Hello! From previous replies and reading of your subreddit I had concluded that USA is a **VERY** diverse country, but – how much? What are the extremes? In wealth, climate, culture, language and so on. Give me some examples from your lives)

39 comments

  1. We are a melting pot, so we have people from literally everywhere on the planet. We also have environments from tropical to nearly Siberian. Hell, in Oregon alone you can go from beach to forest to mountains to desert in one day. The thing I think foreigners fail to understand the most is that the USA is gigantic. Physically huge. It takes a solid week of driving to get from the west Coast to the east. Things vary dramatically inbetween.

  2. Depends on where you live. I have lived in both very diverse and very NOT diverse areas. I’ll talk here about cultural diversity. If I go visit where my brother lives, it’s 85% white. If I go to where my sister lives, it’s 70% white. It just depends. On another extreme, if you are in a place like Queens NY, the diversity is so high that sometimes in some areas you can’t really tell if any one of the ethnicities are in the majority.

    I grew up in surburban america in the south. I’d go to the mall like any teen would. Now of course you’d see nice diversity but let’s be honest, 70-80% of the people in it are white. That’s not a bad thing at all, it is just realistic of what you’d see. One of the things that strikes me about living in Queens is that if you go to the mall, like queens place mall near rego park, there won’t be a single white person. You’ll walk that mall for an hour and the only white person you see is the security guard. But every other race is there: latino, asian, middle eastern, etc. It’s not some failing dump of a mall, it’s really nice and clean and wonderful in there. A big mall with a sweet, busy food court just like any fairly well performing mall you’d find in suburban america. Are there white people in queens, of course there are, there’s tons. But you absolutely can’t tell if they are the majority, unlike where I grew up in the south. And if you do talk to a white person half the time they’ll have a strong accent – turns out they are an immigrant from Russia or Greece or somewhere like that. Truly is what the world would be if everyone decided to live in one spot. Yes there are enclaves, asian neighborhoods, black neighborhoods, etc. But during the day when you are about and in some places of business, you can see them all together. And another crazy thing about living there is the language. You can walk around an entire day and never hear english but you’ll hear every other language.

    But the point is, as I said I grew up in suburban south, and the things I talked about in the previous paragraph I never, ever grew up seeing at all. So it was surprising for me to find that in america after I travelled and lived in many other places. Culturally, it’s amazing what we have here.

  3. I’ve traveled a fair amount, and have visited about 20 countries. To give a specific example, the variety of food options is one thing I consistently miss when I go abroad. If you’re in a major city like NYC or Chicago, you will meet people from all over the world. Italy has outstanding Italian food, but you’re going to struggle to find Korean, Vietnamese, Colombian, or Mexican food the way you would in a major US city. This may not answer the full question, but I think it’s a good way to understand the diversity of experiences and cultural influences that exist within the US, particularly in our larger cities.

  4. >climate

    I grew up in the deep south, where I regularly dealt with hurricanes (which involves prep, days of school/work, days without power, sometimes recovery), intense humidity that doesn’t really go away regardless of time of day or year, and extreme heat.

    now I live in the upper Midwest. we have a lot of snow (people shovel snow, use snow blowers, plows, road salt – all stuff I’d never experienced before). no hurricanes. the seasons here are distinct & – unlike where I’m from in the south – the trees change color during fall. I now live near the biggest freshwater lakes on earth (which are more like seas – they have beaches), whereas in the deep south, I was close to the very salty (and beautiful) gulf coast.

    the climate diversity adds a lot to the diversity of experiences you can have in the US bc it’s more than just weather, it’s also culture. in the upper Midwest, people play hockey, ski, sled down hills, cross country ski, join curling teams, etc. none of these are activities I had experienced before moving here.

    and these are just two regions of the country. I didn’t even mention the PNW, southwest, or the northeast. or Alaska and Hawaii which have unique qualities you won’t find in the contiguous 48.

  5. The US has a similair diversity to other states like Canada, Australia, NZ, etc. These are all Anglo nations that were founded intitally by colonists but then built immigrants.

