[Bobboau]

a) hardly an American phenomenon, I seem to recall a plane full of Brits a while back.

b) a hand full of idiots in a culture does not a cultural phenomenon make

c) persecution is more things like throughing bricks threw windows and starting fires, rapeing pillageing, ect. I'll admit in the last few years there's been a bit of a strain, but I hardly think it amounts to 'persecution'. it's not like were rounding them up and indefenately putting them... in... tropical millitary prison... camps... without char..ge.....
THAT DOESN'T COUNT!!! DAMNIT!!!

[Nuke]

thats why godOppenheimer invented nuclear warheads

like theres a ****ing difference

thats why god invented nuclear warheads

who'da thunk that Nuke would have said that? 

for explanation, see the soundbyte at the end of the Zyklon song "chaos deathcult"

[karajorma]

but the paradox of the situation is such that, what if the high crime rate and all these other factors you are referring to is at the root caused by this phenomenon of distrust? I think looking for diverse comunities that lack high crime rates and such would be cherry picking data, if you wanted to figure this out you should find culturally homogeneous communities with high crime rates and such rather than the other way around then compare them to the diverse comunities.

I think you should look for both. A low crime rate dispite diversity would help show that the cause of the problem is nothing to do with distrust just as much as the same thing in a culturally homogeneous community. You basically need both sets of data.

As I said I've be interested in seeing what the results in such places were.

[perihelion]

Diversity may possibly play into it, but I think the real driver is most likely population density.  I've lived in relatively small communities with a good deal of ethnic diversity (college towns, which I'll admit are a kind of unique situation in and of themselves), but you couldn't go anywhere in town without meeting someone you knew.  There wasn't that constant sense of annonymity you get in the big city.  When everyone knows everyone else, it is a lot more difficult for crime to florish.  When crime doesn't flourish, there's a lot less to fear.  Your neighbors may annoy the hell out of you, but you know they are mostly harmless.  Trust isn't that hard in a place like that.

Contrast to a place like, I don't know, Houston?  Maybe more diversity there, granted, but the BIG distinction is that it is freaking huge.  You can get lost in a crowd within a couple blocks from your house.  Tight-knit communities exist within Houston, but they are tiny islands floating in a sea of faceless crowds.  It isn't hard to see why one might get a little paranoid.

[aldo_14]

I always found diversity to be a strength rather than a weakness, myself; it makes the cultural life of a region, area, etc so much more interesting.

[Colonol Dekker]

Horses for Courses, swings and roundabouts, Everyones got a strength and if everyone was the same then we couldnt compliment each other, IE if everyone was a physics god then we'd have no computers but if everyone was bill gates then music would suck and there'd be sod all on telly/movies cos we couldn't act........

[Goober5000]

I think the problem is that diversity works only to the extent that it's voluntary.  For example, I enjoy Mexican food and Japanese art and Greek literature.  But if I was forced to live in a city with Mexicans and Japanese and Greeks, I'd probably feel very uncomfortable.

[aldo_14]

I think the problem is that diversity works only to the extent that it's voluntary.  For example, I enjoy Mexican food and Japanese art and Greek literature.  But if I was forced to live in a city with Mexicans and Japanese and Greeks, I'd probably feel very uncomfortable.

Why?

[Goober5000]

Why?

Because homogeneous communities are predictable, whereas diverse communities aren't.  How much do those three cultures have in common?

This isn't rocket science, it's the product of thousands of years of cultural evolution.  It's also why there's so much trouble in the Middle East and in Africa: so many different cultures are forced to live in close proximity to one another.

[aldo_14]

Why?

Because homogeneous communities are predictable, whereas diverse communities aren't.  How much do those three cultures have in common?

This isn't rocket science, it's the product of thousands of years of cultural evolution.  It's also why there's so much trouble in the Middle East and in Africa: so many different cultures are forced to live in close proximity to one another.

I sincerely doubt homogenous communities are anything like predictable, even if such a concept exists in reality (racial diversity is not the only kind of diversity, after all).

