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TIL Canada is less multi-cultural than the United States

Frimaire

Member
Shit, now that I think about it, I live in a pretty small town in Canada and even here I don't think 90% of the people are white...
 
the term Hispanic in the US is oddly created to paint brush and place all Spanish speakers from Latin America into the same basket regardless if they are Domincan, Mexican, Nicuraguan, Argentinian

hqdefault.jpg


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji1fjeYNkCY

Chart totally goes against the chart in the OP. One of them has to be wrong right? Or am I reading the this chart wrong?
easy
OP's is about RACE,
the HuffPo one is about Ethnicity
 
The chart comes from this website.

The chart is complete bullshit made by someone who didn't understand what the fuck they were doing.

I don't think so completely. Canada uses places of the ethnic groups origin in it's census data and the US mainly uses a specific large area or continent to than categorize broadly using race.

What the person is basically doing is combining what is racially white, maybe not accurately. The US can go by ethic group just like other countries and it might be diverse as or more, but it doesn't. I guess if we go by hyphenated - Americans official we probably have every nation on Earth, plus Native American tribes.
 

C4Lukins

Junior Member
So Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Greeks, Polish, Russians, Ukranians and etc are not considered "multicultural" according this chart because it is gauging Skin Color instead of Ethnic backhround


I just like to look at nations such as Sweden.

Sweden does not have immigrants flowing in from South America, Mexico, the Middle East..

It does not have people floating over on tubes from nearby islands.

Sweden does not have 100k people attempting to penetrate there boarders monthly.

So nothing against Sweden, but they have no idea what the US is dealing with.
 

shintoki

sparkle this bitch
Which says Canada is more diverse?

Ethnicity diverse is different than what this article is referring too.
Many of the African nations are extremely diverse ethnicity, but drastically fall down when we lump it into Black, White, Asian, etc. Which is what the OP's map is referring too and typically how the US paints it.
 
I just like to look at nations such as Sweden.

Sweden does not have immigrants flowing in from South America, Mexico, the Middle East..

It does not have people floating over on tubes from nearby islands.

Sweden does not have 100k people attempting to penetrate there boarders monthly.

So nothing against Sweden, but they have no idea what the US is dealing with.

Pretty sure it does.
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist

cromofo

Member
"White" is a very bad of looking at it. I'd imagine a lot of these "white people" are actually immigrants from Europe.

I have relatives in Canada and know many families that emigrated to Canada in the wake of the 90s Yugo Wars.

Multiculturalism isn't only racial.
 

Korey

Member
It's pretty obvious that Canada would be less diverse than America....

America:
1) Has way more black people
2) Has way more Mexicans (being located right next to Mexico) and hispanics in general since we're closer to South America. Only thing Canada is closer to is Santa Claus.

Why would anyone think Canada is more diverse than America?
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
This is doing that woefully American thing of assuming that race is the only component of diversity. In 2011, 20.6% of Canada's population was foreign-born. In 2013, the equivalent figure for the United States was 13.1%.

I'm pretty sure that the cultural experience of a (white) Yugoslavian refugee to Canada is more different to the median Canadian than the cultural experience of a black American is to the median American.
 

Xe4

Banned
I've always considered a lot of the racism in America due to its diversity. In areas that are more racially diverse there's a lot more pushback. I think that's a big reason you have all these stories of racism coming out of the US more than Europe or Canada.
 
This is doing that woefully American thing of assuming that race is the only component of diversity. In 2011, 20.6% of Canada's population was foreign-born. In 2013, the equivalent figure for the United States was 13.1%.

How is that in solid numbers, though? 20% of 27 million is about 5 million, 13% of 198 million is 25 million. So uh...more of the US population is foreign born than Canadian?
 
I've always considered a lot of the racism in America due to its diversity. In areas that are more racially diverse there's a lot more pushback. I think that's a big reason you have all these stories of racism coming out of the US more than Europe or Canada.

racism in the US is rooted from colonialism, slavery, Manifest Destiny and religion (Protestants over Catholics)
 

pswii60

Member
So Italians, Portuguese, Spaniards, Greeks, Polish, Russians, Ukranians and etc are not considered "multicultural" according this chart because it is gauging Skin Color instead of Ethnic backhround
Yeah. OP says multicultural in thread title and then posts a chart about skin colours instead.
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
How is that in solid numbers, though? 20% of 27 million is about 5 million, 13% of 198 million is 25 million. So uh...more of the US population is foreign born than Canadian?