    The US has very little regional diversity in comparison to a nation like France, Italy, China or India. The US is not a multiethnic state but its a melting pot. The US has people from all around the world that come in and melt into the overall culture of the US and modify it.

    Regional cultures in the US are mostly influenced by immigration patters/populations. For example the culture of the North East is heavily influenced by Jewish and Italian immigration while the culture of Texas might be influenced by Mexican populations and the population of Lousiana would be influenced by French populations.

    I grew up in NYC which is basically a “gateway for immigrants”. It has the most spoken languages on planet earth. If I rode my bike for 30 minutes in one direction I would pass through a Russian, Jewish, Syrian, Italian, African American, Yemeni, Mexican, Dominican, Turkish, Georgian, and Uzbek neighborhood. Typically most American immigrant groups will assimilate within 3 generations and loose their language by then.

  6. It all depends where you go. Im born and raised in Southern Louisiana around Lafayette area. One of the most unique cultures in the US and some of the best food. Gumbo, jambalaya, crawfish, etoufee, boudin, etc. My moms from Michigan (all the way north, Louisiana all the way South) So Ive been up there a good amount of times. Snows up there (I’ve seen snow twice of my 24 years of living in Louisiana however) Michigan doesn’t come close to the culture. People in Michigan can be nice but not as welcoming. More bland or quiet. Food isn’t as good really. In Louisiana though people are more outgoing and could be louder. So pick your poison. Each state for sure has its unique features though. Just comparing two I know well. I’ve been all over though. Idk if it’s that I was born and raised here but I love it.

    Michigan’s gonna have more open woods. Clearer lakes and rivers and beautiful areas for sure. Not much time of the year to swim as it’s cold almost year round.

    Louisiana has more rugged, thick woods. Bayous, rivers, lakes. Good for fishing but not too good for swimming. We should have the clear water and they have the brown water. We’d get more use from it lol 😂

    This is only just a little portion of the US there’s so much more

  7. >Wealth

    The US is much wealthier than the rest of the world, including most other developed nations, and our professional or managerial upper-middle-class is much better paid than its counterparts in other developed nations. The US also has more economic inequality than the rest of the developed world. There’s also a lot of variation between different regions of the country, and differences between rich and poor areas within any given city can be stark.

    ​

    >language

    This is paradoxical. A very wide range of languages are spoken here, including a large number of Native American languages as well as those brought by different colonial and immigrant populations. At the same time, the fact is that the vast majority of people raised in the US in the past few decades are proficient in English by the time they reach adulthood. There is a deeply ingrained monolingual ideology which seeks to suppress and denigrate the use of other languages in this country, and the English language is pretty regularly linked with national identity while use of other languages by immigrants may be seen as meaning that they haven’t learned English or even as a threat (ie that they’re “not assimilating”, have dual loyalties, replacing “real Americans”…). Obviously, not all Americans share in this ideology.

    US government agencies and other institutions have, at times in the past, explicitly aimed at forcing minorities to abandon their native languages – most notoriously in the case of the boarding schools aimed at assimilating Native students into White culture. Today nearly all Native American languages are endangered, it can be quite difficult for immigrant parents to pass on their languages to their children, and there are still cases of people being harassed for speaking other languages in public.

    There is a fair degree of geographical, ethnic and social variation in American English, and it actually is really interesting.

    ​

    >culture

    I’m just gonna mention one aspect of cultural diversity here. A lot of people like to say that each state might as well be its own country, when talking about this. They’re delusional. But of course there is cultural variation across different parts of the US, and part of the difference between different states comes down to the fact that state governments have a lot of autonomy and can pass very different laws on a number of controversial, high-profile issues, such as gun control, trans rights and abortion.

  8. Example from my life? My parents are from opposite sides of the world.

    Growing up, if I went to a friend’s house after school, chances were 50/50 that the family spoke English at home. My friends were immigrants from China, Ukraine, poland, Haiti, Italy, Mexico, the Philippines. And my class in school was only twenty kids. Of the people who spoke English, most of their parents and grandparents came from Ireland.

