Which city has the best racial/ethnic harmony and integration WITHIN its own diversity: NYC, London, Toronto or Sydney (living in, gangs)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Now, I can understand how New Yorkers would feel at that time, but it was acoupleradical islamists that "blew up" the WTC (not 9/11. You can't blow up a date on the calender).
The folks who wanted to build their mosque, no matter where it is, are citizens of the United States of America, plain and simple.
I COMPLETELY AGREE, but when they want to build a mosque very close to where two of them that are from that culture that we Americans are not used to blew up two buildings I think its sad and kind of disturbing and they show just realize yes this is a free country but some things have common sense to it. Also developed countries are not as free as 3rd world countries.
Sydney - yes and no. I mean the new generation mixes etc, but you still have tensions between say the Lebanese and Anglos - some of them, e.g. the Cronulla riots.
That was really more about gang violence. Lebanese gangs beat up Lifesavers on Cronulla beach, and a bunch of white douchebags set out mass texts and organised a riot. But generally this sort of stuff is incredibly rare in Sydney.
Also remember in Sydney, Cronulla is considered a bogan neighbourhood, this wouldn't happen any where else in the city. Sydney has much diversity in terms of class and culture. (note in Australia, Bogan roughly translate to redneck).
I don't think that this would be an easy question for most people to answer, since you really have to know a city quite well to have an accurate idea of how integrated it is. I live in New York and don't think really integrated neighborhoods are the norm, and with the ones that are, it's often that they are undergoing a demographic change which very well may result in a racial change rather than integration, and these changes are often quite contentious. Children of old/new residents often do not attend the same schools and I wonder how much social interaction these groups have. But we're all together on the subways...Since I'm part of an interracial family, I am perhaps more interested in this type of thing than some others, and want my kids to have contact with and feel comfortable around diverse populations.
I have been to London and Toronto as a tourist, but wouldn't feel qualified to assess the question in their regard.
Have to add Hawaii - everyone here is from somewhere else. We all seem to except and enjoy others culture. There are so many different races and cultures here, but don't have a racial problem at all, or the least I have ever seen. Must be Aloha - respect for everyone and everything
The highest residential ethnic majority of any neighbourhood is only 70%. I believe that it has a higher instance of interracial relationship/marriage/birth than the other cities too.
I've noticed improvement on the integration front in Toronto as well - especially with those in their 20's and 30's... they just don't seem to have the same hangups about anything 'different' than those who are in their 40's and above. Even in my workplace (I've been in my company 11 years) - I find there are far more individuals coming into the company of various ethnicities than even a decade ago and everyone gets along very well. Its an area that can always improve but i'm really hopeful and encouraged by what I've seen in such a short span of time.
Very much agree with this....but I've got to see more of a diversity in the executive suites before we can really boast that Toronto integrates its immigrants well. I await the day when we can finally get rid of this infernal WASPish/British elitist conservatism that permeates our society and I think integrating our immigrant populations will go a long way in accomplishing that.
I've never been to Sydney, so I can't comment, but have spent a considerable amount of time visiting and living in the other three.
For racial harmony, I would probably go with 1st London, 2nd Toronto, 3rd NYC
For racial integration, 1st NYC, 2nd London, 3rd Toronto
I think all three actually score well when it comes to racial harmony, but London and Toronto still seem to have less tensions overall than NYC. When it comes to true integration, especially when it comes to seeing people of colour and recent immigrants in professional and political positions of power. I think NYC is the only one that can truly say they have made alot of progress. London and Toronto have a long way to go.
I think you may have underestimated London. It had it's first Black mayor in 1913, it's first Jewish-descent Sephardic Prime Minister 1868. Also it's the one place not just Blacks but Arabs, East Asians and South Asians earn more than Whites (with Black women the second highest earning strata behind South Asian men, West Africans the best performers at school, most likely to go to university and get a high paying job). Also despite the ethnic majority in the capital residentially the highest majority of one ethnicity is only 70% (Central Slough ward, Pakistani), plus intermarriage rates outnumber in-marriage in all the major minorities except South Asians (although one third of their relationships are still outside their ethnicity), with Caribbeans, East Europeans and East Asians thus considered 'endangered' despite numbering in their millions. In short everyone's in each other's pants, at every level.
However, this doesnt mean London is some racial nirvana, with racist incidents and even possible murders still happening, and quite the chequered history with race riots stretching from medieval times (when it's foreign born population was as proportionately high as today) right through to the 1980s. Caribbean men still underperform (though Caribbean women are near the top), and Muslim sounding names still face discrimination on job opportunities. But overall it's a pretty good picture. All this wasn't because of some wonderful policy making, but rather through the racist postwar govt attempts at segregation and the communities that bucked the trend despite. The waves of Empire immigrants in the 1940s and 50s were housed in specific communities cheek by jowl with the traditional working class in a hope they'd develop separately - no need to swear to a flag or even speak the language, and granted freedom of dress, language, education and religion. The result a generation later was, adversely, high mixing with the local community. When one isn't forced into assimilation, one warms much more easily to the majority culture. Thus these communities bucked the trend of 'melting pot' assimilation aswell as divisive 'multiculturalism'. By the 90s over 80% of the ethnic communities 'felt British', whether they were happy or not. Contrast that with France's assimilative policies over the channel and those results dropped to half.
