You seem to be saying that if we got rid of all the blacks and muslims we'd have far less crime. Did I misread you?
Cultural homogeneity and its effects on crime transcend race. European immigration to the US during the 19th and 20th centuries were linked to crime as well. Usually, the dominant cultures in a heterogenous society will exclude and oppress minority populations, which leads to poverty and desperation. The problem really is cultural heterogeneity, not anybody's race. Acceptance of minority populations into the greater culture solves the problem much more effectively than any kind of antagonistic separatism, that's for sure.
Plus, assuming cultural heterogeneity leads to higher crime doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad idea. I happen to think the benefits of a diverse, heterogenous society outweigh the costs. That doesn't mean the costs don't exist.
EDIT: In particular, check this link out: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri_percap-crime-t...
There are countries with majority Muslim populations with lower-than-average crime rates--check out Turkey and Tunisia, as do countries with majority black populations--check out Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Jamaica. Obviously Islam, or blackness, isn't the problem here.
How is this consistent? Do you have any single evidence your blanket group of "muslim immigrants" caused the increase in rape? Make your mind please.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article190268.ece
http://centurean2.wordpress.com/2009/09/02/muslim-rape-epide...
You've backed up your theory here - but you didn't initially.
In my opinion, the most dangerous form of prejudice - is prejudice that's backed up by an 'intellectual' argument.
Anyway, you spoke in terms of "criminality in some American cultures", which sounds like a euphemism, since you neglected to name them. Although you followed it up with your hetereogenity thesis I (like many readers) was already lost.
I do agree that it is the rifts between groups that ultimately cause all the problems. However, who's really to blame for that? America's slave-descended population have been in the country for over 500 years. By any normal expectations, their original culture should have been completely blended with the mainstream culture hundreds of years ago. And a large extent this is true of those blacks that enter the middle class and beyond. But for those that are trapped in a ghetto lifestyle -- with ghetto attitudes -- I don't think you can attribute that up to cultural differences. That's circular reasoning again. Something else is keeping the cultures separate.
I think we should be open to the idea that the forces keeping the cultures separate are both external and internal to the black community in America. Still, anecdotally speaking, as a Canadian I find the racism in America to be pretty breathtaking. White Americans, whether liberal or conservative, take it as a given that there's always some part of the city dominated by blacks where gunfire is heard at night and the cops are afraid to go. If you probe even a little bit you find that most white Americans, even nominally liberal ones, think blacks have lower capacities than they do. This seems to me, with my Canadian attitudes, like a shocking abandonment of a large part of your citizenry.
In any case, heterogenity doesn't always lead to a higher crime rate. Toronto is over 38% immigrant [1] and yet has a low crime rate. Montreal has been riven by cultural heterogenity (between English, French, and others) ever since the 1700s, and yet has an even lower crime rate. [2] I'm not saying Canada is perfect in this regard, and it is a pretty universal rule that the newest immigrant population has a higher rate of crime and organized crime. But, unscientifically, it seems to me that the availability of better social services, less inequality, more equitable law enforcement, plus a very strong tradition that the norm of "Canadian" isn't any particular race [3], must all be factors in mitigating this.
[1] http://www.mta.ca/about_canada/multi/
[2] http://www.toronto.ca/quality_of_life/safety.htm
[3] Even the gangs in Canada are sometimes multiracial: the "United Nations" gang is famous for this. http://www.vancouversun.com/Gallery+gang/1350012/story.html
This place exists in just about every major American city. Not sure about gunfire every night, but places where police presence is minimal and you just don't go there, unless you live there.
Wow, so you just did what Americans are always accused of doing - paint large groups of people with one giant brush.
True racism in America I think has shrunk considerably. The problem is that racism is now commonly used to label any not so nice statistics about any given group of people. Years ago when Bill Cosby pointed out that strong families raised better kids he was called racist. He was just looking at the facts that over 1/2 of the single parent families out there are black[1], and kids from single parent families generally don't do as well as those from a 2 parent family.
When it comes to bad areas in large cities nearly every city has at least one such area, although racial groups may differ. There used to be places in LA where simply wearing a blue or red shirt will get you shot. This is not something made up or in the minds of white people. Even when I lived in a smallish city it had streets or areas that even police avoided. Heck, even my black friends avoided the area.
I also strongly disagree that 'most white Americans' think blacks have lower capacities than they do. That's complete BS. I don't know anyone who thinks that, and I certainly don't think that is true.