    Wealth – my school was right between two neighborhoods so you might go to a friend’s that had a large house on the waterfront, a maid, a yacht, and looked like something out of a magazine. Or you’d be invited to a walk up apartment with seemingly a million people living there.

    The variance in culture went along with the variance in language. I only knew about what “typical” American was from TV shows like “The Brady Bunch”. Weird to me that they and all their friends seemed the same. I was used to being very careful when I went to new friends homes because among us it was automatic to try to pick up the do’s and don’ts of the family’s culture that you were visiting. The submitting was always that each family was different and it was good manners to
    not talk about it but adapt yourself.

  9. Its area dependant, such as NYC with everyone in a small are compared to ND with a pile of Norwegians here, Germans there, Sweeds over there, and that strange area of Ukraine in the SW. All areas have some that still speak their heritage’s language.

    Wealth? Isn’t Bezos the richest guy in the world? Then you have that guy willingly living under a bridge because he earns more as a beggar than any job he wants to work and is happy at it.

    Climate: 140? Record high in California and -100 or so in Alaska. Hurricanes in Florida and drought to flood in Arizona.

  10. Very. There’s something like nine languages with at least a million native speakers in the US.

  11. I’ve never lived or worked outside the Carolinas. I’ve met people who are Danish, German, English, Canadian, French, Spanish, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech, Russian, Armenian, Jamaican, Indian, Chinese, Persian, Korean, Mexican, Honduran, Colombian, Dominican, Japanese, Thai, and probably a bunch more I can’t recall off the top of my head. These were all either visitors or first or second generation immigrants, who grew up speaking something other/in addition to American English.

    I’ve met Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Mormon, and all sorts of Protestant Christians; as well as Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists….and most people I interact with I have no idea of their religion.

    There are HUGE wealth disparities, like everywhere else in the US. We have people who own [ten and twenty million dollar homes](https://www.forbes.com/sites/brendarichardson/2022/10/05/a-2975-million-home-with-mountain-views-is-the-most-expensive-home-for-sale-in-the-carolinas/?sh=32e93e2e4a31), and people who stay in homeless shelters at night and wander around uptown during the day. In places I’ve worked parking lots have a huge range of employee vehicles, from new Mercedes and Porsches and BMWs and Jags (and old Mercedes and Porsches BMWs and Jags) to beat up 20 year old cars. Probably the majority around 3-8 years old, and makes like Ford and Toyota and Hyundai with a solid sprinkling of Lexus and Cadillac and Volvo and similar. For a while, I worked at an office where someone drove a Bentley as their daily driver m though I never figured out who it was. It’s always nice to know that your employer is paying someone enough that they can afford a car that’s worth more than your house.

    Climate… we have mountains and beaches about a 3-5 hour drive apart. We even get snow a few times a year, especially in the mountains. Hurricanes or tropical storms every year or so, usually with a lot of rain and some localized flooding. Tornadoes now and then. Most of the time the temperatures range from unpleasantly warm to damned hot, with relative humidity ranging from armpit to groin. Occasionally it can get downright chilly, though.

    Culturally, we have the best barbecue- pulled pork. It used to be that it was regional- South Carolina had mustard based sauce, North Carolina had vinegar based and ketchup based sauces, but now most places will have unsauced meat and a selection of bottles at the table. Sad.

  12. I work in a local government building. Around half of the customers who come in to our service desks have accents that strongly indicate they are not originally from the US. At least a few people every day either bring someone with them for language interpretation or ask for an interpreter. We deal with land and building issues, so these are almost all long-term residents who are here to stay.

  13. Climate includes the tropics and the Arctic, Death Valley and rainforests, warm beaches, cold beaches, prairies, swamps, deciduous and evergreen forests – I’ve personally been to all of those.

    Bear in mind that Americans have heritage anyone in the world – so you’ll see much more diversity of physical appearance than almost anywhere else. However, English is the only language for most stores, signs, etc.

    On an everyday basis around Seattle, I see people with tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, homes worth tens of millions, and homeless people living on the street.

