6 ms·

> how all of the diverse cities of the USA Have you perhaps considered that they're not very diverse? NYC and SF are a bit different yeah, but other than that

> how all of the diverse cities of the USA Have you perhaps considered that they're not very diverse? NYC and SF are a bit different yeah, but other than that they're all remarkably similar. Honestly it's a significant factor in why I decided to move back to Europe. It always bothered me when Americans claim that the US states are as diverse as separate countries in e.g. Europe. No, just no. You are blinded by the fact you've grown up there and are attuned to the small regional differences. There are as large regional differences within individual European countries as there are in the US.

andsoitis 4y ago
Los Angeles is way more diverse, on just about any front, than San Francisco.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Los Angeles is way more diverse, on just about any front, than San Francisco. LA has greater concentration of a single dominant ethnic/racial group (Hispanic, 48%) than San Francisco (non-Hispanic White, 40%).
- danenania 4y ago
  LA should really be compared to the whole Bay Area, not just SF.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    I used to live on the Peninsula. I think the Bay Area as a whole is pretty bland compared to LA.
- mbg721 4y ago
  LA is also about 500 square miles to SF's 50, isn't it?
drstewart 4y ago
>There are as large regional differences within individual European countries Have you considered that they're not very large differences and you're just blinded by the fact that you're attuned to them?
- piaste 4y ago
  Unlikely, as foreign visitors invariably point them out uncoached.
  - mypalmike 4y ago
    I concur. Perhaps must notably, I found that the graffiti on the old stone apartment blocks in Cologne had a certain flair not seen on the old stone apartment blocks in Hamburg.
- jules 4y ago
  The difference between e.g. northern and southern Italy is large. Larger than the differences I've seen in the US. I'm from the Netherlands, so I may be suffering from the same issue, but a reason I doubt that is that in many ways Dutch culture is closer to American culture than to Italian culture, so if anything I should be able to detect nuances in US regional differences better.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  > Have you considered that they're not very large differences and you're just blinded by the fact that you're attuned to them? Well, let's compare. You could drive for days across America, and hear truly microscopic changes in accent and dialect from one side to the other. Here in Scotland, I could drive for an hour and hear a totally different accent, two hours would get me to a totally different dialect, and with a six hour drive it's literally a completely different language.
  - martindbp 4y ago
    But if you drive north from California for 15 hours you'd end up in Canada, a completely different country with slightly different road markings, Tim Hortons instead of Starbucks, and they even say "about" slightly differently! Take that you Scots!
burntoutfire 4y ago
> Have you perhaps considered that they're not very diverse? This. Being a European, after seeing NYC, SF and Las Vegas, I passed on an opportunity to go for a week-long business trip to Seattle. Even though I had the time, I imagine Seattle being just mostly more of the same (an uniform, boring city consisting of XX century architecture built on a grid) and absolutely not worth the trip. Americans speaking about large cultural differences between regions always surprise me - I often suspect they don't understand what "cultural differences" mean and instead talk about political differences.
- mypalmike 4y ago
  This being hn, I'm struggling not to be sarcastic about how similar Seattle and Las Vegas are.
  - burntoutfire 4y ago
    Apart from tiny tourist part of Las Vegas, are they really that different? I've walked around Las Vegas to see how the real city (not the tourist part) looks like, and it was just an endless grid of streets with condos, houses and mini-malls at intersections. Is Seattle different?
    - mypalmike 4y ago
      Yes, just like Las Vegas and NYC, Seattle is just mini malls and intersections. (Ok I couldn't help myself from sarcasm there.)
      - burntoutfire 4y ago
        It may be European perspective, but there are dozens of absolutely gorgeous historic cities within an hour or two of flight from where I live, so flying sixteen hours to see Seattle (where I could fly two hours to see Paris or Rome) is just a sorry proposition.
        4y ago
lbrito 4y ago
I'm always surprised how Americans have a radically different interpretation of diversity. This debate always comes up. Large American cities have many minorities that tend to congregate socially and geographically, hence "Koreatown", "Little Russia" etc. You have your Cuban-Americans and eat Thai food. An American will say this is diversity. I guess it is in a sense, but with very flawed integration. Other countries also had large influxes of immigrants in the past century and they eventually are integrated, enriching themselves and their host country in the process. I wish people would reflect more why this doesn't happen in the US.
- cgriswald 4y ago
  The existence and continued renewal of historical enclaves is not an indication that America does not integrate immigrants or that America has not been enriched by their presence. (It's almost absurd to say. America is far from being "little England", and the culture I grew up with was so clearly influenced by the various peoples who settled the area, I don't even know what you could possibly mean.) America is currently home to almost 50 million immigrants, representing about 13% of our population. This is more than any country on Earth by number, and something like 8th by percentage. This number is just immigrants, not the American children of immigrants. The population of Chinatown in SF is around 35,000. Only 80% of that is some kind of Asian. The Chinese-American population of San Francisco is around 175,000 (out of around 850,000; total Asian-American population is around 280,000). There are areas of concentration, but you've a great chance of having a Chinese-American neighbor or two wherever you live in the city. The population of Little Italy in Manhattan is just under half white, with less than 10% being ethnically Italian. Similar demographic changes for Little Russia in SF. With the exception of some religious enclaves (e.g. Hasidic Jews), this is probably the case for most enclaves in the US older than (say) 50 years. Enclaves existed in Europe historically and still exist today. Both in the US and in Europe, enclaves formed both naturally as a thing immigrants did to survive in their new host country and as part of government plans. Ethnically, in the US the lines are essentially gone. Almost no one cares if your grandmother was Irish or your cousin married a Greek. (There are some pockets where people do care, but they're usually associated with historical beef—or generalized racism—and they're by far the exception.) To the extent non-white people care about ethnicity, it is probably correlated with how recently their ancestors immigrated, with recent immigrants themselves most likely to hold such views. I doubt this is that different from Europe. We do tend to divide more along racial lines; especially between certain groups—usually with outspoken people in BOTH groups having a problem with mixing. This is seen both socially and geographically; especially in some places. (Even this has changed significantly over my lifetime in places I thought it wouldn't.) I don't really know how this compares to Europe.
mbg721 4y ago
You're also comparing the biggest cities to each other. If you compared say, Lafayette, LA to Montpelier, VT to Las Cruces, NM, you might draw a different conclusion.