Yes, because the US has a larger population in total? More of the US population is also domestically-born than Canada by the same logic. Doing the sensible thing and comparing them proportionally, the US is not especially unusual by the standards of Western countries - with a smaller foreign-born population than well known cultural metropoles Spain, Norway, and Belgium.

This thread is just another example of weird and unjustified American exceptionalism.
 
Yes, because the US has a larger population in total? More of the US population is also doomestically-born than Canada by the same logic. Doing the sensible thing and comparing them proportionally, the US is not especially unusual by the standards of Western countries - with a smaller foreign-born population than well known cultural metropoles Spain, Norway, and Belgium.

This thread is just another example of weird and unjustified American exceptionalism.

So what's the issue? The US has more foreign born citizens than Canada. I'm glad you brought up Spain Norway and Belgium because they have nothing to do with the comparison between the US and Canada.
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
So what's the issue? The US has more foreign born citizens than Canada. I'm glad you brought up Spain Norway and Belgium because they have nothing to do with the comparison between the US and Canada.

This is dumb logic.

We have two countries, A and B. A has a population of 1 billion. 10 million of these are of one ethnicity, and the rest all belong to another. B has a population of 10 million, split into five ethnicities each compromising 2 million. By your logic, A is the more diverse country than B, because it has, in absolute terms, more non-majority ethnic people than B. This is despite the fact that A is 99% homogenous, and B is only 20%. You can see this is argument can't possibly stand. No reasonable person aware of what the term 'diversity' actually means would argue A is more diverse than B.

In terms of diversity, we have to compare populations like for like. And like for like, the US has a smaller foreign-born population as a proportion of total population than many, many other Western countries. In fact, the US is quite close to the median, and is less diverse in the origin of its citizens than Canada by an enormous margin, and somewhat less diverse than countries such as Norway, Belgium, and Spain, which is why I picked them.
 

99Luffy

Banned
This is doing that woefully American thing of assuming that race is the only component of diversity. In 2011, 20.6% of Canada's population was foreign-born. In 2013, the equivalent figure for the United States was 13.1%.

I'm pretty sure that the cultural experience of a (white) Yugoslavian refugee to Canada is more different to the median Canadian than the cultural experience of a black American is to the median American.
It isnt an american thing at all. In canada 'visible minority' is the category used to determine diversity. Its used in workplace statistics and censuses all the time. And I agree with it.
 
Compare proportions all you want

The USA is #1 when it comes to the raw numbers of diversity. Proportions are nice but when it comes to comparing how much a country contributes, in this case diversity, its used as a crutch to make the smaller guy seem like they do the same as the bigger guy.
 

Xe4

Banned
racism in the US is rooted from colonialism, slavery, Manifest Destiny and religion (Protestants over Catholics)

US didn't really take part in colonialism to the same extent Europe did. Though slavery, manifest destiny and religion all play a part as well. It's just an observation I've noticed that whenever minority groups in a country increase you see a lot more racism, even in countries that we consider "progressive".
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
It isnt an american thing at all. In canada 'visible minority' is the category used to determine diversity. Its used in workplace statistics and censuses all the time. And I agree with it.

'visible minority' is not used to 'determine diversity'. It exists because Canadian politics actually has the nuance to understand that different minority groups face different problems, and that lumping a Yugoslav refugee and a wealthy East Asian immigrant into the same category is not at all useful, and there needs to be different laws to adequately address the different types of discrimination each would face. The fact that a Yugoslav refugee would not be counted as a visible minority doesn't mean they're not somehow contributing to Canada's diversity.
 

Joni

Member
I always thought multiculturalism was about how cultures lived together, not how many you actually have.
 

Socreges

Banned
I'm actually shocked at this statistic considering how much Canada is pushed as being multicultural, and the US as... well not that.
...what? Certain cities, like Vancouver and Toronto, are definitely "pushed as being multicultural", but otherwise the country is fairly white.

