I am watching the ABC Evening News. While describing the context for their segment about the relatively new mayor of Los Angeles, a Hispanic man, they twice called L.A. the “most diverse city in the nation.”
Whoa, now!
When did NYC give up that dubious title? Or maybe I should ask, did NYC give up that dubious title?
[Skeptical smilie here]
Well, first you have to define diversity. What does it mean?
More people from different cultures/backgrounds?
More people from a greater variety of different cultures/backgrounds?
Something else?
For example:
City A has a population of 1 million, with 36% from different cultures/backgrounds. That 36% is comprised of people from 15 different places or ethnicities.
City B has a population of 1 million, with 29% from different cultures/backgrounds. That 29% is comprised of people from 21 different places or ethnicities.
Which of these cities is more diverse?
Also, the very phrase “different cultures/backgrounds” is problematic by itself. For example, for how long are members of a particular community considered “other,” and when do they become just another American? How do you measure this diversity, and who qualifies?
Is a fifth-generation Italian a “plus” on the diversity scale? What about a black person whose family came over on slave ships? Or a third generation Japanese? Or an immigrant Englishman?
Is this a matter of skin color? Personal habits and customs? Self-identification?
Agreed, the meaning of “diversity” can be vague, but political leaders tend to say it a lot because it’s generally considred a positive. At any rate, it’s iimpossible to tell. L.A.'s population is, very roughly speaking, 50-ish% Hispanic, 35% percent Anglo, and most of the rest of East Asian and Pacific Islands extraction. The thing is, the Hispanics aren’t a monolithic bloc, but represent many different countries in Latin America. Similarly with the Asians.
New York, on the other hand, does seem to have a bit more linguistic diversity, because you have neighborhoods of recent African immigrants, Haitians and Puerto Ricans, and, I shouldn’t wonder, probably more European immigrants as well. It’s geographically more centrally located with respect to those places than L.A. is.
Or maybe not…
I’m guessing (from a quick Google session) that this is based on a published statistical analysis of the 2000 US Census by USA Today, summarized here in some detail. Therein, Long Beach, CA (a “satellite” of Los Angeles) was deemed “the most diverse city” in the USA.
The goal of the analysis was to calculate a “Diversity Index” on a scale from 1 to 100 that approximates “the chance that two people picked at random from that city are different”. Long Beach came out on top of the list with a 79.4 DI rating.
And you know, I think this is actually an excellent approach to measuring “diversity” in a metropolitan area. The actual formula used, though, is somewhat overgeneral:
The formula they used for the 1990 Census analysis (and presumably retained for the 2000 Census analysis) was:
1 - ((W^2 + B^2 + AmInd^2 + API^2) * (H^2 + NonH^2))
Of course this is perfect for what the media folks are really after: an easy-to-regurgitate number with some kind of pedigree, so put “statistics”, “formula”, “US Census” and “USA Today” in a bowl and stir and you get something reasonably resembling a confection.
To answer the OP’s question, this “hurts” NYC versus West Coast cities such as Long Beach because all blacks are lumped together, and separating out “Hispanics” versus “non-Hispanics” is really weird from a NYC point of view. I would venture to guess that NYC’s black and Hispanic populations are more diverse than those in LA/Long Beach or anywhere else on the West Coast, since the great majority of Hispanics there will be Mexican, while in NYC it is getting pretty evenly split between Domincans, Puerto Ricans and a growing Mexican segment, plus a wide assortment of Hondurans, Ecuadoreans, Peruvians, Chilenos, etc.
There is also there is a significant African immigrant community in NYC (from all sorts of different nations), as well as many “black” Caribbean immigrants from Trinidad or Haiti; considering them in the same subgroup as American-born “blacks” is also to understate the “true diversity” of NYC versus the West Coast cities.
On the other hand, the West Coast cities have far larger numbers of various SE Asian or “Pacific Islander” ethnicities than NYC, which all get lumped together under “API” for “Asian/Pacific Islander”. But on the whole I’m guessing that NYC is getting “undercut” in the formula used by this index.
…But who really cares, it’s USA Today fer Chrissakes!
As a followup to my earlier post: to be fair to USA Today (or rather, to the Boston-based group that provided the analysis for them), the US Census only collects data under those broad racial/ethnic categories, with the option for one to choose “other”. So they were stuck with what the Feds considered statistically important/interesting (i.e., “racial” data versus ethnic data).
Another thought just occured to me: wasn’t the 2000 Census the first one where people were potentially recorded under multiple categories (e.g., Tiger Woods could check off all of Black, White, API and AmerInd if he wanted to)?