andsoitis 4y ago

Los Angeles is way more diverse, on just about any front, than San Francisco.

dragonwriter 4y ago
> Los Angeles is way more diverse, on just about any front, than San Francisco. LA has greater concentration of a single dominant ethnic/racial group (Hispanic, 48%) than San Francisco (non-Hispanic White, 40%).
danenania 4y ago
LA should really be compared to the whole Bay Area, not just SF.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  I used to live on the Peninsula. I think the Bay Area as a whole is pretty bland compared to LA.
mbg721 4y ago
LA is also about 500 square miles to SF's 50, isn't it?

drstewart 4y ago

>There are as large regional differences within individual European countries Have you considered that they're not very large differences and you're just blinded by the fact that you're attuned to them?

piaste 4y ago
Unlikely, as foreign visitors invariably point them out uncoached.
- mypalmike 4y ago
  I concur. Perhaps must notably, I found that the graffiti on the old stone apartment blocks in Cologne had a certain flair not seen on the old stone apartment blocks in Hamburg.
jules 4y ago
The difference between e.g. northern and southern Italy is large. Larger than the differences I've seen in the US. I'm from the Netherlands, so I may be suffering from the same issue, but a reason I doubt that is that in many ways Dutch culture is closer to American culture than to Italian culture, so if anything I should be able to detect nuances in US regional differences better.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
> Have you considered that they're not very large differences and you're just blinded by the fact that you're attuned to them? Well, let's compare. You could drive for days across America, and hear truly microscopic changes in accent and dialect from one side to the other. Here in Scotland, I could drive for an hour and hear a totally different accent, two hours would get me to a totally different dialect, and with a six hour drive it's literally a completely different language.
- martindbp 4y ago
  But if you drive north from California for 15 hours you'd end up in Canada, a completely different country with slightly different road markings, Tim Hortons instead of Starbucks, and they even say "about" slightly differently! Take that you Scots!