  14. “In wealth, climate, culture, language and so on.”

    We have literally every example from each category. In terms of climate, we range from tropical rain forest to tundra. In terms of culture we have communities ranging from the Gullah to the Amish. And pretty much every major language on earth is spoken here.

    In my personal life, I have neighbors ranging from White guys flying confederate flags to East African immigrants. And while I obviously don’t agree with all of them on everything. I would never want to live in an area that didn’t have a broad mix of people.

  15. I live in Connecticut. If I’m being brutally honest it’s not that diverse.

    New Britain/Plainville is where most polish people are, the cities is where most black people live. Then we have greenwich which is the ultra wealthy. Everywhere else is mostly white

    when I was living in London it was impossible not to see at least 3-4 different races or ethnicity every day.

    Not saying every state is like this and is representative of all of America since CT is a very weird state and is literally just a giant highway to New York or Massachusetts

  16. Larger coastal cities are going to have much more diversity (or all sorts) than smaller towns in the interior. However, anywhere there are colleges and universities you will find a diverse mix of people at least around that school.

    For example, rural Ohio is very white and politically conservative. But if you go to the town of Athens, Ohio, which is located in a relatively remote area, you will find a very diverse town. Then travel to just the next town over and it’s the complete opposite… homogenous in almost every way.

  17. Perhaps there is no greater example of diversity in the U.S. than in its geography. It is after all the only country in the world to possess all of the world’s recognized climate zones.

  18. Probably the only way the US is not diverse is language diversity. Yes we have very small pockets of probably every language in the world due to immigrants, and yes Spanish is a bit more widely spoken that other minority languages, and yes Puerto Rico exists, but aside from Puerto Rico, Miami, and some minor areas along the southern border (and small immigrant enclaves), there really isn’t anywhere that you can go where the majority language is not English, and in the few exceptions, almost always the majority language is Spanish.

    Otherwise, the US is an extremely diverse place

  19. Some people live in a pile of trash underneath the the overpass

    Some people live in giant mansions with marble floors and gold plated toilets

    Some places it’s extremely hot and dry all year, other places are hot and humid in the summer and get so cold in the winter it’s very dangerous to be outside for more than a few minutes.

    The extremes are extreme I guess.

  20. I grew up with German and Irish people, a generation before there had been French sprinkled around.

    Now I live a few minutes away from a mostly Vietnamese town, there is a school here that teaches only in French, lots of Italian surnames, Indian immigrants, neighborhoods of people of Irish ancestry, lots of Hondurans, a few more Germans, and I know a family of 5 from Denmark.

  21. In California, you can very easily go “snow to sand” in one day. Ski in the morning, surf in the evening.

  22. I work for a company that does a lot of traveling around the country but in our most recent project I have met an Italian, two Jamaicans, a brit, and a very lovely Belizean couple. Most of them are American citizens except the Italian who was here on a work visa but yes very very diverse and generally attracts hard working and career oriented folks that are building themselves the American dream

  23. I live in Chicago… the city is almost exactly 1/3 white, 1/3 Latino, 1/3 African-America. Chicago also has large immigrant and ethnic communities, from Jewish, Irish, Italian, Greeks that came over 100 years ago to more recent immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, Russia and Eastern Europe, China, and all across the globe. There’s a pocket of immigrants from pretty much any country/region.

  24. An example that might explain it: yesterday someone asked me for directions to a Russian market (dude was Latino, and seemed to be on some drugs, and was trying to be nice, but was just not that well-mannered, since he kept spitting on the ground and asking people who were eating if he could try their food at a food bank event).

    Anyways, I looked the place up, and it was far away, pricey, the staff didn’t speak English and allegedly sold people moldy meats, expired fish, and counterfeit goods.

    So, I warned him about this, and he said he was thankful someone warned him. What I did, was message my friend who lives nearby, who is from Russia, what the best places to check out were, and got him some “advice from the pros” on the best Russian food in town.

    On the other side of things, my friend from Russia loves our Mexican food, Japanese food, and Italian food.

