Is the USA the most diverse country?

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#1  Edited By crazyguy111
Member since 2013 • 406 Posts

I noticed that if you stay in Honolulu Hawaii, New York City or Los Angeles California and then go to rural West Virginia, oklahoma, or alabama, it seems like two very different countries, when they are just different states. Peoples accents are different, their political views are generally different. Parts of the u.s are demographically different as well, for example, san franciso and Honolulu Hawaii are both about 30-40% Asian, and the vast majority of their population is non white, while rural West Virginia is almost 100% white is about 0% Asian.

Would you say that the USA is the most diverse country? Thoughts?

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#2  Edited By deactivated-58e19e160226c
Member since 2014 • 30 Posts

I'd have to say yes in many cases. Due to the country's beginning, there were immigrants from basically everywhere, and there are still plenty coming in. These racial groups from around the world also brought their religious, social, political, and other opinions and values as well as races.

Different groups generally immigrated to different areas. That's why you find tons of Asians throughout the west coast, for example. And that's also why some opinions are largely by area. Plus, there is the factor that people express their opinions to local areas more than national/global areas.

Also, I'm pretty sure the hawaiians just look like asians but are really the remaining natives. (DO NOT QUOTE ME)

Anyhow, just my thoughts. Poorly explained, but you get the point.

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#3  Edited By Nengo_Flow
Member since 2011 • 10644 Posts

no is pretty diverse, but no the most.

Also, people are still in living in racial factions, not mixed like they are in Brazil for example.

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#4 deactivated-58e19e160226c
Member since 2014 • 30 Posts

@Nengo_Flow: That is true, however, as a whole the US is more diverse. Plus there are cities where it is completely mixed very well (renton washington is a good example).

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deactivated-5b1e62582e305

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#5 deactivated-5b1e62582e305
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@Nengo_Flow said:

Also, people are still in living in racial factions, not mixed like they are in Brazil for example.

Yeah in Brazil they live in economic factions. Rich people vs. the ones who live in favelas.

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#6 Zelda99
Member since 2004 • 770 Posts

From what i have witnessed with my own eyes, i have to say yes it is. I've been to London, Amsterdam, Lagos (my home) and Melbourne, as well as all over this country. No where else in the world have i seen so many different people in one country. Hell, in my University, there are over 150 different countries represented by students, and my school is just a local University that few outside the area probably ever heard of. When i go home, i get overwhelmed by just how similar everyone is. it's 99% black there. In those other cities, there are definite pockets of different ethnicities, but that only accounts for the major cities and surrounding urban areas. In the US, you meet people from all over the world just about every where you go, not just in NY, LA or other mega cities.

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#7 deactivated-58e19e160226c
Member since 2014 • 30 Posts

@Aljosa23: Exactly. I think it was about general diversity, NOT just racial.

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#8 Nengo_Flow
Member since 2011 • 10644 Posts

@zeusoflightning said:

@Aljosa23: Exactly. I think it was about general diversity, NOT just racial.

no yeah i get that, in the US there is a group of all times of races, nationalities, and religions, but for the most part they are all pretty separated from each other.

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#9  Edited By gamerguru100
Member since 2009 • 12718 Posts

I'd say so, especially considering we're the third largest country by population and have a wide variety of ethnicities, religions, and cultures. American culture is essentially an intertwining of several other cultures. There may only be seven or eight options for race on the census, but every race has different ethnicities. Every religion is represented in the US. Yes, Christianity is by far the largest, but other religions are growing in number as the ethnic groups who practice said religions grow in number. The number of non-religious people is also skyrocketing. As the nation becomes more ethnically and religiously diverse, it becomes more linguistically diverse. I've read on Wikipedia that in New York City alone, over 800 languages are spoken. O_O Eight...freaking...hundred. To be honest though, there are many other countries out there that are far more diverse in language than America. Our two main languages are just English and Spanish.

