Well, it’s logical to expect violence to go down with low diversity, since hatred of the different is such a motivation for violence. Just like violence in Iraq dropped once the ethnic cleansing was pretty much accomplished; with their targets fled or dead the killers didn’t have anyone to kill any more.
The main reason Europe is enjoying its sixty-fifth year without a major war is in no small part to the 650 years plus of ethnic cleansing and other violence prior to then. Those homogeneous societies were born out of serious bloodshed. And even the current period has been plagued by the troubles in Ireland, the Balkans and the Basque region.
For those who worry about sectarian violence, I would rather be a Sunni in Iran or a Shi’ite in Egypt now than a Catholic in Shakespearean England or a Huguenot across the Channel. The Renaissance and the birth of the Modern Age was just as brutal as the medieval era.
The price to be paid for multiculturalism is far less than the price that was paid for those good old fashioned mono-cultures. Having government forms printed in or teaching school in various languages are minuscule in cost compared the alternatives
And by the by, one of the first things the American revolutionaries did was print the Declaration of Independence in German, which was the second-most common language until the first World War, and they are still the largest ethnic group in this country. Hell, they are the main reason we tried to stay neutral and keep out of WWI.
That article is nowhere near as supportive of your position as you claim.
It doesn’t say anything about learning English, which was what I talked about and is something which immigrants have individual control over. It talks about their economic status. And it says:
It then goes on to note however that Hispanic people seem to reach a plateau. The second generation rises to the the same economic level that second generations of European immigrants have. But Hispanics seem to then slow down and they never reach the same economic levels that Europeans do - even in cases where the Hispanic people have been living in America for several generations.
Now one possibility is that people whose great-great-grandparents immigrated to America are still refusing to adopt to American culture for some unspecified reason. Another possibility is that these people whose ancestors came from Mexico are not being offered the same economic opportunities as people whose ancestors came from Europe.
I too don’t see how the plateau can really be defined in terms of “failure to assimilate” in the linguistic and social culture sense as the second and third generations DO assimilate in that realm to a similar degree as prior immigrant waves. If anything, the difference is that some of these immigrants ***are ***assimilating into American culture… but into a limited, boxed-in social tier within American culture. Not a linguistic problem but an attitudinal one. Even my youngest nephews, who are exclusively anglophone, getting good educations, and culturally as American as Justin Bieber, will be seen by their looks and the sound of their name as “exotic” and will hear more than once some fool tell them to go back to somewhere they did not come from.
You want to be on the side of the whitey on the ground here ? Be my guest 
You make a cogent argument there. And by “cogent” I mean “non-existent”, unless you’re arguing that minorities are just waiting to build up enough numbers to go beat up “whitey”.
Is that your argument?
My classic example of this: The only two people with AIDS I have known IRL contracted it in chaste monogamous committed relationships – that is, they were chaste (not celibate); their partners, as it turned out, not so much. I know this is a bizarre outlier from the norm, but that’s what makes it such an excellent example in countering “in my experience” posts that improper4ly generalize. (Not ne3cessarily accusing Contrapuntal of this; just citing it as a perfect “white crow” in support of your point)
The balckout affected NYC in both 1970s and 2004 (and in 2004, it affected many other US and Canadian cities as well). The ethnic combo in NYC did not change all that radically in thirty years; NYC still contains may Blacks and Puerto Ricans.
Certainly there were many other factors at work - which is just my point: ethnic composition doesn’t appear to have played a big role. In NYC, it was more or less a constant between the two blackouts.
That there is. Shame that wasn’t the case with Katrina.
ETA: Gaaa…didn’t see enomaj’s response. Ah well…it bears repeating.
Those photographs have been addressed numerous times, but in case you hadn’t heard, the phrase “looting” was used to describe the woman in the top picture because the photographer saw her break into a supermarket to grab food, while the word “finding” was used to describe the people in the bottom picture because they grabbed food that was literally just floating by.
Those are two dramatically different actions.
That said, I don’t think a woman breaking into a store in the midst of a flood to grab food for herself is committing a serious crime and we ought to have a completely different phrase for it other than “looting” which implies the person is merely taking advantage of the chaos to steal, such as what happened during the Rodney King riots in LA.
That is true. But over the last few decades, even if slightly, the position of blacks and Puerto Ricans have become better in addition to stronger police enforcement of laws.
Or, just as realistically, you could move away from the coast to somewhere that’s less prone to hurricanes, if you were so inclined…
The success of Multiculturalism is totally dependent on the attitude of the dominant culture.
The peoples that are coming in to the US (for example) are NOT coming to steal something that is rightfully yours by birthright. They are here to compete for jobs/mates/money etc. If you can’t handle a little competition, then that is your fault, not the fault of the immigrants.
That said, far too many native people think they deserve something simply because of where they were born. I love the idea of Multiculturalism, but I do think it’s a failure on the whole because it’s pretty darn near impossible to get the majority to accept the immigrants unalienable rights and humanity. That’s just a shame
A third possibility is that they have lower average IQs.
Ah, the old excuse that “They aren’t oppressed! They’re just subhuman!”
That’s an incredible straw man. Opposing multiculturalism does not mean opposing immigration or bad feelings against people from other cultures. We are a nation of immigrants (except for the Native Americans). For most of our history we celebrated the melting pot; the idea that over time we create a national culture that is enriched by each wave of immigration. You can see it: we have a Dutch and German version of Christmas, language and legal system from England, music influenced by African and Celtic traditions, and so forth. The question is do we adopt a siloed culture with balkanized communities standing apart from each other but each equal, or do we follow the melting pot ideal. In practice it’s a continuum between the two, and even people who oppose multiculturalism don’t seem to have any problem celebrating Cinco de Mayo and St Patrick’s Day, or using schlep as part of their vocabulary.
This is America and we have a national culture, just like there are French, Saudi, Australian, and Brazilian cultures. If someone comes to this country to live they should accept ideals like equality for women and free speech. If they don’t want to, then don’t come. I am not going to go to Saudi Arabia and expect them to allow me to drink beer on the beach with my girlfriend in a bikini.
Multiculturalism only works when the natives accept the incoming peoples w/o conditions. Our collective history shows far more assimilation from immigrants than acceptance from natives.
That issue belongs to the natives, not the incoming.
Multiculturalism (in America) is a failure for the most part due to a lack of acceptance from the natives.
As for your hypothetical trip to Saudi, just have to remind you that Saudi is not America with it’s rich history of personal freedom. Hate to go all Rush/Fox News on you, but America is exceptional. Of course a lot of the things that are acceptable here are not in other parts of the world. That should go without saying.
Not subhuman, just less intelligent on the average.
America is a stunning success. We are the richest country in the world by far. We have no meaningful military enemies. We are home to the top universities in the world, have the best scientists, and the richest businesses. Our citizens have an amazing amount of freedom and options in their lives. We have universal education, almost anyone can go to college (though they’ll have to pay for it eventually) and we could have universal health care if we wanted it. Even ordinary people live in houses most would consider mansions. Our entertainment industry spans across the planet. We have so much food that we are bursting at the seams. We’ve got a half dozen cities that are international hubs of power and culture.
We are in no way failing. Whatever we are doing is working like a charm.