Some people use this survey to prove that “every other countries are more culturally diverse than America”, what are your thoughts on it?

17 comments

1. Any of these surveys that doesn’t have the US one of the top countries (excluding countries like India or many of the Central African states that are also diverse and can claim a top spot as well) in diversity are flat wrong. You’re telling me that a country that’s 80% a single ethnic group is more diverse than the US? No way in hell that survey is correct.

   Reading their methodology, they defined it on linguistic grounds. That is flawed. If you want to tell me a person of Mexican descent living in a Southern California border town, a person of African descent living in urban New York, and a person of German descent living in rural Wisconsin all have the same culture because they speak English then I’m going to disregard your opinion.

2. >Some people use this survey to prove that “every other countries are more culturally diverse than America”

   That’s not remotely what the survey you linked even says. It puts us right about in the middle of the pack, which I’d say is fair.

   ​

   People on this sub seem to massively overestimate the cultural differences between regions of the US. You’ll see people say things like “traveling to another state is like going to another country”, and when asked to explain, the differences almost always just involve accents, minor variations on food, and what their gas stations are called.

3. > Gören considered the ethnicity and similarity of language between each country’s major people groups. Gören reasoned that people groups who shared a language were more likely to also share other aspects of their culture, while groups whose languages were dissimilar probably also had additional significant cultural differences.

   > It’s important to note that the goal of Gören’s study was not to construct a list of the most racially diverse countries, but to identify the most culturally diverse nations. As such, the study de-emphasizes race (which many modern ethnologists argue is a social construct, not a genetic one) and instead prioritized differences in culture from one group of people to another.

   > This methodology is important when examining countries such as Brazil. The country’s population includes a diverse range of races—however, because virtually all Brazilians of any race speak Portuguese as their primary language, Gören surmised their culture had also become fairly homogenized and ranked Brazil as one of the least culturally diverse.

   The methodology essentially says that they’re defining “cultural diversity” by linguistic diversity.

   So, yeah, the US is not as *linguistically* diverse as other places, which is all this says.

4. My thoughts?

   I’d like to know the underlying methodology used to construct the survey. The questions you ask and the things you observe for skew the results you get: you see what you measure, and if you measure the wrong things, you see the wrong things.

   This part, however, gives me concern:

   > Gören considered the ethnicity and similarity of language between each country’s major people groups. Gören reasoned that people groups who shared a language were more likely to also share other aspects of their culture, while groups whose languages were dissimilar probably also had additional significant cultural differences.

   Problem is, if you use language as your metric of diversity, but you only include the internal self-applied labels of “language” as defining linguistic diversity–then you would conclude that Catalonian is not Spanish, and Spain–having at least two major languages in Northern Spain, is far more diverse than is the Eastern United States. That, despite the fact that arguably the flavor of English spoken in the Appalachian mountain region of West Virginia is more linguistically different than American English. Just as you’d have to conclude that AAVE is just “English”–even though if you put someone who spoke AAVE in the same room as someone who spoke Appalachian English, you may need a translator.

   And if you assume linguistic diversity (by “self-applied label” rather than by actual linguistic diversity) was the metric of culture–then you’d have to assume the United States only has two major cultures: English and Spanish. Despite the fact that–well–that sounds fairly dismissive as it ignores some other rather important differences between, say, the Mexican community and the Puerto Rican community, by presuming they’re basically the same.

   Switzerland then becomes a rather interesting example, as it’s a country with three very distinct languages: French in Geneva, German in Zurich, and Italian in Lugano. But having driven the loop in Switzerland, I didn’t really notice the sharp differences in Swiss architecture, style, or culture that having three major language groups instead of one would strongly imply. That is, Geneva, Zurich and Lugano did not seem as radically different to me as (say) New Orleans, San Francisco and New York–all where English is the major spoken language.

   Worse, what would Gören have to say about Native Americans, who are trying their hardest to preserve their culture in face of a cultural onslaught which decimated the different languages spoken by various Indian tribes? Would he say that those cultures simply do not exist anymore and there is nothing left but a bunch of “Pretendians?”

   And given that English has become the dominant default language throughout most of Europe–I’ve seen the interaction of two people talking to each other, showing confusion, then switching to English in cafes while traveling–I’d suggest that Europeans clinging to their notion that Europe is a region of dozens of major languages, so they are even more radically different than (say) one of my Salinan Indian relatives living in Morro Bay is from a banker living in New York–is at best mindlessly idiotic.

   And at worse–as we see in the Catalonian secession movement in northern Spain–pointlessly divisive and destructive.

5. I couldn’t care less.

6. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

7. Must be a European. Their countries compete over anything. I am sure the author defined his terms to make Europe seem better. Let’s check.

   So, the US is less culturally diverse than San Marino, a tiny country of 33k people.

   Sounds very European.

   How do **I** feel about it? I don’t feel anything.

8. Apparently most Americans speak English. Who knew?

9. >Some people use this survey to prove that “every other countries are more culturally diverse than America”, what are your thoughts on it?

   That’s not really what the paper says. First, it’s a study and not a survey. Second, the theory of the paper is essentially that there are economic benefits derived from cultural similarities and the author is using linguistic similarities and proximity as factors.

   I think common sense tells us that it’s easier to trade with and share technology with cultural similar groups.

   From the abstract of the actual study:

   [https://www.etsg.org/ETSG2013/Papers/042.pdf](https://www.etsg.org/ETSG2013/Papers/042.pdf)

   “The empirical analysis suggests that the degree of cultural diversity in contiguous neighbouring countries has substantial positive effects on do- mestic per capita income growth, even controlling for a broad set of regional, institutional, religious and other proximate factors of economic growth. The conclusion is that culturally homogeneous countries gain a strategic advantage over their culturally diverse neighbours.”

   I don’t disagree with the author’s premise. It seems like common sense to me. I disagree with using this study as some kind of general litmus test regarding diversity. That’s a misrepresentation of the study.

10. They can think whatever they want, I don’t care

11. Look at Brazil’s diversity rating. That should tell you how much of a crock that “survey” is.

    The article ranks the US low for “cultural” diversity when the only ranking is languages. Yet we have no national language at all and only 79% of us speak the major language natively as our primary language. Dumb survey is dumb.

12. I don’t care enough to even read the survey. I am not going to perform this morning.

13. No Old World definition of cultural diversity will ever match up with a New World definition of cultural diversity.

    Brazil getting a zero on this scale shows how biased the definition used is.

14. My thoughts? I don’t care.

15. I call bullshit. Why is Brazil ranked that low?

16. I wouldn’t think the US would rank in the top 10, but I do think it’d rank in the upper half. Also yeah, Brazil ranking lower is a tell that the methodology is flawed.

    I’m curious what makes Canada rank so high (the Quebecois?)

17. I couldn’t care less but the methodology just seems downright silly.