China may have 1.3 billion people, but most of them are Han Chinese, speak Mandarin or some other variety of Chinese, and most of them are irreligious, Buddhist, or follow Chinese folk religion. Only small minorities of Christians and Muslims exist in China. China may have 55 recognized ethnic minority groups.....but they're collectively less than 10% of China's 1.3 billion people. O_O Hell, there are more white people in America than non-Han Chinese people in China.

The same applies to India, with some exceptions. India does have several ethnic groups and languages, but many of these groups are limited to India or the countries surrounding India. You won't find large populations of Europeans, Africans, Middle Easterners, or other Asians in India either. And the two main religions are Hinduism and Islam, with Hinduism having an absolute majority and Muslims at less than 20% of the population. Christians, Buddhists, and non-religious people are rare.

The US is definitely the most ethnically diverse Western country, even compared to Britain. Outside of London, Manchester, Leicester, Bradford, Birmingham, and a few other major cities, the UK is still overwhelmingly white and Christian. And its main non-white groups are only Indians, Pakistanis, and Africans. Germany is mostly German with the exception of a large Turkish presence. You can't even judge France's diversity because they refuse to believe race exists. Race might not exist biologically, but socially, it is very much alive. Race and ethnicity provide a source of identity for billions of people.

Russia (though technically not Western) has some ethnic diversity in its more isolated republics, but is still over 80% Russian, and Moscow is over 90% Russian, which is surprising since you'd think the biggest city would boast a variety of ethnic groups. Moscow has the largest white population of any city on the planet, so its lack of racial diversity isn't that surprising. And Russia isn't known for racial tolerance either. Australia is mostly Anglo-Celtic, with only major cities like Sydney or Melbourne boasting any amount of ethnic diversity.

Point is: Europe generally only has ethnic diversity in sizable amounts in major cities. The US has diversity in units ranging from cities to counties to small towns to entire states. We may not be #1 in math and science, but I'd say we're #1 when it comes to representing the diversity of the world, with the exception that the US is still way more white/European in percentage. :P I'm sure most people know Asians are the majority of the species, representing 60% of us.

Too lazy to make a TL;DR version.

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#10 themajormayor
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Nah. China, Israel, India, Lebanon, many African countries, Brazil. Just to name a few.

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#11 GazaAli
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I'd say its diverse, but not the most diverse. It is true that the U.S is the host of many different demographics, racial groups, "cultures"...etc but it all comes down to the adherence to one culture, the American one. This is in essence the American version of multiculturalism and its mainly what proud Americans parade and flaunt: Our version of multiculturalism works (supposedly as opposed to its European counterpart) and is highly beneficial because it relies on the notion that you have to integrate with the rest of the established culture which leaves no room for cultural antagonisms or a volatile or fragile social or cultural fabric. So in order for other cultures and demographic groups to exist in the U.S, they have to coalesce and melt. In that sense I'm not sure if the existence of demographic groups with different racial and cultural backgrounds really matters. I'd say the U.S is diverse by virtue of the sheer geographic area of the country and in that sense its no different than other huge countries like China, India, Russia...etc. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if I was made aware of the fact that there exist in China as many cultural variations and diversities as in the U.S, if not more.

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#12  Edited By one_plum
Member since 2009 • 6816 Posts

Possibly. India and Uganda are said to be the most ethnically diverse. However, those ethnic groups are only present in those said countries, meaning that the US would be more diverse internationally speaking.

China's diversity rivals that of the US. Just like the US, the local culture and architecture in a place in China will depend whether if you're in the west, north, south or east.

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#13 gamerguru100
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@themajormayor said:

Nah. China, Israel, India, Lebanon, many African countries, Brazil. Just to name a few.

With the exception of Brazil, those countries don't have a wide variety of people from all around the world, so I'm gonna disagree.

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#14 themajormayor
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@gamerguru100 said:

@themajormayor said:

Nah. China, Israel, India, Lebanon, many African countries, Brazil. Just to name a few.

With the exception of Brazil, those countries don't have a wide variety of people from all around the world, so I'm gonna disagree.

Israel definitely has. And in any case that's not the only criteria for diversity. It's not clear really in what way we should tackle this question. But when I think of diversity, USA is not the first country that comes to mind. It seems relatively homogenous.

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#15 foxhound_fox
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No.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/07/18/the-most-and-least-culturally-diverse-countries-in-the-world/

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#16 Barbariser
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Most "measurements" for diversity show that the U.S. is pretty mediocre in ethnic & cultural diversity and tends to get its ass beat by a whole bunch of Asian and African countries. It depends on how you choose to define distinct "groups" and then the formula you use to compute a result from that data.

For example, my home country (Malaysia) easily beats the country I'm currently in (Australia) when it comes to "official" diversity rankings, even though I can see a lot more "colours" by randomly walking down the street in Melbourne. The reason for that is that the population distribution in Malaysia is far more even than in Australia, and that has a pretty big effect on how ethnic & cultural diversity is calculated.

What the TC argued doesn't mean shit, I could walk from a random village in Sweden to Stockholm and I'm sure I'll suddenly see a massive different in how people look, talk, behave, .etc. That doesn't make Sweden uber diverse.

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#17  Edited By themajormayor
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@Barbariser said:

What the TC argued doesn't mean shit, I could walk from a random village in Sweden to Stockholm and I'm sure I'll suddenly see a massive different in how people look, talk, behave, .etc. That doesn't make Sweden uber diverse.

Yes.

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#18 -Sun_Tzu-
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I would say India is the most diverse.

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#19  Edited By one_plum
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@Barbariser said:

Most "measurements" for diversity show that the U.S. is pretty mediocre in ethnic & cultural diversity and tends to get its ass beat by a whole bunch of Asian and African countries. It depends on how you choose to define distinct "groups" and then the formula you use to compute a result from that data.

For example, my home country (Malaysia) easily beats the country I'm currently in (Australia) when it comes to "official" diversity rankings, even though I can see a lot more "colours" by randomly walking down the street in Melbourne. The reason for that is that the population distribution in Malaysia is far more even than in Australia, and that has a pretty big effect on how ethnic & cultural diversity is calculated.

What the TC argued doesn't mean shit, I could walk from a random village in Sweden to Stockholm and I'm sure I'll suddenly see a massive different in how people look, talk, behave, .etc. That doesn't make Sweden uber diverse.

It's true that the US doesn't come close when you include every single cultural group in the world, but what some people are arguing for here is that the US have people whose cultural roots come from pretty much every broad region in the world.

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#20 jun_aka_pekto
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@Barbariser: What are those measurements?

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#21  Edited By Barbariser
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@jun_aka_pekto said:

@Barbariser: What are those measurements?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level

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#22  Edited By jun_aka_pekto
Member since 2010 • 25255 Posts
@Barbariser said:
@jun_aka_pekto said:

@Barbariser: What are those measurements?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level

Thanks.

So, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious fractionalization are used to determine the diversity level.

That does take immigration into account or does it deal strictly with native populations? I had to ask because my wife is from the Philippines. That country has something like 78 native dialects. If you go to California, there are various Philippine groups based upon those dialects. I imagine it's the same for immigrants from other countries.

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#23 foxhound_fox
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@one_plum said:

@Barbariser said:

Most "measurements" for diversity show that the U.S. is pretty mediocre in ethnic & cultural diversity and tends to get its ass beat by a whole bunch of Asian and African countries. It depends on how you choose to define distinct "groups" and then the formula you use to compute a result from that data.

For example, my home country (Malaysia) easily beats the country I'm currently in (Australia) when it comes to "official" diversity rankings, even though I can see a lot more "colours" by randomly walking down the street in Melbourne. The reason for that is that the population distribution in Malaysia is far more even than in Australia, and that has a pretty big effect on how ethnic & cultural diversity is calculated.

What the TC argued doesn't mean shit, I could walk from a random village in Sweden to Stockholm and I'm sure I'll suddenly see a massive different in how people look, talk, behave, .etc. That doesn't make Sweden uber diverse.

