Hacker News Reader

Comment by spectramax | Hacker News Reader

Yea I feel like it’s cliche to hate on America these days. For those comparing Switzerland to USA, you’re comparing a highly homogeneous culture and highly optimized country to a land full of immigrants gathering in excess of 300 million.

Americans criticize their own country more than anyone else.

OP’s post not only misses the fact that Switzerland is not in the EU, but more importantly the spirit of argument is baseless with the general perception that things are better in EU.

View on HN

> For those comparing Switzerland to USA, you’re comparing a highly homogeneous culture and highly optimized country to a land full of immigrants gathering in excess of 300 million.

Percentage wise, the Swiss have more immigrants, more foreigners and more people with immigrant backgrounds. Not to mention the whole "four official languages" thing.

If you exclude Western Europeans from your "immigrants" statement, which is what the parent comment was clearly implying, it's not even close to true.

If you think Western Europe has some glowing history of harmonious relations, I’ve got news for you. Heck, ask German-speaking Swiss people how they feel about French-speaking Swiss (and vice versa) and you’ll get a quick picture of how things aren’t so rosy.

Would love to read more on the topic of German/French-speaking Swiss, would you mind sharing some reads you would recommend?

Start here and then google rostigraben: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R%C3%B6stigraben

Most of my knowledge of the subject comes from Swiss friends, so unfortunately can’t recommend any books or articles.

Even better: ask German-speaking Swiss people how they feel about Germans.

That is precisely what is wrong with the assumption. Diversity is not just skin color as Americans think. I have people of color as neighbors who I share more cultural traits with that neighbors who are white (I am white) My wife is of Asian decent but I have more in common with her than with many other white Western Europeans.

Diversity is also language, culture, language, identity etc.

It doesn't seem clear at all that having many different kinds of Western Europeans makes for a "highly homogeneous" culture compared to neighboring countries that generally have only one kind of Western European.

The culture between Italy and France is much closer than Italy and Algeria. For as much difference there is between the countries in Western Europe, there are far more similarities amongst them compared to other continents and larger regions. Counting Italians as "immigrants" is at the very least slightly misleading.

It is more misleading to count somebody as different who is second or third generation American and who has fully adapted American culture values and norms but count that person as more different to the host country due to different skin color or remote country of origin than a Spanish person whom just settled in Switzerland.

The slightly racist assumption in America is that if I as a white Norwegian settle in America I contribute less to diversity than a black American who has lived his whole life in America.

In America diversity is all about what you see on the outside.

To be fair, this kind of diversity is important because in the US it still matters (very much!) what you look like on the outside, regardless of how long your ancestors have lived here. It'd be great to be in a post-racial society but we're very far from that.

It is not misleading at all, you have to learn a new language, learn to deal with a different government and laws, we are talking several years of effort until you get accustomed.

The differences between accepted social behaviour in Britain, Spain and Poland are significant too.

Sure, if you came from Saudi, you'll feel more out of place. But it's not trivial.

I think only Americans can really swallow the canard that “Western European culture” is some uniform thing. If you’ve spent any time around people from the various parts of Europe, you’ll know that they have all kinds of opinion about their neighboring countries, some gentle, some cruel. But all see themselves as quite distinct. Certainly the Swiss do!

And while we're at it we can count non-Caucasian Americans as immigrants /s

... provided they have money.

As someone now living in Switzerland, I've found it largely futile trying to explain anything about Switzerland to most non-Europeans. For starters, no one seems to bother with what countries are in the EU, let alone the EEA, let alone where Switzerland is in all of this. Apparently "everyone in Europe" has free government-paid healthcare and never has to pay for any medical expenses. I could go on...

Tbf the borders of "Europe" are fairly complicated, there is the EU itself, the EEA, the Schengen Area, the Eurozone, EFTA and CEFTA, the EUCU, the EEU, the CISFTA, the OBSEC, the Eastern partnership (or EPA), the OECD Countries, the CEI, and finally the Council of Europe.

There is more that I probably forgot about but this should about cover it. None of these political areas and borders have 100% coverage amongst eachother, they're all different groups.

Definitely. One could even add NATO to that alongside OECD. I don't really expect most people to understand all of these groups, but just to avoid making sweeping statements about the continent (which already has an ambiguous definition) without understanding the groups. I guess this problem of generalizing is a concern with nearly every issue, though.

A lot of Europeans on this site make similar statements.

Well, if you're willing to take one more shot at explaining the situation, I for one would be interested.

20% of the Swiss working population is made of immigrants, plus many more in temporary work contracts.

Swiss cities where most of the economic value is being created are far from homogenous.

> you’re comparing a highly homogeneous culture

Are you talking about a different Switzerland than everyone else? A country literally made out of three different cultures (French Swiss, German Swiss and Italian Swiss)?

Even apart from the diversity of the natives, Zürich has roughly the same proportion of foreign born residents as San Francisco.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com