Racial Diversity and Racial Strife; A Cross-cultural Examination

 I had a question about the racial strife within the US as a product of a more diverse country:

Is the racial strife in the US a natural product of the US being a more diverse society?

I am not sure I have a specific answer but I do have a number of ideas to consider:

• To understand "race," it is necessary to understand the social and political history of a country.
• "Diversity" is relative; just like race is a social construction, diversity can be defined in different ways making it difficult to quantify.
• Myriad ways of measuring "diversity" show the USA is less diverse than many other countries.

Racial Formation; The Importance of Social and Political History

First, I think the most important piece to consider is the Omi and Winant conclusion that I mentioned in class regarding the social construction of race.  Essentially, their claim is that race is shaped by each country/society's social and political history.  And because race is NOT biological, think of it in terms of social group.  So in other words, each country creates social groups based on the dynamics within that country's history.  This makes "diversity" and "race" (i.e. social groups) relative to each country.  So, while the U.S. looks diverse to Americans by seeing people who look: African, Desi, East Asian, Indo-European, etc...  We only notice these differences because our society points them out.  Other societies notice differences that Americans do not - for example within Africa there are numerous different ethnicities and cultural groups, and biologically, Africa has the greatest genetic variation of any continent.  However, all of that diversity in the United States would simply be considered black.  This is the most important baseline to your question.  We must start out with this understanding.  And, by many measures, there is myriad evidence that the US is NOT the most diverse country around the world.

Second, not only do we notice the tensions and diversity more in the USA because we live here but also those tensions are exacerbated by a social and political history that:

• sought to justify domination by race for nearly 250 years of brutal slavery beginning in 1619
• Fought an extremely destructive war over the racial slavery practices but never came to terms with slavery despite the end of the war (1865)
• Created a political and criminal justice system after slavery ended that lasted for another 100 years (Civil Rights legislation 1964)
• And then for decades created a system of ignoring "race" while still creating race-based policies of incarceration and political dog whistles until the Black Lives Matter Movement ushered in a second civil rights movement (2014).

In other words, our country has not come to terms with its long history of racism so even though the USA might not be the most diverse country in the world, it has a particularly painful history of dealing with diversity that we, as a country,  have not come to terms with yet.

"Diversity" is Relative

This PEW research explains the relative views about diversity within various countries around the world.  Views on diversity vary from country to country but also within countries based on demographics.  Intranationally, more diversity is seen as positive by younger and more-educated people worldwide and seen as negative by people supporting populist and conservative parties.  Internationally, diversity is more favored by Western nations.  Below are some graphs explaining the findings:

"Diversity" is Difficult to Measure

Stanford U. professor James Fearon explains the difficulty of defining "ethnic diversity" in this 2003 paper, Ethnic and Cultural Diversity by Country:  

Despite the difficulty, Fearon attempts to create a proxy (including language) for defining "diversity" around the world.  His conclusion rates the USA at less "diverse" than many of the other countries examined - 6th out of Western nations and much lower worldwide.  Here are some graphs from Fearon:

And this PEW research from 2013 explains which countries are more "diverse" based on a German study.  The graph below highlights that there are many countries considered more "diverse" than the USA:

World Population Review explains the most diverse countries based on the same German study mentioned above by the PEW.

This Washington Post article explains research from Harvard Institute for Economic Policy that shows "diversity" is a social construct and is relative to each country or population.  The article explains how the research attempts to measure diversity and the effects of diversity.  The first map below shows that the USA is only moderately ethnically diverse, while the second map shows that US respondents are very open to having neighbors of a different race.

Share of people who said that did not want a neighbor who was from a different race:

 World Atlas created its own measure of ethnic diversity here.  It does not list the USA among the most diverse countries worldwide.  Africa dominates the list.

Religion can also serve as a proxy for diversity.  The Pew examines religious diversity in countries around the world here.  Using religion as a measure, the USA is also less "diverse" than many countries worldwide.

Diversity within the USA:

Here is an article from The Census Bureau explaining the diversity in the US.

Here is a diversity map from the Census Bureau of diversity within the US: