5 ms·
Change my view: This only works with small, homogenous populations.
by csours 8y ago
Change my view: This only works with small, homogenous populations.
- intellectronica 8y agoHomogeneous?! Switzerland is a confederacy and home to three distinct linguistic/cultural populations.
- cyann 8y ago4 official languages: German, French, Italian and Romansh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romansh_language
- labster 8y agoCompared to the United States, this is very homogeneous.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- buboard 8y agoUS people seem to underestimate how homogeneous the US is. It's quite a thing to know that you won t have to change habits when you travel across.
- toasterlovin 8y agoI guess you haven't visited the East or West Coasts of the U.S.?
- projektir 8y agoI've moved from the East coast to the West coast and there's basically no difference in my view.
- buboard 8y agoat least from central all the way to the west, it doesnt feel like you re among very different people. You can find similar or bigger differences by going from south to north italy. And this is just 1 country
- toasterlovin 8y agoLet's just consider a single city in the United States: Los Angeles. The population of Los Angeles metropolitan area is 13 million people (so, larger than all of Switzerland). Here are some interesting demographic stats about Los Angeles: Less than 60% of people in LA were born in the US. There are less whites (<30%) than hispanics (47%). There are also 10% asians, 10% blacks. On top of that, I can tell you that there are neighborhoods in Los Angeles where specific ethnicities are so concentrated that the street signs are largely or entirely in foreign languages. This is true for the following languages: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Armenian, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish.
- buboard 8y agoyet they all eat at mcdonalds, shop at 7-elevens and have thanksgiving parties. Here is another test: do you see many satellite dishes in immigrant neighborhoods?
- toasterlovin 8y agoRight, so because the whole world drinks Coke and buys furniture from Ikea, we're all just one global monoculture, right? I get that Switzerland is not a monoculture. But to pretend that it's more diverse than the US is just a joke.
- 1wd 8y agoStatistics disagree: Rank Country Ethnic Fractionalization Index Cultural Diversity Index 63 Switzerland 0.575 0.418 85 United States 0.491 0.271 159 North Korea 0.002 0.002 Ethnic, Linguistic and Religious Fractionalization Switzerland 0.531400 0.544100 0.608300 United States 0.490100 0.564700 0.824100 Korea, North 0.002000 0.002100 0.660400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_ethnic_and_cultural_diversity_level https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_ranked_by_et...
- labster 8y agoStatistics don't represent the whole story. How many indigenous groups are in Switzerland? How many language families are native to Switzerland? By my count, two, where in the United States it is over twenty. When's the last time Switzerland had a civil war (I mean, war between the cantons)? Is there a deeply ingrained bias against other Swiss depending only on how they look? Even in the supposedly mainstream culture, I have almost nothing in common with "Red Tribe" Americans. Just because we share a language, ethnic identity, and religious category does not mean we are homogenous by any means. I often have much more in common with people of a different ethnicity and religion than those statistics would indicate.
- 1wd 8y agoI'm sure you are right. I don't know anything about language families native to Switzerland. The census in Switzerland counts over 40 main languages spoken in Switzerland. 64% German. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland#Other_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Switzerland#Other... In the US the census only counts 32 languages spoken at home. 70% English only. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States Probably these are not comparable and this doesn't really prove anything. > When's the last time Switzerland had a civil war 1847, but I don't understand how that's relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderbund_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderbund_War > Is there a deeply ingrained bias against other Swiss depending only on how they look? Sadly, yes. Immigrating and becoming Swiss is difficult, but it does happen. Swiss with a migration background suffer a higher rate of racial discrimination. https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerung/migration-integration/integrationindikatoren/indikatoren/erfahrung.html https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/bevoelkerun... I don't know how this compares to the US.
- refurb 8y agoThree distinct European cultures.
- totfz 8y agoWhite and Christian, white and Christian, and white and Christian. That's all that matters. :)
- buboard 8y agoI don't believe it s their homogeneity, besides, different languages, quite different cultures, mountainous divides etc, it's all very different. But, they share the values of fierce independence . Even the (rich) foreigners who choose to make it their home seem to do so .
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- asituop 8y agoSwitzerland is very heterogeneous in terms of language and mentality. The Röstigraben is clearly not a myth. However people accept those very high differences because it's economically going really great in Switzerland. (But of the day the economy is down, I think tensions might really explode, French vs German speaking have really different mentalities)
- s3nnyy 8y agoHow is the economy down? Looks pretty up here in Zurich. knock on wood
- solidsnack9000 8y agoEven today, Europe is far more diverse than the US in the sense that culture doesn't travel far: traveling a few hours by train in any direction from where you were born could easily put you in a place where you don't speak the language and where cultural practices, while nominally Christian, were markedly different with regards to dates and times, things people ate, what counted as legitimate use of a public place and so on. The US is much more homogeneous than Europe with regards to these kinds of criterion, which in practice greatly impacts government administration. Switzerland is like this but turned up a notch -- an hour's travel by train is usually enough to land in areas with mutually incomprehensible spoken languages, even when they are both nominally German.