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Comment by qwerta | Hacker News Reader

> The lack of diversity between social groups in San Francisco isn’t going to change anytime soon, as the number of tech employees in the Bay Area is only going to continue to rise.

I am not sure I understand. Tech sector brings people from all over the world including India, China, South America and Europe.

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NYC cuts across race, class, and country of origin in its diversity -- in a way SF doesn't. The neighborhoods are also much more integrated largely because of the density of the city. For example, it's not uncommon to find public housing units embedded between luxury condos. The kids of both communities attend the same local school (usually up until high school), a few blocks away. That means, integrated social gathering and hang out. You can see this at local parks where everyone gets together to play sports. This impacts how you grow up and experience/understand/become sensitive to race and class differences.

The introduction to this article really captures this well: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyregion/05jackson.html

Real diversity is not how you look or where you come from, but what's inside you and how you think and the culture you belong to.

It kind of sounds like 'No true Scotsman'. Could you explain what sort of diversity you miss in tech sector?

I think the argument is that if everyone in SF is tech focused now, despite different backgrounds, there is a lack of diversity in the interests of the groups taking over SF (techies), where there used to be diversity. So now, everyone's a techie, instead of maybe musicians or artists, etc. I'm not sure it's a good argument, but I think I agreed with it briefly.

You missed the point of the quote - it's diversity between social groups, not between race. It's likely that all the employees in the tech sector are of a similar earning potential, a similar age, and have similar upbringings and home lives. This contrasts with the rest of the people living in the area, and causes problems.

Actually, that's one good thing about Santa Clara County (ie Silicon Valley proper), despite being a suburban hellhole, there's a ton of ethnic diversity.

It is statistically diverse, but like most other places, each ethnic group lives in a bubble separate from the other, mostly. The density of NYC forces deep interaction between communities -- much deeper than simply judging diversity based on the different restaurants you see or the languages you might hear at the mall everyone goes to. Here's a good article about the kind of thing that's common in NYC and nowhere else: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/nyregion/05jackson.html

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