burntoutfire 4y ago

> Have you perhaps considered that they're not very diverse? This. Being a European, after seeing NYC, SF and Las Vegas, I passed on an opportunity to go for a week-long business trip to Seattle. Even though I had the time, I imagine Seattle being just mostly more of the same (an uniform, boring city consisting of XX century architecture built on a grid) and absolutely not worth the trip. Americans speaking about large cultural differences between regions always surprise me - I often suspect they don't understand what "cultural differences" mean and instead talk about political differences.

mypalmike 4y ago
This being hn, I'm struggling not to be sarcastic about how similar Seattle and Las Vegas are.
- burntoutfire 4y ago
  Apart from tiny tourist part of Las Vegas, are they really that different? I've walked around Las Vegas to see how the real city (not the tourist part) looks like, and it was just an endless grid of streets with condos, houses and mini-malls at intersections. Is Seattle different?
  - mypalmike 4y ago
    Yes, just like Las Vegas and NYC, Seattle is just mini malls and intersections. (Ok I couldn't help myself from sarcasm there.)
    - burntoutfire 4y ago
      It may be European perspective, but there are dozens of absolutely gorgeous historic cities within an hour or two of flight from where I live, so flying sixteen hours to see Seattle (where I could fly two hours to see Paris or Rome) is just a sorry proposition.
      - 4y ago

lbrito 4y ago

I'm always surprised how Americans have a radically different interpretation of diversity. This debate always comes up. Large American cities have many minorities that tend to congregate socially and geographically, hence "Koreatown", "Little Russia" etc. You have your Cuban-Americans and eat Thai food. An American will say this is diversity. I guess it is in a sense, but with very flawed integration. Other countries also had large influxes of immigrants in the past century and they eventually are integrated, enriching themselves and their host country in the process. I wish people would reflect more why this doesn't happen in the US.

cgriswald 4y ago
The existence and continued renewal of historical enclaves is not an indication that America does not integrate immigrants or that America has not been enriched by their presence. (It's almost absurd to say. America is far from being "little England", and the culture I grew up with was so clearly influenced by the various peoples who settled the area, I don't even know what you could possibly mean.) America is currently home to almost 50 million immigrants, representing about 13% of our population. This is more than any country on Earth by number, and something like 8th by percentage. This number is just immigrants, not the American children of immigrants. The population of Chinatown in SF is around 35,000. Only 80% of that is some kind of Asian. The Chinese-American population of San Francisco is around 175,000 (out of around 850,000; total Asian-American population is around 280,000). There are areas of concentration, but you've a great chance of having a Chinese-American neighbor or two wherever you live in the city. The population of Little Italy in Manhattan is just under half white, with less than 10% being ethnically Italian. Similar demographic changes for Little Russia in SF. With the exception of some religious enclaves (e.g. Hasidic Jews), this is probably the case for most enclaves in the US older than (say) 50 years. Enclaves existed in Europe historically and still exist today. Both in the US and in Europe, enclaves formed both naturally as a thing immigrants did to survive in their new host country and as part of government plans. Ethnically, in the US the lines are essentially gone. Almost no one cares if your grandmother was Irish or your cousin married a Greek. (There are some pockets where people do care, but they're usually associated with historical beef—or generalized racism—and they're by far the exception.) To the extent non-white people care about ethnicity, it is probably correlated with how recently their ancestors immigrated, with recent immigrants themselves most likely to hold such views. I doubt this is that different from Europe. We do tend to divide more along racial lines; especially between certain groups—usually with outspoken people in BOTH groups having a problem with mixing. This is seen both socially and geographically; especially in some places. (Even this has changed significantly over my lifetime in places I thought it wouldn't.) I don't really know how this compares to Europe.

mbg721 4y ago

You're also comparing the biggest cities to each other. If you compared say, Lafayette, LA to Montpelier, VT to Las Cruces, NM, you might draw a different conclusion.