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Comment by unavoidable | Hacker News Reader

Every time an article like this comes up, someone immediately pops up to say something like "the listed countries aren't multi-ethnic like the USA!"

This is a meme that should die, because it isn't based in any fact, but is mere speculation. A quick look down any statistics for immigration (as other posters have pointed out) will show very little difference between the US and other "Western" countries. The assertion that multiculturalism restricts good governance clearly does not hold up to scrutiny. Canada, for example, compares well to Scandinavian countries on certain metrics (education, economy, formerly healthcare...), and nobody can plausibly argue that Canada is not at least as multi-ethnic as the US.

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You're conflating immigration, multi-ethnicity, and multicultural. The key factor in homogeneity, which is what translates to ease of governance, is limiting the number of subcultures. Scandinavia and Canada have far fewer subcultures than the US; yes, people may be of different ethnic backgrounds, but they all basically think the same.

There is nothing like the US difference between "red state" and "blue state" outlooks. There aren't huge debates over whether creationism should be taught in schools. You don't have people in the national legislature with radically different beliefs about facts like how old the Earth is. Of course it's going to be easier to govern.

Is it the institutions that cause divisions, or is it the divisions that cause the institutions? I don't think this answer is as clear as you suggest, because a great deal of beliefs and ideologies are passed down by institutions such as schools, which are of course mostly government controlled. Is it merely a historical artifact that the US has so many creationists?

I use Canada as an example because I think it's interesting how two countries that were basically founded by the same people (European settlers, mostly British in the early years) have diverged so greatly in both governance and ideology.

The fact that two groups are both European settlers does not mean they're basically the same people. Would you say that the Barbadian slaveowners who founded Charleston, South Carolina, and heavily influenced the culture of the South, are basically the same people as the Quakers and Puritans who founded colonies further north? They did not see themselves as the same people, and ended up fighting a bloody war over it, which they've been refighting politically ever since.

Is it merely a historical artifact that the US has so many creationists?

Perhaps. I think it's basically a product of separation of church and state. If everybody is free to practice whatever religion they choose, a fair number will choose religions that have nutty beliefs.

I don't think institutions like schools have fostered these kinds of divisions; if anything they have reduced them, by putting everyone through the same indoctrination. As much as the US seems politically divided now, it was more so in the 19th century, before compulsory public education.

i think it's geography. people don't realize how significant geography (and geology) is in the determination of culture. in the case of the U.S., "cultural diffusion" is restricted by the geographic distance between towns/cities

it is only now in the internet age that these cultural distances have begun to erode

The correlation has more to do with solidarity of individuals in those countries, which supports a concept of very tight linked individuals in a uniform fashion.

The problem is the assertion that it's not correlative is just as baseless as the one that asserts the opposite. You simply cannot measure either one on a 1-10 scale.

Homogeneity states that individuals within the composotion of a greater whole are uniform in composition and character. You state very clearly factors of composition - ethnicity and culture, but ignore all of the other characteristics such as opinion, thoughts, religion, adherence, etc, (this list will go on forever) that you and I simply cannot throw together into a pot and draw a conclusion.

nobody can plausibly argue that Canada is not at least as multi-ethnic as the US

What evidence do you have to support that claim?

You are being completely misleading. Of the foreign-born in Nordic countries, most are white. The black and Hispanic population are almost nonexistent. Canada also has a very small percentage of blacks and Hispanics.

How very odd. What difference does that make? Is there some intrinsic tie between a (white) Iraqi or (white) Irani and a (white) Swede which does not exist between a (Hispanic) Mexican and (white) American?

I thought the immigration rate of blacks to the US were rather low, so what point are you trying to make there? Shouldn't you also include the First Nations peoples in Canada, and the Native Americans in the US?

And as for Canada ... Canada has a high Asian immigrant population. Pulling up a 2006 report:

> Among the more than 1.1 million recent immigrants who arrived between 2001 and 2006, almost 6 in 10 (58.3%) were born in Asian countries, including the Middle East. ... The share of recent immigrants born in Asia (including the Middle East) had increased steadily since the late 1970s. But in 2006, the share (58.3%) was virtually unchanged from 59.4% in 2001.

Granted, the US classifies people from the Middle East as "white", but to outright ignore the significant immigration from the Far East into Canada makes your objection weak.

Canada didn't have a civil war.

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