How diverse is your area?

I don't know about numbers, but anecdotally, I have black neighbors next door and across the street. There is a large Hispanic and Southeast Asian (Vietnamese and Loatian) population in our general area, if not necessarily in my neighborhood.

 

I live in minority majority county.
And I'm the only white person in my six-person household.

 

By county? Extremely diverse.

By city ? Still pretty diverse.

By neighborhood? Technically diverse if we don't acknowledge that rich old asian people are honorary white.

 

The county where I live is suburban/small town/rural, and the population is 75% white, 20% black and about 2-3% Hispanic. I believe Mississippi as a whole still has the highest percentage of blacks in the country, about 38%. As for my neighborhood, I live on a small cul-de-sac with four other houses and we're all white. But the neighborhood behind my house has a lot of townhouses and other relatively inexpensive housing, and the population is much more diverse.

 

I'm in an extremely diverse neighborhood. Love it.

 

I live in Atlanta. Obviously we have a large black population, but it is also one of the most gay-friendly cities in the country. We also have Georgia Tech and Emory, so there is no shortage of nerdy Asians and douchey white fratboys.

As a straight white man, I dig it. I could do without the fucking hipsters at Little Five, though. Take those damn gauges out of your ears.

 

County is diverse as all get out. My city is largely Hispanic (58 percent) with whites being the next highest (31 percent) and a handful of Asians and a few Blacks. My neighborhood is a solid mix of whites, Asians and Hispanics but not largely one over another.

 

I dated a woman once who was raised in upstate New York and had never met a Jewish person. And she was almost 30 at the time.

That's unfathomable to me.

 

Not very.

The population where I live is 75 percent white. But there is a decent percentage of Asian people and those of Hispanic descent (probably 10 percent each), and both of those populations are growing, fast, with a slowly increasing but still small smattering of African-Americans.

It's a very tolerant place, though. Crime is low -- it annually makes the top five among the list of the safest cities of its size in the country -- and people have mixed well so far, with everyone seeming pretty well at ease with each other.

An interesting thing I've found is this: There is a neighboring city to mine, of about the same middle- to upper-middle class socio-economic level, that has more diversity, particularly in terms of minority populations. But it also has a higher crime level and more outward signs and experiences of racism. They're subtle, but they're there. I've had discussions about this with others, even some from minority cultures who live there, and they agree with that assessment.

In my city, people of different races generally seem to give each other some benefit of the doubt unless and until they're given reason not to do so. In the neighboring city, there seems to be an already built-in subtle sense of uncertainty and distrust. Again, it's slight but it's noticeable, if you're perceptive.

I guess it makes sense, in a way. Diversity, by its very nature, can cause problems, even despite the idealistically positive spin everyone likes to put on it. A melting pot is not always, necessarily, going to mix well.

 

Wow. Especially in New York, that's incredible.