[1] http://family.jrank.org/pages/1574/Single-Parent-Families-De...
I think neilk is aware of that. I took his point to be that it is surprising that Americans accept this as a normal fact of life.
I lived with a friend in San Francisco's Potrero Hill / Dogpatch neighborhood. The north side of the hill is one of the most desirable areas of the city and is one of those deliberately quaint neighborhoods that is pretty much 100% white. The south side has low-cost housing and is almost as uniformly black. [1]
My friend lived very near the top of the hill, where the character abruptly changed. Police sirens were common, but since it was all over on the other side of the hill, everything was okay and nobody even felt unsafe. Apparently whoever it is that makes trouble on that side knows never to come over to the other side, presumably since the police will bring down the hammer much harder.
Taking the bus into the city was embarrassing. The bus started on the "black side" and then came over to the "white side" on its way downtown. And half a century after Rosa Parks, the bus was voluntarily segregated with blacks at the rear. I got on the first "white" stop and was stunned to see how, every day, the entire bus was filled at the back with nobody at the front. One day I went to a different bus stop (just three blocks over!) and got a lot of stares, because this was obviously a "black" stop and I'd crossed the line.
I'm not saying Canada does it much better -- ethnic ghettos exist, and are often encouraged by realtors or even government policies. But I always felt like, in Canada, we all sort of knew that was a bad situation that had to be rectified eventually. If you asked a typical Obama-loving resident of Potrero Hill if they lived in some kind of cultural standoff that amounted to a separate regime for their black neighbors, they'd be shocked and offended.
[1] Race map of the Bay Area: http://www.flickr.com/photos/walkingsf/4981425631/
Also... if you leave Toronto/Vancouver/Montreal (and few other big urban centers), there actually is a very strong tradition of Canadian being a white christian.
You're painting everyone with overly broad stereotypical brushes. Nothing makes a Canadian look as lame as possible as going out trashing talking Americans armed with stereotypes and stuff they remembered from Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans.
That said, I know what I'm talking about. I'm an insufferable do-gooder who has volunteered to teach in East Vancouver, and I've had friends and significant others who are artists using warehouse space in economically depressed areas, like Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (which, to be fair, is for many a race-blind vortex of despair). And in the Bay Area I've had similar experience making frequent trips to West Oakland, Emeryville, and San Leandro. I never lived there, but I am the sort of person who tries to walk whenever possible (even when people tell me it's ill-advised) so I've seen a lot more that one does from an automobile.
Trust me: the ethnic divide in Canada is nothing compared to the USA. In Canada you have neighborhoods where people are struggling. In the USA you have neighborhoods that look like the apocalypse happened, thirty or forty years ago.
It sounds like we're violently agreeing here. What I refer to as "cultural differences" or "cultural heterogenity" is the result of this process, not the cause. As long as blacks have been materially excluded from the middle class in America, America as a whole has been trapped with these cultural differences.
In any case, heterogenity doesn't always lead to a higher crime rate. Toronto is over 38% immigrant [1] and yet has a low crime rate. Montreal has been riven by cultural heterogenity (between English, French, and others) ever since the 1700s, and yet has an even lower crime rate.
That's a fair point. Canada probably does a better job than the US of handling those issues. French Canadian culture is an interesting difference we don't really have in America--French Canadians (unless I'm mistaken) are no more or less affluent than English Canadians and, aside from various controversies over Quebec separatism, by and large don't seem to be materially oppressed. Those aren't things you can say about, for instance, America's Spanish-speaking population.
American culture accepted and integrated generations of European immigrants, but those immigrants largely assimilated (or rather, their children did) due to geographic isolation from the countries they immigrated from. That geographic isolation doesn't exist for Latin American immigrants, and it's quite possible they will remain a different culture in perpetuity. America is going to have to learn how to accept that diversity rather than expecting assimilation. As you may have gathered, we're not doing a great job of that so far.
I'm not as pessimistic about Latin American integration as you are. Their values are pretty much identical to mainstream America. I don't expect they will ever vote in blocs; they don't even do that today. The worst thing about that situation is the hypocrisy about so-called "illegals", especially in California.
BTW, the French in Quebec were never excluded from government, higher education, or the professions, although they were excluded from the business and managerial classes for centuries. So it wasn't quite oppression, like say Cuba, but the French did feel like second-class citizens in their own country. It's not comparable to any other situation I know of.