Yeah, I was just about to say this. These charts don't show how 'multicultural' the USA is, it shows the spread of race. That said, of course the USA is likely the most diverse in both respects. Firstly it's a huge country and secondly it's a county built on migration. Where Canada had mainly French and British settlers, the USA had people coming from everywhere. And that's not even counting the slavery which brought in a lot of people from Africa and Asia.
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TIL Canada is less multi-cultural than the United States
- Thread starter Mysterious
- Start date
Yeah, I was just about to say this. These charts don't show how 'multicultural' the USA is, it shows the spread of race. That said, of course the USA is likely the most diverse in both respects. Firstly it's a huge country and secondly it's a county built on migration. Where Canada had mainly French and British settlers, the USA had people coming from everywhere. And that's not even counting the slavery which brought in a lot of people from Africa and Asia.
sixteen-bit
Member
Shocking news
butzopower
proud of his butz
Uh, pretty sure people are talking about actual US colonization, not states. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_colonial_possessions
Uhm, he's not wrong. A white American and a black American culturally have far more in common than a white American and a white Italian for instance.
No he's not, as the US's colonies were almost nothing compared to Europe's colonial powers, and the largest of which we did give independence to.
Crab is calling the US expansion of states "colonialism."
Yeah Canada is super white. I always thought the diversity was referring mostly to the major cities, specifically the GTA. Swear I had read somewhere that Toronto itself was one of the most diverse cities in the world. It helps that Toronto is also pretty tolerant all around compared to most other major cities.
CadetMahoney
Member
Yea it's not surprising at all.
Still not compared to American cities.
Vancouver:
White: 53%
Asian: 41%
Black: 1%
Hispanic: 1%
Asian: 41%
Black: 1%
Hispanic: 1%
Toronto:
White: 50%
Asian: 34%
Black: 9%
Hispanic: 3%
Asian: 34%
Black: 9%
Hispanic: 3%
-----
New York City:
White: 44%
Hispanic: 29%
Black: 26%
Asian: 13%
Hispanic: 29%
Black: 26%
Asian: 13%
Los Angeles:
White: 29%
Hispanic: 49%
Black: 10%
Asian: 11%
Hispanic: 49%
Black: 10%
Asian: 11%
Except America has all of those same groups of white people, along with WAY MORE black people (and the various groups within that), along with WAY MORE hispanic people (and the various groups within that).
He's trying to argue that there's more cultural diversity just within Canada's white people than America has within its WAY MORE black/hispanic/asian groups. Like wtf.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
The difference between black American and white American culture in America is minimal compared to the differences between white Americans and white Polish or black Americans and black Xhosa. I mean, it obviously exists and forms the basis for some pretty strong discrimination, but you can still communicate with each other, you still have the same cultural points of reference, you still exist in the same political system, you probably watch the same or similar TV show and play the same or similar TV games. Cultural differences are significantly greater across language and customs and traditions and so on than they are across race.
Yes, there is a diversity within America's racial groups - some of those listed in the US survey as 'black' have been here for generations, some are of Afro-Caribbean origin. It's important to recognise that. But the best data we have for seeing how differerent these groups in where they come from is to see from how many different places they originally come from. On that metric, Canada is significantly more diverse than the United States. As a rule of thumb, most, if not all, white Americans were born in America. Most black Americans were born in America. Most Asian Americans were born in America. Most of them have no cultural reference other than America. This is much less true for Canada.
If your question was 'which country is more racially diverse?', the United States is quite clearly ahead. But the OP's topic referred explicitly to culture.
And yes, the United States' expansion was colonialism. I don't see how you can argue that the genocide and expulsion of the indigenous American peoples from their territories was not colonialism; I wouldn't have thought this was an especially controversial point.
Yes, there is a diversity within America's racial groups - some of those listed in the US survey as 'black' have been here for generations, some are of Afro-Caribbean origin. It's important to recognise that. But the best data we have for seeing how differerent these groups in where they come from is to see from how many different places they originally come from. On that metric, Canada is significantly more diverse than the United States. As a rule of thumb, most, if not all, white Americans were born in America. Most black Americans were born in America. Most Asian Americans were born in America. Most of them have no cultural reference other than America. This is much less true for Canada.
