Places like Sweden, Japan, Taiwan are often touted as examples of why XYZ works. However people often fail to mention that these places are, relative to many countries like the US, extremely homogenous in culture and ethnicity. Certain things that work in those countries will fall apart when attempted in a more diverse country.
Sweden is something like 20% foreign immigrants and another 5% who are children of 2 immigrant parents. For the past half century Sweden has taken in a lot of refugees and other immigrants, and has more foreign residents per capita than the USA. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden
(Sweden is comparable in proportion of foreign immigrants to New York, Florida, or Hawaii; a bit lower than California; much more than most US states. As far as diversity is concerned, Japan/Taiwan are more like West Virginia.)
The article doesn't say where those immigrants are from. Swedes and Norwegians have different cultures and histories, but there's a huge difference between 20% Norwegian immigrants and 20% Chinese immigrants
According to Wikipedia the biggest groups are Syrians, Iraqis, and people from the former Yugoslavia. There are also a lot of Finns. Then there are Poles, Iranians, Somalis, Afghans, Turks, Germans, Eritreans, Thais, Indians, Norwegians, Danes, Chinese, Romanians, Etc.
Something like 5% of Swedish-born residents are descended from Finns if you go back a few generations (not counted among foreign-born immigrants).
I've heard this argument before, but is there any reason to believe it? What exactly about diversity stops social programs from working?
Also, if diversity is the problem (hypothetically) why can't we implement Swedish/Japanese/Taiwanese stuff in those American towns with no diversity?
Without any more explanation this sounds like one of those things where you find two statistics about two countries and say "this explains the difference."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-diversity-cr...
> Putnam’s study, which used a large, nationally representative sample of nearly 30,000 Americans, found that people living in more diverse areas reported lower levels of trust in their neighbors. They also reported less interest in voting, volunteering, and giving to charity. In other words, greater diversity seemed to be linked to both feelings and behaviors that threaten a sense of community. The finding was alarming to many people, including Putnam himself, because the U.S. continues to grow in racial and ethnic diversity with each passing decade.
The authors hand wave his data by saying white people are to blame.
> In other words, greater distrust may stem from prejudice rather than from diversity per se. Therefore, Putnam’s conclusion that racial diversity leads to less altruism and cooperation amongst neighbors was incorrect. If there is a downside to diversity, it has less to do with the behavior of racial minorities and more to do with how Whites feel when living amongst non-Whites.
They attempt to decouple diversity and prejudice, but that is completely illogical. Their logic is if you asked a minority if they feel more comfortable with a jury that is made of people who are not of a similar culture and racial background as them they would, but white people wouldn’t. That is ridiculous.
>Past research has shown that Blacks and Hispanics, on average, report less trusting attitudes than do Whites. Without controlling for this, neighborhoods with more Blacks and Hispanics will appear to have lower “trust,” but for reasons having nothing to do with the degree of diversity.
The linked article has a lot of stuff about how the Putnam study misinterprets its data.
Sure, you can say the data is misinterpreted, but real world results also show the same conclusion and there is no evidence that shows multi racial areas that have programs that work as well as those in homogeneous societies. I linked it saying it refuted the data: yet it has nothing to prove the contrary. They interpreted it in a politically correct statement to blame white people and call them racist: but they don’t prove any opposite conclusions. They just hand wave it away by blaming white people. They have no respectable information.
You asked about why they aren’t implemented in small towns that are homogeneous, what do you think happens in suburbs?
You being snarky are you? Suburbs have much better pilot school programs and why would a suburb have a national healthcare system? Do you have an global warming prevention program for carbon credits in your backyard?
It might be that it is diversity of opinions that count here, and that there can be significant differences in opinions based on where you grew up etc.
So swedes are cool with this, but what about people from different backgrounds? As the GP hints, people working in Sweden who are not Swedish are not comfortable with this, so perhaps in countries with much more diversity these things would never get off of the ground due to the sheer number of competing opinions on what is acceptable/unacceptable etc
You hit the nail on the head; this is one of the many issues with diversity that is never discussed. Or rather, this is an example of how many people nowadays want superficial diversity (skin color, food, etc) but don't actually want diversity of opinions (thus we have political correctness, cancel culture, etc).
