish there were more examples, but if you ever had the benefit of witnessing your city win a major sports championship, you would be witnessing something truly beautiful and special, and those that have witnessed this know exactly what I mean; and they always say exactly the same thing, I wish it was always this way. LoL
Yes and no. If you fusion too much, then every plate has bacon on it so to speak, but interacting with different groups doesn't always require you to change who you are.
America has been called out as one of the best examples of this - despite all of our rough patches, we've interacted across groups better than any other real world country example. Do we fall short of the ideal, yes, but we're still at the top when compared to actual examples.
What the OP is describing really struck me when I visited Toronto. People who live there tend to bleat on and on about how wonderfully diverse their city is, but what I saw what that each group tended to live within its own very monochromatic neighborhoods. My wife and I visited a Korean friend in North York during our visit, and it felt like we were the only non-Asians there.
Toronto is super enclaved. Smaller white-majority cities like Seattle feel magnitudes more functionally diverse than Toronto.
Since you brought up Atlanta's suburbs, there are suburbs that are extremely segregated, and there are suburbs that are extremely integrated, I grew up in an integrated suburb (Forest Park). Atlanta's a big metro and everyone generally gets to choose to be segregated or not.
Toronto is super enclaved. Smaller white-majority cities like Seattle feel magnitudes more functionally diverse than Toronto.
When you are in Toronto go to any apartment building or condo in Etobicoke, Mississauga, North York etc and tell me that it is 'super enclaved' - go to any workplace or school and say the same.
As I mentioned before, there are certainly large Asian and South Asian parts in the GTA and the primary reason for this is those groups are massive each with over 1 million people. Of course they are going to have their own large enclaves, but that by no means that there isn't integration of diverse groups including those all over the city and metro, not just areas they dominate. I think I should know, I lived in these buildings for over 40 years and I've worked for over 20 of them and counting and I work with a plethora of different races, ethnicities - I seriously can't even count. Same with friends and I married a latino (I'm Caucasian- Scottish background). With a shortage of housing as well, there is no luxury for many groups to live in nodular ethnic/racial enclaves even if they wanted to.
Seattle 'feels' more functionally diverse - like what does that even mean as it relates to Toronto/GTA? How much experience have you had with Toronto. Lived there, worked there, went to school?
Wanted to get others opinions on this - often times on city data people tout diversity as one of the advantages of big metros, something that they have while small town america is monoculture.
Looking at raw numbers, they can paint that picture, but numbers only speak to who's there, not at all to how those people actually interact. Likewise there's more than just ethnicity; it's things like culture, mindsets, activities, worldviews, ages, etc that are real drivers of diversity of thought and experience. Heritage doesn't correlate to thought patterns much.
In my experience, big metros tend to self segregate into clusters where people don't actually interact much with those outside their group. In contrast smaller towns somewhat force people to interact across groups. Some small towns can be very monoculture, but not all of them are that way, and the smaller groups force people to talk to each other.
Here's my personal experiences: I lived in Gwinnett county GA, which is one of the most diverse counties in the US, but it was hugely self segregated. There was the korean Suwanee and the white Suwanee - and they didn't interact, unless it was kids in school. You could see it in churches. I went to one a couple times where everyone was korean except me, and it did feel weird. Went to another where literally every person besides me was a married couple in their 30s - 40s. Another was entirely Romanian. There were ones where everyone had grey hair too. I couldn't find one that was actually mixed age and ethnicity wise. Basically Gwinnett was where immigrants decided to get houses because they could find a community from their same country and people that spoke their native language. Then these groups didn't interact.
There was the age thing too, everyone was Gen X parents in Suwanee. People told me that I was frankly in the wrong location and people my age were all down in Roswell or inside the perimeter - 45 minutes away. Have fun driving through ATL traffic to get to that.
Contrast that to somewhere like Junction City KS, where the military brought in people from different backgrounds. Because it's too small to self segregate, there actually is cross group interactions.
Then there's Denver - on paper a very diverse place but in function it's a bit of a hivemind in culture - sports, beer, dogs, skiing, crossfit, Salt & Table type of restaurants. Colorado Springs, quite a bit smaller, feels more diverse. And Taos feels the most diverse of all, where you have all these different groups around that actually interact. People actually have in depth conversations routinely with people from different generations - that's something you just don't see in many big cities.
You're telling me Koreans don't interact with the white just b/c they have separate churches?
For immigrant communities, one of the big thing about churches is that it's both a social center, finding a "home away from home", and also (especially for older generation of immigrants) feeling more comfortable of having services in their own native languages.
Immigrant communities also do tend to congregate in certain areas for the same reason - most of the time it's b/c of the availability of amenities that are important to them - i.e. ethnic restaurants and supermarkets.
What REALLY separate a "diverse" area from your segregated areas is that the younger generation will interact with each other in schools, with the younger generation becoming more "Americanized" (and thus more integrated).
tl;dr: If you think Suwanee is that segregated, the dynamics between Northside and Southside ATL metro is even crazier.
P.S. Grew up in Sugar Land TX. Fort Bend County TX has a similar dynamics (It's very diverse but there are also microcluster).
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