If your question was 'which country is more racially diverse?', the United States is quite clearly ahead. But the OP's topic referred explicitly to culture.
And yes, the United States' expansion was colonialism. I don't see how you can argue that the genocide and expulsion of the indigenous American peoples from their territories was not colonialism; I wouldn't have thought this was an especially controversial point.
So again, the only metric that matter is the one you say matters. And only proportionally.
Canada did the same thing! Across MORE territory! The European powers did the same thing to A RIDICULOUSLY larger population over HUNDREDS of additional years over the whole planet. And so did countless other empires over the years, some of whom still benefit from those expansions (such as China).
But somehow the US was the biggest colonialist?
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
No, there are other metrics. For example, here are two alternative studies with slightly different takes:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=319762
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2255492
Both find Canada measuring higher in terms of cultural diversity than the United States.
You've changed the goalposts. Your original post questioned who was the biggest beneficiary
which isn't the same as being the biggest actor. Work out the population and GDP generated by all the parts of the US that aren't the Thirteen Colonies (and therefore wouldn't have been attained without further colonialism), and you can see quite clearly who the biggest winner from early modern colonialism was.
You're kidding yourself if you think that America is culturally homogenous, but in Canada the much larger white majority somehow managed to escape assimilation into a kind of generic Canadian cultural gestalt.
It's also arbitrary to conclude that national background of one's immigrant European ancestors is a stand-in for culture, but the cultures of the many individual American states which 1) surpass many countries in sheer population size, and 2) possess their own vastly divergent subgroups, do not contribute to cultural diversity.
It's also arbitrary to conclude that national background of one's immigrant European ancestors is a stand-in for culture, but the cultures of the many individual American states which 1) surpass many countries in sheer population size, and 2) possess their own vastly divergent subgroups, do not contribute to cultural diversity.
I feel like you maybe ignoring the U.K. a little here.
No, you are the one changing goalposts. You originally said the US engaged "in a greater degree of colonialism" based on geography. I was simply saying if you base it in geography, Canada "engaged" more. I never said that was a real rational basis for the argument.
The US did not engage in a greater degree of colonialism than the other powers of history. That's a ridiculous argument.
I'll read your papers when I have a chance.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
I said the United States engaged in a greater degree of colonialism than most other European powers (the exceptions being the United Kingdom, Spain, and Russia; and it's a very close-run matter between Russia and the United States, so I'm being generous). I stand by this. Consider how populated the United States is today, and suppose that United States colonialism had never occured. Where the United States mostly is now, there would have been (a) thriving nation-state(s) of the indigenous American communities, with all of their traditions and customs and history and culture. Instead, they were massacred, and the justification you're using to say 'there wasn't much colonialism' is 'because we made sure they could never recover enough for anyone to see the ramifications'.
That doesn't make any sense. The US "engaged in a greater degree of colonialism" because of how successful they were with the land well after it was colonized? To me, "engaged in colonialism" would be a measure of how long and how much land you held, and how many people you subjugated and killed. Under those metrics, the US is nowhere close to the top. Under your strange rules, China would actually be on top. Think of all the people on land they conquered today.
And if the US never expanded, that land would have continued to belong to other colonial powers. The US only expanded in North America by taking land from the Spanish, French, Mexicans, and British. There would never have been any great Native American nations, there were too few of them left way before the US took over.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Indigenous American communities would, if left in peace, eventually have recovered. The US being 'successful with that land' isn't some piece of magic, it's because it was fertile and productive territory. By taking it from the indigenous communities before they could recover, the US ensured they never recovered - a genocide, a deliberate extinction of peoples. Most other colonial powers were much less interested in genocide, since they didn't intend to populate the lands they enslaved, and needed bodies to work.
If you measure across time, China probably is on top, yes, but we tend to judge societies by their era. Even by the time the US was pushing indigenous Americans off their lands, there were people pointing out how wrong this was.
There is no reason to think they would have "recovered." The other colonial powers are who decimated them in the first place. How come they never recovered in Canada or Mexico if that was the case? If the US never expanded, all of that territory would have just remained in other hands, and a population of European descent would have continued to fill the rest of North America with or without the US. Even if those lands became independent, they would have been mostly populated by and lead by Europeans. Like in Canada.