  25. Ill sum it up by listing my neighbors from my apartment complex from after college in Atlanta, GA.

    Across hall directly: Family of 4, from midwestern US of Scandinavian descent

    Across hall to the left: Couple from India, immigrants about a year prior

    Across hall to right: Couple from Germany, here on work visa but wanted to get citizenship once completed

    Neighbor to right: Another Indian couple, second generation

    Neighbor to left: Japanese women with like 17 cats

    This was just one floor of one building of a 20 building complex that was full of different people from different backgrounds. Pretty much everyone would get along and the common space in the clubhouse was used and enjoyed by everyone for quinceanera parties to Chinese new year parties.

  26. The US is very diverse but it really is regional. The city I grew up in was 30% black, 30% hispanic, 20% white and 20% asian. I believe it was, and probably still is, one of the most racially balanced cities in country. That said, there was always self-segregation which often ran along racial and socioeconomic lines and created heavily improverished areas that were essentially no-go ghettos (I’m black and grew up in one).

    I now live in the UK which isn’t quite as diverse as the US from a numbers perspective, but many of the big cities (particularly London) feel less segregated due to the way their social housing system works. Every local council (essentially a county), rich or poor, has to build and offer a similar percentage of social housing (and 17% of the UK population lives in social housing vs 2% in the US). So it evenly spreads people of different socioeconomic classes much more equally. Of course there’s good and bad areas, but there’s very few ghettos like the one I grew up in the US.

    The UK does have a huge issue with class but that’s a whole other conversation…

  27. Very, Most Americans don’t know their genetic heritage, and the few that claim they do usually are purposely ignoring a significant portion of their background so they can claim superiority to some other group(that they are usually a part of in some %). But it’s that mutt like mix that makes it a melting pot.

    Crazy fact: At one time in the state of Indiana, known for the university of Notre Dame, the KKK ran out of colored people to hate in the area and officially added the Irish and Catholics to their list of targets .

  30. The two halves of my family :

    Moms side emigrated from Norway around 1920. Naturalized around WWI, due to military service. Great grandparents spoke Norwegian and Swedish at home when they were little, learned English at school. I’m a 3rd generation US citizen on that side.

    Dads side emigrated from France and England, looooong ago. Major US cities were named for long ago ancestors from land they were given, or farms expanded that later became towns and cities. I’m 9th or 10th generation American from Dads side. They built railroads in PA, WV, Carolinas. There is a river named for an ancestor. Long history of literally building and financing growth of this country.

  31. So, I live in Anchorage, Alaska, a few hundred miles from the Arctic Circle. I can stand in line in the grocery store behind an Eskimo in a Parka AND a 6’5″ 400 lb Samoan man made of muscle – wearing a wrap skirt

  32. High school of in one of the towns I served as hospice chaplain had students from 32 language groups. Note: northwest Iowa.

  34. I think there is a lot going on in your question. and because of that you’ve, unintentionally, started a lot of discussions you didn’t intend. A few have gotten contentious( looking at you u/Negative_Froyo_1014). In an effort to answer your questions:

    >USA is a VERY diverse country, but – how much?

    You seem to be asking for a quantified answer to a concept. How much what? *How many languages are spoken?* Over 350, from a survey form 2017-2021. *How many religions?* there are over 4000 religions practiced in the US, many are differing Christian sects (70%). The top practiced are Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Hinduism, and the various sects of each. Climate? The US has every climate zone on earth except jungle. some of the coldest (-78c/-108f)and hottest ( 56.7c/134.1f) were in the US. Wealth? The 10 wealthiest people on the planet are all American, yet 11% live below the poverty line. We have cities with the population of some European countries and small towns with single digit populations. Crowded urban areas and wide open spaces. Culture is a concept I can’t begin to quantify for you.

