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Comment by danso | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if it's so much as collective thin-skinnedness as it is that diversity is such a cornerstone of our society that we're forced to deal with the tensions it creates on a constant basis. This foments debate, much of it good, and some of it trollish, but I see it as a natural result of the freedoms and diversity that America has aimed to aspire.

I don't mean to say that achieving diversity is some kind of Grand Experiment designed by the Founders, but it's what we have because of our past and geopolitical circumstances, and we've struggled with and benefited greatly from it.

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> I don't know if it's so much as collective thin-skinnedness as it is that diversity is such a cornerstone of our society that we're forced to deal with the tensions it creates on a constant basis

I don't think that argument holds: Canada is a pretty diverse place but I don't think there are simmering/barely-contained tensions there as much as in the US.

I think a lot of the tension results from specific 'environments'; in reverse chronological order: the "southern strategy", Jim Crow laws and ultimately chattel slavery. For most of its history, the prevailing, unquestioned belief was that one race was inherently superior. It will take several generations to rollback that mindset back to any significant degree

>Canada is a pretty diverse place

I know Canadians like to tell themselves this, but your country is ~80% white

The US is ~73% white, it's hardly that different.

source? last I checked it was about 60%

e: Non-Hispanic Whites totaled about 197,870,516, or 62.06% of the U.S. population. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Americans

"Non-Hispanic Whites totaled about..."

Hispanic white people are white as well if by white you mean of predominately European descent.

For the purpose of a discussion about diversity, I think the more important measure is how they identify themselves culturally. Being able to genetically trace your roots to the mayflower but being raised steeped in Mexican (to avoid the term in question) culture (for example, adopted) would still yield more diversity, by the definition we are usually using when referring to national diversity (which I think is generally interpreted as cultural diversity of a nation).

They're not considered white by the locals until they lose their accent. White is what you're considered by the relevant whites under discussion, not a meaningful physical category. Mediterranean-bordering, Irish, and Slavic people have just gotten to be white in the US fairly recently.

"The locals" is an odd term. I lived in New Mexico, where some of people who are raised in Spanish speaking households trace their local ancestry back to before the founding of the US.

The Hispanics of Puerto Rico were there before the US took it over as part of the Spanish–American War.

These Hispanics are more local than the new-comer English-speaking people, no?

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