I always thought multiculturalism was about how cultures lived together, not how many you actually have.
Also this.
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
US didn't really take part in colonialism to the same extent Europe did. Though slavery, manifest destiny and religion all play a part as well. It's just an observation I've noticed that whenever minority groups in a country increase you see a lot more racism, even in countries that we consider "progressive".

The United States engaged in a greater degree of colonialism than almost any European state going. Compare a map of the Thirteen Colonies to a map of the modern United States. The key difference is that eventually, most of the European powers relinquished control of the lands they'd stolen from the indigenous peoples.
 

Matt

Member
This is dumb logic.

We have two countries, A and B. A has a population of 1 billion. 10 million of these are of one ethnicity, and the rest all belong to another. B has a population of 10 million, split into five ethnicities each compromising 2 million. By your logic, A is the more diverse country than B, because it has, in absolute terms, more non-majority ethnic people than B. This is despite the fact that A is 99% homogenous, and B is only 20%. You can see this is argument can't possibly stand. No reasonable person aware of what the term 'diversity' actually means would argue A is more diverse than B.

In terms of diversity, we have to compare populations like for like. And like for like, the US has a smaller foreign-born population as a proportion of total population than many, many other Western countries. In fact, the US is quite close to the median, and is less diverse in the origin of its citizens than Canada by an enormous margin, and somewhat less diverse than countries such as Norway, Belgium, and Spain, which is why I picked them.
So the only true measure of diversity is the one you decide upon?
 

Matt

Member
The United States engaged in a greater degree of colonialism than almost any European state going. Compare a map of the Thirteen Colonies to a map of the modern United States. The key difference is that eventually, most of the European powers relinquished control of the lands they'd stolen from the indigenous peoples.
And this is a really silly way of looking at things. If we go by this logic Canada is actually the largest beneficiary of colonialism.
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
So the only true measure of diversity is the one you decide upon?

I mean, no, there's plenty of flaws with the statistic I picked - for example, Belgium is actually significantly more diverse than it appears because the foreign-born statistic doesn't capture the Walloon/Flemish divide, which is an enormous cultural line dividing the country (this also applies to Canada what with Quebec). But it does give a better approximation than the OP's post, which reduces 'culture' to 'race' despite the two terms being incredibly far apart. It's almost insulting in some respects - my best man might be of Pakistani origin and have brown skin, but you literally cannot get more culturally British than him, - chips, tea, Doctor Who, drinking to cover social awkwardness, you name it. Yet he would be classified as a different culture to myself, despite blatantly not being, while a Polish migrant would be the same culture as myself, again despite blatantly not being, by the OP's post.

Culture is obviously hard to define and you'd struggle to boil it down to a final point, but we can at the very least see the OP's conception is incrediby wrong and by almost any of the metrics we do think are good measures of having a state populated by multiple different cultures, Canada significantly leads the United States.

And this is a really silly way of looking at things. If we go by this logic Canada is actually the largest beneficiary of colonialism.

No, there are other elements than just the physical size of the territory that determined the benefits from colonialism. Much of Canada's territory was only ever sparcely populated and remains so today. The greatest 'winner' of colonialism, at least in recent history, would be the United States, closely followed by Russia.
 

Matt

Member
I mean, no, there's plenty of flaws with the statistic I picked - for example, Belgium is actually significantly more diverse than it appears because the foreign-born split doesn't capture the Walloon/Flemish divide, which is an enormous cultural line dividing the country. But it does give a better approximation than the OP's post, which reduces 'culture' to 'race' despite the two terms being incredibly far apart. It's almost insulting in some respects - my best man might be of Pakistani origin, but you literally cannot get more culturally British than him, chips, tea, Doctor Who, drinking to cover social awkwardness, you name it. Yet he would be classified as a different culture to myself, despite blatantly not being, while a Polish migrant would be the same culture as myself, again despite blatantly not being, by the OP's post.

Culture is obviously hard to define and you'd struggle to boil it down to a final point, but we can at the very least see the OP's conception is incrediby wrong and by almost any of the metrics we do think are good measures of having a state populated by multiple different cultures, Canada significantly leads the United States.