Also the Victorian tradition of mixing the classes worked well in preventing entrenched prejudice and cycles of poverty. Back in the day the developers realised building chichi new neighbourhoods in salubrious areas stood out more and upped the asking price - the start of today's 'trendification' when a certain locale becomes de rigeur with the chattering classes. The Twentieth Century continued in the same vein with social planning, but came across the rash of gated developments in the late 80s yuppie boom. This was fast nipped in the bud with an unwritten policy that one would not get building permission unless 30-50% of any new development over 40 units be given over to 'affordable housing'. This meant the working class mixing and gaining access to the middle class markets in education, business, relationships, partnerships, jobs, banking and opportunities. Often within a generation or two the working classes joined the middle classes, and were replaced by new arrivals. As the newly minted Cockeys moved to the leafy suburbs of Kent and Essex, the Jews to North London and the Irish and Indians to West they were replaced by new working class communities of Caribbeans, Bangladeshis and Africans who in turn are now following the suburban flight today, as the centre becomes ever richer and replaced with the world's current international elite of what was once exclusively West Europeans, Arabs, Japanese and Americans but are now Russians, Chinese, Indians, Italians, French, Latin Americans and West Africans. The poor meanwhile are now being relegated to the edge city outskirts, akin to the typical Third World city, plus the return of the shanty town in 'Beds-in-Sheds' outbuildings, appearing like a rash in the suburbs. This means all this mixing policy is now threatened. The new mayor has also torn up the residential rule of 30-50% affordability, though some boroughs still go by it. The mixing in other words still stands - but is in motion, with clouds on the horizon.
Contrast London with say, NYC where every area is delineated on class and racial lines from 83% - 98%, often just by crossing the street, where the last Census put it that self-segreation was as bad as the 1960s, approaching algorithms of Apartheid era South Africa - and getting worse. This doesn't mean everyone in NYC hates each other or that noone socialises with anyone outside their race (by contrast, they do) - just that they have the chance of choosing which community they want to live in. Londoners would surely do the same, but they are not granted the luxury due to the perpetual boom-bust property bubbles, where they don't choose who the neighbours are, merely the asking price. Where mansion lined streets are profitably subdivided up for bedsits, and once poor tower blocks 'colonised' by the pioneering hipsters and middle classes out to make a profit. It's a shock to Londoners themselves to find out the numerous ethnic foci of the capital - such as Jamaican Brixton, Jewish Golders Green, Hindu Wembley, Bengali Tower Hamlets, Korean New Malden, African Peckham, Brazilian Stockwell, Japanese Acton, Arab Kensington, Kurdish Dalston etc doesn't actually house a majority of the community they cater to, merely the shoppers.
In short the story so far has been full of bumbs and rides, but the result is surprisingly, one of good integration and harmony, where ethnic minorities are represented in every class without the need of positive discrimination (which is banned), and people openly mix in business, relationships, marriage and education despite the often painful history. Some schools speak over 300 languages, 40% of the population are foreign born, and native Britons (who themselves are pretty polyglot in ancestry) are a minority in a city of 300 mosques and 800 Hindu temples- yet with intermarriage rates the highest in the West - Lonely Planet put it that you'll see more mixed relationships in a day in London than a year in New York.
Rewind a decade or two and London was at that critical tipping point where the largest waves of immigration the nation had ever seen had just settled, first from the EU, then Africa, then EU expansion (read: Eastern Europe), then Latin America, each wave larger than the last. The hundred year old Bengali and Pakistani communities still the poorest, alongside the Portuguese and Somalis most likely to be on benefits, and the long suffering discrimination of the Irish and Caribbeans most likely to be stopped and checked, with multiple the rate of odds dying in police custody. Then the murder of 12 year old Damilola Taylor that culminated the Black-on-Black violence tackled by Operation Trident as longstanding Caribbeans felt pushed out by middle class African arrivees, in turn divided by race and religion themselves.
-However 15 years later and Bengalis and Pakistanis are now overtaking native Whites in income, Somalis and Portuguese are now no longer benefit trapped and send their children into universities at higher rates than the rest, while the fortunes of those at the top of the league (Indians, Nigerians, French etc) rise and fall every year which is a sign of an entirely healthy ecosystem. The initial rifts between the Caribbean, West African and East African communities that marred the early noughties have seemingly evaporated, with intermarriage between those communities now inline with the rest - the rest being very high. Mixed race is now the fastest growing 'minority', which doubled in a decade, and with mixed race Black-White children for example now outnumbering Black children 2 to 1.
-However, the future is in doubt as central London sells itself over to high rents and the neverending building boom. Legislation-wise for one, NYC treats its new arrivals and illegals far better than the current UK govt does, and you don't see far certain right politicians there wooing voters on the streets. White flight, Asian flight, Black flight into the middle class suburbs is also seeing the centre replaced with corporations and millionaires, as social policies get torn up for profits.
And one only needs to look at Britain's northern cities to see what may happen to London if they continue to leave development unpoliced, where segregation was the norm, and schooling, class and residence often corresponded with racial lines, thus entrenching poverty and where as recently as 2002 there were race riots. Though alot has improved there, it's still markedly different from London. We can but hope the status quo bucks the new trend. In other words, London I feel, at this moment in time has a more integrated, harmonic present than the others (though Toronto may give it a run for it's money). However it's past record and uncertain future look dubious.
Last edited by smool; 07-31-2014 at 05:46 AM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
