US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1410

Speculate on the causes all you want; but places with large (and especially recent) minorities have a lot more social division and crime. For it's diversity, the US is remarkably good in all of this.

On November 07 2014 07:21 Yoav wrote:


This is true, and it understates the case. When we did it in my high school class, I was the only white person in the room who didn't primarily trace back to an immigrant wave (or several) since the 1850s or so (Slave trade was the big "immigration" wave for black people, and was outlawed in the early 1800s, so the average black person has much deeper roots than the average white person in the USA.). So for most Americans, that's not a lot of generations. Even "white" Americans often think of themselves as being in one or another ethnic subgroup. Irish, Scottish, Pennsylvania Dutch, actual Dutch, white Hispanic (often further self-defining by country)... Hell, for the part of my growing up I did in the US, I knew immigrants or children of immigrants from every continent but Antarctica. It's not sheer numbers, it's the incredible diversity.

And for people who say, so what, this stuff doesn't matter: actually do your the math. Do a map of ethnically homogeneous countries against a map of low-crime countries. Ethnic diversity is great for culture; it's also terrible for crime stats. Speculate on the causes all you want; but places with large (and especially recent) minorities have a lot more social division and crime. For it's diversity, the US is remarkably good in all of this.

And, as everybody's pointing out, the situation of US blacks is unique among first world countries. It will be interesting as India and Brazil develop to see how other countries that once depended on an enslaved race (or set of races) are able to join the modern world.

On November 07 2014 08:16 Nyxisto wrote:
The overwhelming majority of Australians is ethnically British if I'm not mistaken. Also Australia enforces the English language and assimilation way more than the US does.

"According to the 2006 census, close to 79 per cent of Australia’s population spoke only English at home. The three most common languages other than English were Italian (accounting for 1.6 per cent of the population), Greek (1.3 per cent) and Cantonese (1.2 per cent)"

That's not really comparable to the US. The second most common language isn't even spoken by 2% of the population while the US has states with multiple official languages.

On November 07 2014 07:41 Alex1Sun wrote:

That IS actually an interesting observation. As far as I know the recent rise of inequality in USA can be mostly attributed to stagnation of income for a median worker and hollowing out of the middle class. At the same time republicans claim that those near poverty now benefit from more welfare than ever. If this claim is correct, then murders seem to be correlated with the living conditions at the very bottom of the economic ladder rather than with inequality in general. This also appears to agree with low murder rate in European South, where despite rampant unemployment and substantial poverty, being poor and unemployed does NOT usually equal being homeless.

On November 07 2014 09:50 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

The lowest 10% of earners here earn more here than the bottom 10% in Italy, and the living conditions of those at the very bottom have been improving with time. So I don't find the living conditions argument to be very powerful.

On November 07 2014 10:12 Alex1Sun wrote:

That's what I mean. They have been improving, hence lower murder rate in USA compared to 90ies. Although I agree that this might be a weaker correlation compared to guns and overall mentality, hence a drastic difference from all other developed and several developing countries.

On November 07 2014 10:27 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Oh, ok. But then why would it rise from a pretty low point in the 50's and 60's through to the 90's?

On November 07 2014 11:53 Nyxisto wrote:
Well if you by racial mean cultural then I highly doubt that. Economically speaking France is pretty homogeneous. But please try to wear a Burka while walking into a public building or try to marry two persons of the same sex and watch what happens. Economics obviously play a role because being financially secure obviously never hurts but culture plays an immense role in a lot of countries.

On November 07 2014 12:18 IgnE wrote:


Are there a lot of gun homicides in France, Nyx?

On November 07 2014 12:18 IgnE wrote:


Are there a lot of gun homicides in France, Nyx?

On November 07 2014 12:20 Sub40APM wrote:

There are a lot more gun homocides in brazil than in mexico, but economically they are relatively unequal countries AND racially mixed. China has low gun homocides despite being incredibly unequal.

On November 07 2014 12:48 Nyxisto wrote:


Well the gun homicide rate if Wikipedia is reliable is a third of what it is in the US but the gun/capita rate also is a third so I'd say it's comparable in that regard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate

That's two to three times as much as in other European countries, so yes I'd say there are quite a lot of gun related killings in France.