More like they got defeated in an extremely bloody war that involved nuclear weapons, and reassessed their priorities in the aftermath. They didn’t just come to that change on their own as some kind of natural cultural evolution over time.
Same thing with the Germans; Nazi Germany was the outgrowth of a largely homogenous society, and today’s Germany is a very different place. And that change is because of the trauma and reassessment in the wake of World War II.
You could argue that homogenous societies foster greater persecution of minorities, because minorities are even more the outgroup than in more diverse societies, and therefore easier to persecute. You saw this in 19th century America with enslaved Black people and Native Americans.
But I agree with those who think that our less orderly society is more a product with that culture that we all do share; it’s strongly individualistic and not big on rule following, which is not the typical approach from places that are very orderly like Japan or Germany. It’s IMO, our biggest strength as well as our biggest weakness. It lets people be mavericks, it lets people come here and add to our diversity and what common culture we have. But it also means we’ve got myriad subcultures and a general feeling that people are going to do what they want, without having the cultural strictures and taboos that come with more homogenous cultures. So we end up with more friction in a lot of ways, which manifests itself in more violence, more identity type politics, and a general sense of the government engaging in cat-herding, rather than moving the nation in one common direction.
There are around 54.4 million K-12 students in the US. (Nearly half the entire Japanese population, btw). While we do have a school violence problem, 515 people have died in K-12 school shootings in the last 20 years. That is hardly a “slaughter”. In contrast, an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 school-aged children and students (elementary through high school) have died by suicide in Japan over the last 20 years. I would say that Japan’s child suicide problem, as a percentage of its population, is a much more critical issue than our school shooting problems here in the US.
All that aside, there’s really no point in comparing a homogeneous society that was relatively isolated for most of its nearly 3,000 years of existence with a 250-year-old country of 300+ million people that wouldn’t even exist if it were not for a massive amount of immigration from many different cultures.
I am not convinced a strong work ethic is much of a value, in school or work, where it functions to make profits that are funnelled up.
In schools, the remarks of André Gorz nearly 50 years ago are even more appropriate today:
“Schooling discourages independence and versatility in favour of graded ‘qualifications’ which have the essential characteristics of have no use value for the person who acquires them, but only an exchange value in the marketplace. You can’t do anything for yourself with what you learn in school. The only way to make use of the qualifications bestowed by schools is through the mediation of a third person, by trying to sell oneself on the ‘job market.’” Now more than ever we need intelligent disobedience and critical thinking if we are going to save the planet and ourselves. The work ethic is about following orders.
As for public transportation, that represents political decisions to fund it and keep it clean and efficient, and is not the result of homogeneity.
See also Kimstu, above: "Ultimately, most of the toxic expression of “diversity” and cultural strife in today’s America has been self-inflicted, via hierarchical systems and social stratification that worked to benefit the groups in power, who assumed that they were the only ones entitled to determine what “represents America”.
That’s true. As far as the virtue of “getting things done” by way of an entire race or ethnicity pulling together for its own interests, the track record on that is… mixed.
We’re among the richest and most technically advanced countries in the world. If we wanted to do better, we could. It’s a losing attitude to look at our history and say it’s too hard to even try. Futility is not the attitude that built this country.
I will say again: people who say the US can’t achieve things because of too much diversity are telling on themselves. They don’t mean “we can’t”, they mean “I won’t”.
Not according to this study, Japan’s suicide rate is the worst in the G7 (which includes the US):
…Japan’s suicide rate for those aged 15-34 is the highest in the G7…
from: The Structure of Japan’s Youth Mental Health Crisis — 340,000 School Refusals, Worst Youth Suicide Rate in the G7
Mar 30, 2026
Naoya Yokota
About 6 min read
School refusals among elementary and junior high students have surpassed 340,000, setting consecutive records. Japan’s suicide rate for those aged 15-34 is the highest in the G7. This analysis examines the structural factors across schools, families, and society, presenting the full picture of a youth mental health crisis too often dismissed as an ‘individual problem.’
FWIW on global happiness scales neither Japan or America rank in the top ten. America down at 23 and Japan 61st. Neither is the best role model
The features that tracks best with happiness seem to be a strong safety net - top spots to wealthy, high-trust, low-corruption welfare states - and negatives to wealth disparity without a solid safety net, crime level, and segregation levels. Diversity level doesn’t seem to be a great correlation. Nordic countries at the top, not so diverse; but several other top spots are diverse by various metrics.
Japan is not a happy place, and with declining birth rates their lack of experience at bringing in diverse others is going to put them in an increasingly worse place.
My WAG is that “diversity” is a convenient scapegoat; that @thorny_locust and others who note that diversity IS our culture let alone our strength are correct; and that dealing with differences is a stress and an opportunity at the same time.
@Jasmine are you increasingly more uncomfortable around different others? If so do you have any guesses why?
With how divisive things are in the US politically right now, I can understand the impulse to think that a more homogeneous society would change everything. We wouldn’t have identity politics and culture wars if everyone had the same identity and culture.
But we have countless examples of homogeneous cultures rife with their own problems, so it seems a price must be paid either way.
And America is not only now bitterly divided; it always has been. Division is in the fabric of our nation. So is diversity. It’s what we are.
I recently read Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Lathe of Heaven, which is about a man (George Orr) who can change reality with his dreams and the psychotherapist exploiting him to create his own vision of utopia. (Spoilers to follow.)
