A defining trait of American culture is hyperactivity. Commenting on trivial stuff, moving around restlessly while holding a drink, despise for idle time. The "kindness" thing is a form of hyper-expressivity which is rarely seen in calm cultures.
If you think that there are defining traits of that many people in a country that varies so greatly in terms of geography, lifestyle, religion and culture, then you just don't know what you're talking about.
That statement is kind of what I mean. I don’t think most people outside, and to some extent inside the US, appreciate how much diversity of culture exists in the US.
Eastern Washington is completely different culturally than western Washington(Seattle etc).
No where else in the world has the massive amount of diversity that the US does at the scale of the US. It’s not even close anywhere else so it is difficult for both US residents and people of other countries to fully comprehend.
Many cities in the US provide documentation in often 4 or more languages. Schools employ large teams of specialists for teaching English as there are significant amounts of schools where less than half of the student population is a native English speaker.
Cable TV in most areas offers packages of programming in many different languages. In the US, network television is broadcast with a simultaneous Spanish language audio.
This homogeneous white, English speaking, Christian view of the US may have been true in the 1960s, but outside of the rural US, this is no longer valid.
The US doesn't have all that much diversity comparitively. There is more diversity in skin colour, but the major cultural groups are far closer to each other than European ones.
You don't see how homogenous the culture is because you are so close to it.
As far as Africans go, there's not a whole ton of difference between white Americans and black Americans. I think that, like in Europe, there's entrepreneurs, setting up "Return to Your Roots" tours for diasporans.
Europe probably has more experience with Africans than the US. When I have met black folk in Europe, they have frequently been first- or second-generation Africans, as opposed to the US, where most black folks I know come from families that have lived here for many generations. I think the UK has a similar culture.
I lived in Uganda, when Idi Amin threw out all the Ugandans of Indian descent. These were true Ugandans, who had lived there for generations. It was devastating; both to the people that were thrown out, and the nation, itself. The infrastructure of the nation collapsed, almost overnight.
It's pretty much impossible to "un-mix" a mixed society. That's not for want of trying, though. History is full of "ethnic cleansing" boneyards. It never seems to end well, but we seem to be a bit thick, in learning the lesson.
I'd say that this is the same reductive view that Europeans have of India, for comparison.
Wikipedia (not the greatest source, but reasonable for a HN discussion) says in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_groups_in_Europe that linguistic minorities in Europe are about 14% of the population, while only about 3% are diasporas of non European origin.
Christianity (51% of the population) in Europe is written into the law, so even if you grow up atheist in Europe, you are still culturally Christian.
India is ethnically a bit less homogenous, with three major linguistic groups (Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Iranian). Religiously, monotheistic groups are about 20% of the population, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_India , and a majority of laws aren't based on a single dominant religious philosophy (the Modi government is working on changing that). There is variation in food based on region, climate, and religious subgroup. The dominant flavour would be some sort of brown, polytheistic groups, strongly influenced by other polytheistic groups and with very strong monotheistic influences from Jainism, Sikhism, Islam and Christianity.
This is the 10000m view, rather than the 3000m view which would show more detail.
I honestly feel as though this is a lack of awareness of other regions and the differences inside of them. I don't know how you can make sweeping statements like that. A cursory look at a linguistic diversity map should immediately hint at a different reality, and that's just one metric. There are places in Africa where you have genetic lines that are distant by tends of thousands of years from surrounding villages as measured by their Y chromosomes.
You ever been in Spain, Italy, Germany or France?
This is simply not true, in Spain they have so many different languages, in the others they have incredibly dialects that seem like entirely different languages and can be only as short as 25km away from one another--something like Badish vs schwabish vs Alemansich vs Hoch Deutsch.
You have to live in places like Hawaii (which I did) before you get anything close to the stark differences I'm talking about, where they have an entirely different set of culture and language (Hawaiian pidgin) to see what is so pervasive all throughout Southern and Central Europe.
I have tinnitus in the city.
I go to the mountains and it’s gone.
Keeping ratings and quarterly growth up is, to my mind, emergent of people who live densely.
Intuiting incorrectly that lots of people moving around organically means life is to be lived on the go.
Look out for any exciting opportunities to visit El Paso, Texas or Birmingham, Alabama for a proper comparison sometime if you can.
Bonus points for Brownsville, Texas where you can get a well steeped mix of the South & border along with a rocket launch!
So, yeah.