It's true that the US doesn't come close when you include every single cultural group in the world, but what some people are arguing for here is that the US have people whose cultural roots come from pretty much every broad region in the world.

Then considering Canada's much more lax immigration standards, then we likely have the much more culturally diverse population than the US.

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#24 LJS9502_basic
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@GazaAli said:

I'd say its diverse, but not the most diverse. It is true that the U.S is the host of many different demographics, racial groups, "cultures"...etc but it all comes down to the adherence to one culture, the American one. This is in essence the American version of multiculturalism and its mainly what proud Americans parade and flaunt: Our version of multiculturalism works (supposedly as opposed to its European counterpart) and is highly beneficial because it relies on the notion that you have to integrate with the rest of the established culture which leaves no room for cultural antagonisms or a volatile or fragile social or cultural fabric. So in order for other cultures and demographic groups to exist in the U.S, they have to coalesce and melt. In that sense I'm not sure if the existence of demographic groups with different racial and cultural backgrounds really matters. I'd say the U.S is diverse by virtue of the sheer geographic area of the country and in that sense its no different than other huge countries like China, India, Russia...etc. For example, I wouldn't be surprised if I was made aware of the fact that there exist in China as many cultural variations and diversities as in the U.S, if not more.

Love how people with no knowledge spout off ignorance,

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#25 killzowned24
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Easily.

It's also why its the best in practically everything.

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#26  Edited By Barbariser
Member since 2009 • 6785 Posts
@jun_aka_pekto said:
@Barbariser said:
@jun_aka_pekto said:

@Barbariser: What are those measurements?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level

Thanks.

So, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious fractionalization are used to determine the diversity level.

That does take immigration into account or does it deal strictly with native populations? I had to ask because my wife is from the Philippines. That country has something like 78 native dialects. If you go to California, there are various Philippine groups based upon those dialects. I imagine it's the same for immigrants from other countries.

It measures that value across the entire population at that time, it doesn't distinguish between immigrants and "natives" (a word that means little in the context of most modern countries anyway). An Indian resident in the U.S. is ethnically Indian, the studies don't care whether he just got there from India or was born into a well-established Indian American family.

The existence of multiple languages in the U.S. doesn't necessarily mean that fractionalization (probability of two random individuals being ethnically/culturally/linguistically/religiously different) will be high, it depends a lot on how they're distributed in the population, not just on the "number" of variants.

Why is it calculated that way? I'm not sure how to explain without giving a scenario. Let's compare two countries, A and B. Both have 5 ethnic groups, but A's groups are distributed equally with 20% of the population each and B has one majority with 80% of the population and four minorities with 5% each. They're obviously not equally diverse even though they have the same number of ethnic groups. Fractionalization allows us to factor in the size of each population group to determine the level of diversity.

Using your example, the U.S. may have hundreds of languages spoken within its borders, but 70-80% of the population primarily speaks English; this makes it very unlikely that two randomly selected Americans will speak different languages. By contrast, only about 1/3 of the Philippines speaks Tagalog, and that's the biggest linguistic group there. Two randomly selected Filipinos are very likely to have speak different languages. So even though the Philippines has four times less languages, their overall diversity in languages is much higher.

A lot of people may disagree with the fractionalization method, but it's probably the best you're gonna get at mathematically measuring diversity. It also depends a lot on how you choose to categorize the groups, though. Do you group all White Americans together or do you cut them up into German Americans, Polish Americans, Italian Americans, British Americans, Irish Americans, .etc? It's pretty subjective and depends a lot on the researchers' decisions.

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#27 jun_aka_pekto
Member since 2010 • 25255 Posts

@Barbariser: Thanks. The third paragraph cleared it up.

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#28 lamprey263
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think it depends on where you live...

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#29 LJS9502_basic
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@jun_aka_pekto said:

@Barbariser: Thanks. The third paragraph cleared it up.

The third paragraph is basically a silly premise. And I'm not talking about Barbariser's premise but the study he used.