It'll be a great data point to see what happens when a modern, homogenous country becomes more diverse, in contrast with Japan and Korea that aren't likely to follow the same path anytime soon.
People trust those that look more like them. It’s just human nature. It’s why people say all all white jury is racist when defendants are black, or why cops are racist. Putnam’s diversity study also confirmed it. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/does-diversity-cr... the authors hand save the data with the usual ham fisted white people are racist retort. Sociologists aren't respected because of authors like them who have no basis in reality.
It isn’t the only factor; China does it through culture, or Sinofication. https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinicization
“Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture. This is historically what happened in China and is now happening in Africa and South America.
> “Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture.
Not quite. Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. But it is true that "Chinese” isn’t based on genetics, it’s many different races that call themselves "Chinese" because they share culture. Or to cover all cases, it's many different races that the Chinese government calls "Chinese" to push a facade of homogeneity, marginalize minority peoples like Uyghurs, and marginalize minority languages and cultures in China that aren't Han Chinese, though their current nationality is Chinese.
What do you mean about it being a specific ethnicity? From what Chinese people say and the history of it, "Han Chinese" is a recent concept and used like you said to push homogenuity. Its like calling people black, white or other nebulous terms. The Cantonese language is being removed in China but the people are still Han for instance.
> the northern and southern Han Chinese are genetically closest to each other and it finds that the genetic characteristics of present-day northern Han Chinese were already formed as early as three thousand years ago in the Central Plain area.[22]
If you look at the history of Han Chinese, they called themselves many different names.
>Among some southern Han Chinese varieties such as Cantonese, Hakka and Minnan, a different term exists – Tang Chinese (Chinese: 唐人; pinyin: Táng Rén, literally "the people of Tang"), derived from the later Tang dynasty, regarded as another zenith of Chinese civilization.
>The term "Huaxia" was used by Confucius's contemporaries, during the Warring States era, to describe the shared ethnicity of all Chinese; Chinese people called themselves Hua Ren.
Regionally they called themselves people of the area they grew up in, the Baiyue who are now called "Han Chinese" did not call themselves Han. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baiyue When reading this section I noticed a "Han Chinese" bias.
>The Han Chinese referred to the various non-Han "barbarian" peoples of southern China as "Baiyue", saying they possessed habits like adapting to water, having their hair cropped short and tattooed. The Han also said their language was "animal shrieking" and that they lacked morals, modesty, civilization and culture.
Han Chinese is like Apple retronaming all of the OSes that run on iPhone as iOS, the same way the Chinese government is doing the same for all the people's historical names of what they called themselves.
I think we may agree on some level but be stuck on semantics. There is an ethnic group XYZ living in and historically originating from what is today China. This is documented and scientifically backed. This group's name is homonymous with a separate idea in everyday speech; let's call that other idea ABC. ABC is essentially the name of a nation, which as you know doesn't have to do with genetics.
When I say Han, I'm referring to the genetic group XYZ. I understand that some people say Han and mean the nation ABC. I also agree that calling all people from the modern country of China Han is propaganda and "Han"-washes (to make a parallel to white-wash) a number of different ethnicities and cultures.
To bring it back to the original points:
> (you) “Han Chinese” isn’t based on genetics it’s many different races that call themselves Han because they share culture
> (me) Not quite. Han Chinese is a specific ethnicity. But it is true that "Chinese” isn’t based on genetics, it’s many different races that call themselves "Chinese" because they share culture. Or to cover all cases, it's many different races that the Chinese government calls "Chinese" to push a facade of homogeneity, marginalize minority peoples like Uyghurs, and marginalize minority languages and cultures in China that aren't Han Chinese, though their current nationality is Chinese.
You were talking about the ABC Han, or Han as the name of the Han nation, while I was talking about the Han ethnicity. I don't think we really disagreed, just got tripped up on semantics. Although if you still disagree with the scientific belief that there is a Han ethnicity in spite of all the data, then I think we can't go much further here.
If you classify "Han" like "black people", "Hispanics" "Asian/Pacific Islander", or "white people" I would agree that there are "Han Chinese".
I don't think its a very useful classification, but I do not think its stictly scientific, its more cultural since ethnicity is a social heuristic, classifying races isn't scientific but its has uses. If we classify it as a group of Y-haplotypes it can have a scientific basis, but its still classified by social norms. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Y-chromosome-haplotype...