Orr doesn’t know what the therapist is suggesting to him because he’s under hypnosis, and he can’t control how his dreams solve the “problem.” Every time he is forced to solve a “problem,” the world becomes more and more distorted and he discovers unexpected horrors.
As the story moves along, Orr tries to enlist a dark-skinned woman to help him get out of the situation, and they become very close and fall in love.
Until his psychotherapist forces him to “solve racism” and he wakes up to a planet full of grey-skinned people and his love no longer exists.
I highly recommend it to anyone thinking we can find an easy fix to our current condition.
Your study isn’t linked, so I can’t compare particulars, but I’m skeptical. The first CDC study I linked said:
In this NIH article it’s suggested that Japan’s rate is 13.4 per 100,000. So in relative terms that’s higher, but not order-of-magnitude higher, and certain not cause to shrug off how the US fails its children. We have 67% of Japan’s suicide rate, and my children undergo active shooter drills several times a year, which leaves them with no confusion over the fact that they can be murdered at any time by a maniac with a gun.
It happens that I taught school in Japan for a couple of years. I saw no drills of any kind to practice what to do to avoid being murdered. What I saw were mostly happy kids who knew they were valued by their adults, albeit some were highly pressured to achieve, but then again that’s not so different from what my own children are going through right now.
Anyway this is a red herring. Japan does some great socialist stuff by virtue of a homogenous population, and this same factor also lets them stomp on the rights of minorities, and also led them to do a genocide in the last century. Worth noting how all of that works, but as far as value judgments, those outcomes are kind of a mixed bag.
I was having another chat in a different forum about this. Yes, it’s true that America has always had these bitter divides. Sometimes they’ve been concealed, sometimes out in the open, sometimes better, sometimes worse. Why are we so distraught about this moment? I think it’s because for a while it looked like we were at the end of history, leaving all this stuff in the rearview mirror at a very satisfying rate, and then overnight it looks like racial attitudes rewound from 2015 to 1955. Or earlier.
Anyone who thought racism was eradicated in 2015 was of course fooling themselves. But at that time, the default man-in-the-street position was of course racism is bad, even if we might define it different ways. It seems like now the median position is, eh, maybe a little racism is normal and expected and ok and something we just have to live with. And of course that’s the median, it gets worse as we look rightward.
Even though we’ve not rewound to 1860, the knowledge that we could lose so much progress so quickly, with no clear sign of what may reverse or even arrest it, it’s extremely distressing.
I can’t help but point out also, the US teen suicide rate has approximately tripled in recent years. Youth are experiencing a nationwide mental health crisis that has overtaxed hospitals and overwhelmed support services. I’d bring cites, but I made a whole thread about this once, and nobody took any of it seriously. Despite the fact that mental health practitioners are overwhelmingly begging people to take it seriously. The data backs them up.
I’d just put out there that suicide rates, and teen suicide rates, are … complicated. Not a great proxy for overall happiness (see for example that Finland has high and increasing rates despite being such an overall high happiness scoring country).
It certainly is not only an American problem, in fact there are signs of recent improvements here, and some low diversity countries are having rapid rises:
Results: Suicide rates declined or stabilized in the U.S. and Canada, except for steady increases among Canadian adolescent females (AAPC = 2.04). Despite these declines, U.S. young males continued to report the highest recent unadjusted suicide rates (28.7 per 100,000 in 2023). In South Korea, rates rose significantly across all groups, with sharp increases among females from 2015 to 2023 (APC = 10.91 for adolescents; APC = 7.42 for young adults).
Conclusion: Youth suicide trends vary across countries and by sex. South Korea’s sharp and ongoing rise, especially among young females, highlights the urgent need for prevention strategies attuned to sex, age, and sociocultural context. Ongoing risks among Canadian adolescent females and the U.S. young males also warrant continued investment in targeted, evidence-based interventions.
To the subject of the OP - I think of a nation’s population not so differently than any other ecosystem: monoculture can be efficient … to grow lots of wheat say … but it is not well equipped to adapt well or to survive stresses as well as a diverse system does. Can’t help but think of Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist in this context, which will make sense to those who have read it.
To add another thing, a heterogeneous society that has lots of conflict and friction between various groups can end up being more racist and prejudiced than a homogeneous society that has little or no interaction with a minority. Out of sight = out of mind. The homogeneous society may have prejudice, but in a far-off academic way, while the folks in the heterogeneous society seeing “racial incident”, “ethnic clash” day in and day out will become more negative.
Yes, agreed. Anytime Japan gets favorably compared to the US somebody knee-jerks to “what about the suicide rate”. And while Japan has historically had cultural issues around suicide, they aren’t unique, and the US is closing in on them fast, and anyway it’s not much of a counterpoint to the things about Japan that are genuinely better due to how they can work together. Whole thing is a red herring, we should drop it.
Do you have any cites for this? My understanding, from a distance, is that Japan has some pretty racist attitudes. I’m pretty sure racism is a stronger vote motivator in fairly white West Virginia than in very diverse NYC.
Sure, I can see that. I was just trying to reinforce the overall point that places that may not have our problems usually have other problems.
I’m sure North Korea is a very homogeneous society. It’s hard for me to think of a worse place to live. These factors do not appear to be correlated to how nice it is to live somewhere.
Personally I love diversity and always have. It’s one of the reasons I chose the university I did. I would staunchly argue that diversity enhanced the learning environment for everyone. I don’t know how that translates to other communities, but I like being around people with different identities and experiences than mine. I would not like my America any other way.