No, there are other elements than just the physical size of the territory that determined the benefits from colonialism. Much of Canada's territory was only ever sparcely populated and remains so today. The greatest 'winner' of colonialism, at least in recent history, would be the United States, closely followed by Russia.
Why don't you go ahead and post these metrics that "we" think are good measurements, and how they compare?

And much of the US's territory was also relatively lightly populated by the time the US took possession of it. The population differences between the areas touched by European colonialism and American expansion are night and day.

Comparing US states and European colonies is pretty ridiculous.
 

Korey

Member
This is doing that woefully American thing of assuming that race is the only component of diversity. In 2011, 20.6% of Canada's population was foreign-born. In 2013, the equivalent figure for the United States was 13.1%.

I'm pretty sure that the cultural experience of a (white) Yugoslavian refugee to Canada is more different to the median Canadian than the cultural experience of a black American is to the median American.

I like how different white people is now somehow considered more diverse than a black person and a white person.

"Well yea, America has more races but Canadians are way more diverse in their choice of favorite animes and music genres."

How desperate are you for that "most diverse" medal rofl
 

Metroxed

Member
I've always wondered how that's calculated - I would assume it's by ethnic group since if it was by racial group like in the OP chart (with Hispanic essentially being a racialized group) African countries wouldn't be any more diverse than most other places. Black, Arab, some Indian, some Asian, some white...

It has to do with how "diversity" is measured. In the US it is usually considered as the absolute number of different ethnicities or races. But for instance, in some African countries there are a lot of ethnicities and people who speak very different and unrelated languages, have completely different cultures, etc., but they would only be considered as "black" in the US.

The US and many Western countries tend to lump very different people together in very broad and ambiguous categories ("black", "Hispanic", "Asian", etc.). Someone from western Tanzania and someone from Ghana are completely different in almost everything, but they would be seen as the same ("black") in the US, for instance. Another example: an Argentine woman with Spanish-Italian ancestry living in Patagonia is very different from another from Honduras with mostly Amerindian ancestry, but both would be considered Hispanic/Latino in the US.
 
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Deleted member 231381

Unconfirmed Member
I like how different white people is now somehow considered more diverse than a black person and a white person.

Ilu podobieństw kulturowych uważa się za dwie grupy, gdy nie mogą nawet zrozumieć, co mówi druga? Masz różne tradycje, różne historie, różne programy telewizyjne, różne rzeczy. Czy wiesz o Rzeczpospolitej? Czy wiesz o wojnach polsko-litewskich? Czy możesz mi powiedzieć, kto jest Doda czy Nergal?

Nie jest to ograniczone do czarno-białych. Jako anglojęzyczny czarnoskóry amerykańczyk urodzony i wychowany w Ameryce, jesteś kulturowo podobny do białego Amerykanina niż ci, którzy urodzili się w Nigerii. Nie mówisz Hausa, nie wiesz o zwyczajach Hausa, nie wiesz o Maliki maddhab. Rasa nie jest kulturą.
 
Compare proportions all you want

The USA is #1 when it comes to the raw numbers of diversity. Proportions are nice but when it comes to comparing how much a country contributes, in this case diversity, its used as a crutch to make the smaller guy seem like they do the same as the bigger guy.

What in the world this is absurd, proportions are absolutely the more significant figures on the subject of populations and diversity. You don't see an entire population, only pockets spread throughout the country. Proportions are more telling for how those pockets are congregated.
 
Apples and oranges. If the US were to measure the ethnic diversity of its citizens in as granular a way as those African countries, it would blow them out of the water with regards to ethnic diversity.

Yes and no. Because of how migration trends work, the US migrant population is mostly derived from groups that, in their source nations, are the majority, plurality, or otherwise most culturally dominant force. It simply will not pick up the full diversity that any given nation has to offer. It is however an immensely attractive country, and so casts a wide net in terms of nations it pulls from. On the other hand, it's also kinda difficult to get to in terms of sheer geography, which filters those who can't afford it, and so further favours given populations over others. Hard to measure without precise references though.

To be honest, a study into the US racial diversity vs its ethnic diversity would be fascinating to read.
 

urfe

Member
Has it been brought up that Multi-Culturalism is a policy, and the amount of people per American definitions of race doesn't have much to do with it?

If not, I would like to bring that up.
 
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