    >Give me some examples from your lives

    I can trace my family to the early 1830s before records get sparse (sales of enslaved people is often a maze of unfiled paperwork). My partner is 6th gen immigrant paternal and 4the maternal. Ex is 1st gen European . Best friend is 1st gen African immigrant and is active military. I have a BS, my partner a PhD, Best friend Highschool diploma, Parent PhD, Step parent (2nd gen immigrant) no college. Some business associates making 7 figures per year, a few at or below the poverty line. my circle of friends include homeowners, renters, multiple home owners and people still living with their parents. It also includes Buddhists, Catholics, Atheists, Mormons, “Christians”, Jews, agnostics, one “Satanist”, one Jedi, Muslims, Hindus, Taoists, and one Druid. I know Conservatives and Liberals, Democrats, republicans, Socialists and Communists. Straight and LGBT. Monogamous and polyamorous. married and single. New immigrants and Daughters of the American Revolution.

    TL;DR if it exists, the US probably has it. American diversity is so great that it’s the ***lack*** of something that’s surprising, not that it exists.

  35. Tons of good examples listed here but we also should mention that the US has diversity *within* communities that contribute to the overall diversity of the country. I’m of Mexican descent and the Mexican-American community in South Texas is different in certain ways than Mexican-Americans in New Mexico or California. Texas and New Mexico have people of Mexican descent of a non-immigrant background who have been in their states since before they were even part of the US (Tejanos and Hispanos, respectively), with unique history and even food (breakfast tacos, green chile).

  36. You’re asking a ton of questions as one question.

    Wealth can be pretty insane. You can find wealth that’s only possible with theoretical numbers living shockingly close to people who live without running water.

    We will have parts of the country [swing over 100 degree multiple times throughout our history ](https://www.cpr.org/2020/09/07/from-100-degrees-to-snow-colorados-dramatic-weather-forecast-could-be-one-for-the-national-record-books/)

    We are such a hodgepodge of cultures that [Sociologists have divided into several distinct cultural breaks](https://www.google.com/search?q=american+cultural+map&oq=american+cultural+map&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOdIBCDQxMzVqMGo0qAIAsAIA&client=ms-android-verizon-us-rvc3&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#vhid=XVjb3fNZI-dXOM&vssid=l) and that’s being very conservative on how tight you want to draw those lines

    Language is harder to really nail down. Because you’ll find pretty much every language spoken in the world in the US, but apart from small diaspora pockets you’re not going to find any other languages beyond English and Spanish.

    Race is the most stark comparison with the rest of the world. The US has at times had more Jews than Israel and more Armenians than Armenia. Which is something that’s impossibly rare.

  37. It really depends on where in the USA you are. There are rural or even exurban/semi-suburbanized areas of the country which are depressingly homogenous. Not just racially/ethnically, but in terms of culture, language, religion, local values, what kinds of jobs people have, etc. I remember my dad visiting me in NYC once and remarking about how much more common it is to see a man walking a small dog there. Where I grew up, that would be an instant sign that a man was effeminate and gay, which would be beyond unacceptable. So no man would be caught dead out in public with a small dog.

    Meanwhile, I was once on a bus in Queens, NYC, that was delayed. Everyone pulled out their phones to call whoever they were meeting up with. And literally each passenger was doing this in a different language. English, Spanish, Bengali, Greek, Russian, Hebrew, and on down the line.

    Which I guess means that the US is diverse even in its level of diversity!

  38. I live in a tiny city in rural northern Michigan and sitting on the deck of my apartment I hear Jamaicans in the next building, Ukrainian children running and playing in the yard, and recently I’ve heard Spanish spoken in the unit under me. It’s pretty diverse.

  39. I have family that are Mexican-American, African-American, Native American, and I’m Korean-American, along with 2nd generation Irish and German.

    I’m a hueg geek, and so my social circles tend to be much broader than what’s usually defined by geography. As an example, I play D&D weekly. Our group is made up of Japanese-American, African-American, Native-American, Boomers to Zoomers, and all sorts of gender identity.

    I grew up in Minnesota, land of the flat and the cold. I now live in Denver, land of the NIMBY and mountains. I grew up poor, but went to law school. There, you had kids that grew up poor like me and were on scholarship, to kids who asked me why I was working in law school, and said, “$1,000 a week is beer money.” (I kid you not.)

Leave a Reply
You May Also Like