If so, that is another way that the LA and SF areas might get somewhat more favored in a “Diversity Index” calculation versus NYC in particular. Most of NY’s diversity comes from first-generation immigrants (often the children move out of the city), while it’s my impression (with as yet no empirical or statistical data to back it up) that there’s a lot more “second generation race mixers” rattling around in California than hereabouts.
According to the 2000 census, a staggering 40% of us three million Angelenos are foreign born–and of course that’s not counting second generation children born to immigrants. New York City reported only 35% foreign born, although I stand by my statement that the NY foreign born might seem more exotic somehow, by virtue of their having come from farther places and possibly speaking a wider variety of tongues.
The methodology of the survey sounds rather dubious. As opposed to NYC can LA point to DISTINCLY Hassidic, Albanian, Arab, Russian, Dominican, Puerto Rican, Jamacian, Haitian, Irish, Italian, Slavic, Chinese, German, Korean, Somalian, Columbian, etc., etc, neighborhoods?
Diversity isn’t just saying that we have a bunch of Hispanics among us.
Firstly, if this was not such a tongue in cheek post, I would ask you to educate yourself before airing your obviously ignorant opinion. Since the question was posed in a light-hearted manner, I will answer it in much the same way. Let’s start with the obvious:
First of all, we have what is considered the most diverse Asian community in the United States. This is hard for some people to understand. A classmate of mine who is from New York, basically inferred that a mutual friend of ours was Chinese when in fact he was obviously Filipino with a Spanish surname. Because L.A. is situated on the Pacific Rim, every Asian and Polynesian people are here in large numbers.
Secondly, our state is prosperous and is often thought of as the modern day promised land. Where were the Okies going in Grapes of Wrath? Historically, every geographical region in the United States has at one time shared a major migration to California. That means, all of the Europeans who came to the East Coast are represented here in numbers as well.
Thirdly, California shares a border with Mexico. However, not just Mexicans come here because of it. South and Central American people also come through this border. New York shares a border with Canada. Unfortunately, only Canadians come through there (that was a joke).
Lastly, the lack of designated or traditional neighborhoods does not represent lack of diversity. I would like to think that our open mindedness makes this so. Here, Jews don’t feel compelled to live in a ghetto and our China Town is rather small. (Although there are pockets in Fairfax and in the Valley) In other words, just because we don’t have a Little Italy, or whatever, does not mean we don’t have Italians.
So, I would say that it is highly likely that Los Angeles is the most diverse city in the United States, if not the world. And as Clinton once said of our country “Diversity is our strength.”
My kid attended a relatively small (about 300 students) neighborhood elementary school in NYC. There were 21 different native languages in the households of the students. Remember, this was one neighborhood school.
Now THAT’S diversity!
Along that line, a few years ago we were looking at a list of technicians at one dealership in Los Angeles area. Out of 15 or 16 guys they came from 14 different countries. I’m talking first or second gen here.
Los Angeles has off the top of my head, distinct neighborhoods that are Korean, Japanese, Filipino, Armenian, Ethiopian, Thai, Russian, Ukrainian and others including Mexican, Guatamalan, Salvadoran. Outside of LA in the valleys and Orange County you have large Vietnamese, and Chinese communities, Glendale has another large Armenian Community.
There is a large Iranian population in Orange County.
If you look up a city on Wikipedia it often gives the U.S. Census data. That data is broken into two categories: racial diversity and ethnic diversity.
Bolding mine, for clarity. Why this distinction is made, I don’t know.
Arguments could be made for the meaning of “diversity” based on ethnic origin (and just what qualifies as an ethic origin suitable for counting —since nearly everybody is slightly different, eventually the word “ethnic” could be watered down so much that a person is an ethnic group all his own).
You could also say that diversity is based on the percentage of the population who claim mixed-race ancestry, where Seattle ranks quite highly despite having a large percentage of Caucasian population.
In short, who cares whether NYC or LA wins? There’s not a cash prize or anything.
What? Those guys from FOX lied to me… AGAIN!!! 
I sense a considerable amount of unnecessary hometown boosterism in these posts (possibly including my own earlier post), so just let me say: I would not be surprised at all if the LA area is truly as or more “diverse” as NYC, it’s just that (a) I have not lived in SoCal, but (b) I think the formula as described in the article I found potentially seriously underrepresents the “experienced diversity” of having grown up here in NY. Which it may also do for SoCal, I don’t know.
Frankly the main difference I remember being struck by when I spent 2+ weeks staying with family friends near San Diego when I was 10 or 11 years old was that they opened their windows in the summer and they didn’t have any screens. “My God”, I shouted, “close those windows ore we’ll be eaten alive by mosquitos tonight!” And the kids whose room I was in gave me a puzzled look and said, “What are mosquitos?”
Oh, and I remember thinking the pizza was the worst I’d ever eaten, though I now know it is terrible even in NYC if you are getting it at a Chuck E. Cheese (which was where we went, and I had never heard of before).