[Black Wolf]

Wow. What a shocker. People lose trust when they’re around members of other races. I don’t make this point here often enough, but almost every subconscious (and a fair number of conscious) human behaviour stems directly from evolution. We dislike people of other races because they’re genetically further from us than those of our own race. It’s the same reason people help out there brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews – you try to perpetuate not only your own genes, but those of the individuals who are closest to you genetically. In the past, we’d deal with this problem in the most expedient manner available – by killing the foreigner. Now, of course, that doesn’t happen but there’s still a subconscious desire to see them fail in the evolutionary race – essentially to kill them off so that you can keep all the resources for yourself and your closest genetic counterparts. This subconscious desire manifests itself as a lack of trust (because we know that if we want them dead or disadvantaged, they want the same of us) – the more foreigners, the more competition, the more distrust. It’s a relatively straightforward outgrowth of sentience trying to cope with natural selection.

[NGTM-1R]

I sincerely doubt homogenous communities are anything like predictable, even if such a concept exists in reality (racial diversity is not the only kind of diversity, after all).

Sure they do. Go look at any military unit.

An ethnically homogenous community, or a community homogenous across any sort of line, will naturally be more trusting. It's rare to enounter someone of one's own culture whose way of thinking you simply do not grasp. You will better understand their values and their actions.

[aldo_14]

I sincerely doubt homogenous communities are anything like predictable, even if such a concept exists in reality (racial diversity is not the only kind of diversity, after all).

Sure they do. Go look at any military unit.

An ethnically homogenous community, or a community homogenous across any sort of line, will naturally be more trusting. It's rare to enounter someone of one's own culture whose way of thinking you simply do not grasp. You will better understand their values and their actions.

A military unit is specialised and trained to be predictable (and even then it isn't wholly so - otherwise you wouldn't see murders by troops in Iraq, for example) - it's certainly not a community by any means, as it's picked and selected, not organically formed.  Plus, military units AFAIK aren't usually formed solely by troops of a single ethnic, social, class, education, age, etc background.

Also, trust does not equate predictability; it equates assumed predictability, which is something entirely different.

[Goober5000]

Perhaps predictability was the wrong term.  I think Black Wolf said it better.

[Ace]

But if I was forced to live in a city with Mexicans and Japanese and Greeks, I'd probably feel very uncomfortable.

Well you're off the Atlantis expedition wait list now.

That slot's going to Kazan now...

[BlackDove]

[Ford Prefect]

Well for what it's worth, I go to a school where you can't walk out the door without hearing at least one other language besides English, and where whites are barely a majority, (if at all-- I don't know the stats), and I'm feeling alright.

[perihelion]

...
Ok.  I'll grant that I would not want to live in a city in Mexico, Greece, or Japan.  But why should I care if there are Mexicans, Greeks, or Japanese, or whatever living in the same town with me?

Some of the sentiments expressed in this thread are really upsetting me.  I would have expected better.  Shame on me for foolish optimism.  I won't do it again.

For what it's worth, I grew up in a neighborhood where whites like me were the minority.  When I went out to the playground, I played with blacks, whites, hispanics, asians, and I didn't think twice about it.  If it wasn't important then, then why in hell should it be important now?  In my observations, human loyalty is to family, not DNA.  And "family" is largely who you choose to include in that category (biological family, close friends, pets, etc).  If you choose not to include anyone but your own race in your "family," then it is because of your own personal insecurities.  Don't cop out and blame genetics.

[castor]

If it wasn't important then, then why in hell should it be important now?

Because we have been schooled to ignore what we know and to believe in what we are told to?
Or rather, to ignore what we don't know, and to believe in what we are told to.

[TrashMan]

I don't see various sub-types of wolves or lions or tiger or any other animal happily frolicking together.

So I'd say stickng with your own kind is a natural instinct..and there's really nothing wrong with it.

Some might consider it racist but I say bo**cks!