Is Europe more/less/just as diverse as the US?

Great Debates
21

Everyone wants to think that where they come from is “better”. This applies to any adjectval description you can think of. I’ve heard folks boasting about the crime rates of their city in the belief that that makes them “better” (“hey, come here and we’ll show you what gang violence is like!” - “no thanks.”). Or speed limits. Or amount of graffiti. It’s ridiculous.

“Diverse” isn’t a judgement of quality any more than “purple” is. Nevertheless, if you were to get into a conversation about whose locaility is more purple, people would start boasting about levels of purpleness.

Europe is more diverse than the USA; so obviously so. That doesn’t mean it’s better; it just means that it’s more diverse. But some folks from the USA will argue until they’re blue in the face that their country is as (or more) diverse than Europe.

That’s OK, I guess. It’s been quite a while since those comparisons mattered to me, or that I felt the need to defend or prove how purple my country was compared to someone else’s.

But it isn’t a value judgement, and treating it as such tells the listener far more about you than anything about the countries in question.

22

Diversity is created by people having less contacts. In most of Europe, people have probably moved inside their countries at about the level as in the US. At least here in Finland there have been significant movements inside the country but not at all of the same level across the borders. This is changing but still, if you take all the 18th century ancestors of all the Finns of today, an overwhelming majority of them lived in Finland. I wonder if you can say that about any US state? The lack (I don’t think it’s a short-coming) of diversity in the US is the result of the fact that so many people and so many people’s parents came from another state or even country. How can you create a unique Florida if you lived elsewhere before you retired?

23

Ok, I’ll answer myself: by bringing in gazillion Cubans.