I’d have to admit that NY is winning on the economic front. NY has a per-capita income approximately $10K higher than LA does. Can you imagine what we could do with that kind of money here, if it fell on our heads? This is undoubtedly due to the pervasive poverty among our newcomers.
There’s also the question (that this methodology doesn’t address) “Is a city with mutiple ethnic neighborhoods really diverse if no one ever leaves those neighborhoods?” (Which is not necessarily what happens in NY).
It’s one thing to have people from a number of different backgrounds, but if they never, ever mix (or only rarely mix - but only professionally or when otherwise forced to, never socially), it’s another to have fewer backgrounds where people actually interact with each other. Which one is more diverse?
My kids attend a small elementary school on the west side of L.A. Around Christmas they don’t even try to have a holiday celebration – they have Multicultural Week! My son’s kindergarten class alone had kids with Persian, Japanese, Turkish, British, Chinese parents, as well as multiple flavors of Hispanic and Jew.
The neighborhood we live in is actually sandwiched between big Japanese and Persian communities. Go a little further east and there’s a big Hasidic neighborhood. Does New York have a Byzantine Latino Quarter? Or anything comparable to the Gay/Lesbian/Russian Jew neighborhood in West Hollywood?
Are you kidding? NYC blends together more every day. There is not only mixing of neighborhoods but movement to the suburban areas that tend to take on an ethnic flavor. For instance, the only direct flights to Lisbon are out of Newark (not JFK) because of a significant Portugese population that chose to congregate in New Jersey. Many of the observant Jews have moved out of Brooklyn and further out to Long Island to set up new enclaves. While Chinatown is still very much Chinese, Little Italy is mostly a tourist trap.
The point being that New York has been and continues to be a true melting pot of people from all over the world, not from specific regions. They mix more together every day to the point where ethnicity becomes less noticeable every day. While everybody doesn’t always like everybody else, I don’t think you can find another city in the world where the general attitude is that everybody has to find a way to get along.
People like to live amongst people with whom they share similarities. That is the basis of ethnic neighborhoods. It become a problem when that factor is used for the purposes of discrimination. NYC, for a lot of reasons, is very segregated regarding neighborhoods. On the other hand, it is probably the most tolerant city in the world in respect to ethnicity. That is why, for many years, people from all over the world have made NYC their first stop in order to gain a toehold into the rewards of the American economic system.
Have you ever been to NYC? That kind of stuff has been going on forever. In NYC it is so common it just doesn’t get noticed anymore.
This “debate” is bordering on ridiculous. I am sure you could find someone from any given country in both NYC and LA, and in any number of major coastal cities. I’m sure you could bend the statistics however you like, depending on if you are judging race or nationality or ethnicity or generation, and what kind of boundaries you want to draw around a city/metro area. I bet people of NYC and LA both don’t look at passing Laotians like they have six eyes. And neither one has the market corned on exotic immigrants like Africans and Europeans and the less popular Asian and Latin American countries. While a Angeleno is likely to look at New York’s Latino immigration as all a bunch of Cubans, and New Yorkers are likely to think the LA’s Latinos as standard-issue Mexicans, the truth is that both cities (like other major cities) harbor a bewildering variety of people.
When it comes to these things, the truth isn’t always so apparent either. Want to venture a guess on the second-largest group of Asians in America? Okay, how many of you guessed Filipino?
I’ve seen my hometown of Sacramento called the most diverse city in America, and on other occasions it’s been lauded as the most integrated. In my experience Sacto is far more integrated than the other great diverse cities (well, at least far more integrated than the amazingly diverse Bay Area)- my unremarkable suburban high school spoke 67 different languages. Anecdotally, the local Korean megamarket (located next to an Indian grocer, a Fijian grocery and Armenian grocer and a passel of ethnic restaurants covering most of Asia and much of Latin America) ended up having to dedicate an aisle to the Russians. I bet it’s the only Koreana Plaza Market with a kvas aisle.
So lets all just give ourselves a pat on the back, okay?
I think the people of London, Toronto, Mecca, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Jakarta, Phnom Penh, Mombassa, Amsterdam, Sydney, Marrakech, and Hong Kong will be surprised.
America didn’t invent diversity. It didn’t come close.
An Indian will tell you their country has 1,000 ethnic groups and 500 languages. Anyone on the silk road will bring up that everyone in Asia and Europe and in between has been passing through and leaving genes since time began. Muslims will mention that people from every corner of the globe congregate in Mecca. Brazilians will proudly point out that when the whole world interbreeds until there are no more races, we will look Brazilian. Canadians have made diversity an official government policy. Let’s try to remember the rest of the world when we tout our own diversity horn.