The United States did not break the back of the Native Americans, and it did not stop what would otherwise have been the rise of a great Naive American nation. The US did a ton of other horrible things to what remained of them, but we didn't do that. What you are saying is a completely baseless view of history.
Never really cared for how people look at these pie charts and just put white, black, asian, etc.
Does a great disservice to all ethnic groups within these slices.
Just from 'whites', Finlandish people have a unique culture to the British, who have a unique culture to Eastern Europeans, who have a unique culture to Italians, and so on.
Or for asian groups, great diversity across Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and so on.
Does a great disservice to all ethnic groups within these slices.
Just from 'whites', Finlandish people have a unique culture to the British, who have a unique culture to Eastern Europeans, who have a unique culture to Italians, and so on.
Or for asian groups, great diversity across Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and so on.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Because the same thing happened in both of those countries?
"It's okay we did bad thing, because if we didn't, someone else would have."
Okay, I'm sure that India is glad to know that British rule was okay, because if they hadn't done it, the French would have.
EDIT: This is also completely neglecting to mention the slave trade, incidentally, which is yet another act of colonialism.
Are they double counting mixed race people here?
I don't know what this sentence is supposed to mean.
I never said it was OK, I'm saying your argument for "degree of colonialism" doesn't make any sense. Other nations conquered way more land and killed orders of magnitude more people for significantly more time. But the US was more the colonialists because of some made up scenario that would never have happened anyway? One that Canada is also guilty of, but for some reason that doesn't count?
Clearly it's bullshit, you have to chuckle at the idea of putting them in together. Just picture the weddings alone, how the fuck could you consider them the same.
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Deleted member 231381
Unconfirmed Member
Exactly the same thing did happen in both Canada and Mexico - the indigenous peoples were massacred, those who remained were forced off their lands into small segregated reserves or forced to assimilate, and the world lost a great many unique cultures and peoples. Canada and Mexico aren't innocent of this either, but the United States is worse by virtue of numbers.
At the very least, the Fang people of Gabon survived France. What happened to the Chitimacha? The Timucua? The Secatogue? The United States destroyed these people and their history and their language and their customs; we will never know them.
ChubbyHuggs
Member
But if you broke up the white portions of people who are 100% of whatever they are would it still be the same?
lightskintwin
Banned
What's the point of multiculturalism if it doesn't reflect the greater mainstream culture?
The reason America comes across more multicultural is it's greater mainstream culture and it's influence on the rest of the world.
The reason America comes across more multicultural is it's greater mainstream culture and it's influence on the rest of the world.
Genetic differences aside, if you showed each of these ethnic groups to a random American, they'd probably just call them "black"
CarpeDeezNutz
Member
You can drive into parts of Texas and think you drove into Mexico or Korea by the signs.
Moff
Member
Here's a random WaPo map I found from here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/
I've never actually understood what the metrics are though since if we talk purely ethnicity, the US is indeed more diverse.
there is more to ethnic diversity than the color of skin. Switzerland is green there but most of our ethnic minorities are white, mostly from eastern european countries
The Main Event
Member
California alone, which its population is higher than Canada's, is culturally more diverse than any cities in Canada.
Here's a random WaPo map I found from here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-most-and-least-ethnically-diverse-countries/
I've never actually understood what the metrics are though since if we talk purely ethnicity, the US is indeed more diverse.
I think this map splits white Canadians by ethnic heritage (probably Anglo/Canadienne) but does not do the same for white Americans.
From what I understand, white ethnic divisions are much more important in Canada than in the US.
Over 300k, or 3x the US immigration rate per capita
oneils
Member
The second chart could refer to number of ethnicities rather than proportion of people not of the majority. If a country has a 50/50 split of two ethnicities, is it diverse?
UnemployedVillain
Member
I don't think you've ever been to the US if you think those are the only diverse areas
This is nonsense. The Southern states have huge African American minorities. Florida and Texas have huge Hispanic/Latino populations. And that's ignoring the smaller but highly concentrated populations of immigrants and refugees from specific national or cultural origins.
PabloBolivar
Banned
Jimmy Butler is Somali?
CarpeDeezNutz
Member
That's only counting legal immigration. The reality might be far closer.
Have you ever been to the US? Pretty odd statement.
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