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Such blanket assumptions about "the US" really make me smile. They're very provincial, ridiculously dismissive of a nation of 328 million -- as if this were Luxembourg. Excluding even New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, have you any idea the number of nationalities in public schools in Atlanta and Seattle? You can't downplay the "international atmospheres" (plural) here. Nor can you dismiss the food choices in many US metro areas. Such speculation is based on a complete lack of knowledge.
Exactly. In my middle-class outer suburb of of Los Angeles (not even in LA county and over 50 miles from downtown LA), I have neighbors from Argentina, Vietnam, Iran, Taiwan, the Philippines, Italy, South Korea, Peru, South Africa, and more. And my small city is not even especially diverse compared to others in the same area!
Exactly. In my middle-class outer suburb of of Los Angeles (not even in LA county and over 50 miles from downtown LA), I have neighbors from Argentina, Vietnam, Iran, Taiwan, the Philippines, Italy, South Korea, Peru, South Africa, and more. And my small city is not even especially diverse compared to others in the same area!
I can well picture that. California cities and suburbs are among the most diverse anywhere in the world.
From my experience when Americans tell you they are European or south American or whatever, half the time they are just Americans with some grandpa or some distant 19th century ancestor from Italy, Ireland or whatever, but in reality they are actually Americans.
Black Americans for example are seen as AFRICANS despite being Americans for over 400 years, and most not having anything to do with Africa, when many Americans think of Africa they imagine their fellow black Americans from down the block.
In London we have actual Africans, I know people from Senegal, Nigeria, Togo, Burundi, Eritrea, I can walk down the street and encounter African neighborhoods thriving with West African music, West Africans who go out in their traditional attires, I can also find East African areas exclusively with Kenyans or Tanzanians. Where in the USA do you ever experience that!
Another thing is Americans are racial and they stick to people who share their own melanin level, there is a HUGE taboo in American culture over people of different melanin levels even inhabiting the same neighborhoods and people marrying with others of different colors is still something that gets looks on the street. Americans segregate themselvves based on social categories like black, white etc.
In the UK or Europe we are more advanced in that aspect, we do not care , in London in one building you can find people from 70 different countries from every single continent being neighbors and no one even think of categorizing anyone by skin color.
lets not even talk about regional differences. In the UK you drive one hour and people have a different accent, look different, architecture changes, food changes, culture changes. In the USA from coast to coast everything looks, feels, smells the same. Same stores, same looking people, same restaurants, same architecture, same way of life, same style of dressing.
I drove from Miami to NYC and I could not see the difference between Florida and Georgia, or Virginia and New Jersey. It was all the same.
UK is far more diverse, let us not even include Europe in the picture, bcause the US will end up looking very homogeneous.
You were more on the money with London versus US cities. If you’re talking countries, the US has more in absolute numbers and in percentages people not born but residing in the US. I’m with you on the cookie cutter development, but the stats just don’t back the UK as a country having a larger foreign population than the US. The US is at 14.3 percent versus the UK’s 13.2 percent.
You also switched back to talking about London specifically when you mentioned foreign-born Africans—yea, sure, there are generally a lot more black people in US cities that have been here for generations, but there are also cities in the US where there are large African immigrant communities.
I drove from Miami to NYC and I could not see the difference between Florida and Georgia, or Virginia and New Jersey. It was all the same.
In the first place, the drive from NYC to Miami probably seemed extremely long to you, but you only saw a tiny fraction of the entire US.
Secondly, if all of those cities and states you drove through were the same to you, you either didn't venture far off the highway or you weren't looking. Could you really not tell that people in the South have different accents than people in the North?
By the way, the nationalities I mentioned living in my California town are not people whose great-grandparents immigrated from wherever. They are people who ACTUALLY were born and lived and still have ties to those countries. My Argentinian neighbors visit their parents in Argentina almost every year; my Iranian neighbors celebrate Nowruz.
Your experience in the US is so limited, you don't even realize there are lots and lots of neighborhoods where people of all races live close together, and interracial marriage is not uncommon at all.
Exactly. The poster's descriptions -- judging entire states while riding down Interstate 95 -- are absurd. I lost this poster with the comment that he/she would rather eat in London "than the US" -- apparently a country with the same population as Ireland. New York and Los Angeles, both cities of immigrants every bit as diverse as Greater London, would be as racially and ethnically diverse as Dublin and Cork. It's breathlessly narrow-minded.
Exactly. The poster's descriptions -- judging entire states while riding down Interstate 95 -- are absurd. I lost this poster with the comment that he/she would rather eat in London "than the US" -- apparently a country with the same population as Ireland. New York and Los Angeles, both cities of immigrants every bit as diverse as Greater London, would be as racially and ethnically diverse as Dublin and Cork. It's breathlessly narrow-minded.
LA is arguably not quite so ethnically diverse given the very large percentage of immigrants who come from a single country (albeit a very large country) which makes up something like half of the foreign-born population of the metropolitan area. Still, even if arguably not quite as diverse as London, Los Angeles is still very diverse.
LA is arguably not quite so ethnically diverse given the very large percentage of immigrants who come from a single country (albeit a very large country) which makes up something like half of the foreign-born population of the metropolitan area. Still, even if arguably not quite as diverse as London, Los Angeles is still very diverse.
Perhaps, but Los Angeles is way up there. New York vies with London as equally diverse. LA itself has large Iranian and Asian populations (a Koreatown and a Chinatown). It isn't "Tijuana North" by any means.
Many American cities are diverse (even midsize and small ones), so the US wins the "diversity" game with the UK as a whole.
Perhaps, but Los Angeles is way up there. New York vies with London as equally diverse. LA itself has large Iranian and Asian populations (a Koreatown and a Chinatown). It isn't "Tijuana North" by any means.
Many American cities are diverse (even midsize and small ones), so the US wins the "diversity" game with the UK as a whole.
Yea, that's all true. Percentage-wise, the US has a slightly higher percentage of immigrants making up its population than the UK, but the US likely has a lot more people who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants than the UK has.
Of predominantly English-speaking countries, a quick look at this link seems to show the percentage of immigrants making up at least 10% of their population from highest to lowest are Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Bahamas, Ireland, Belize, the United States, the United Kingdom, Barbados, and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-20-2020 at 06:25 PM..
Yea, that's all true. Percentage-wise, the US has a slightly higher percentage of immigrants making up its population than the UK, but the US likely has a lot more people who are the children or grandchildren of immigrants than the UK has.
It's a rare American who can trace his or her family tree back even to as recently as the 1880s/1890s without discovering at least one immigrant. I had at least three great-grandparents who were immigrants, and my husband's parents were both immigrants.
It's a rare American who can trace his or her family tree back even to as recently as the 1880s/1890s without discovering at least one immigrant. I had at least three great-grandparents who were immigrants, and my husband's parents were both immigrants.
Yep, and among Anglophone countries that's a trait shared with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore with the last one probably being the one that has the highest percentage of people whose immigration history don't go that far back.
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