This is nifty

[conuly]

Here's a set of pictures of cities in the US, carefully color coded to indicate who lives where by ethnicity.

Naturally, I looked at NYC first. That big gray spot in Manhattan is Central Park, right below it is Midtown - not a lot of people live there, it's mostly where people work. All that stuff on the left of the screen is Jersey.

Of course, down the page a bit is this lovely comment:

Further proof that mixing races only leads to segregation, which leads to voilence. Multiethnic or multicultural societies are doomed to fail.

WTF? Mixing races leads to segregation? And this leads inexorably to violence how, exactly? I'm sure it's because this map proves his point or something, except it doesn't - NYC is actually one of the safest cities in America. (Maybe he's trying to prove a negative and say that NYC isn't actually all that integrated (or maybe that it is...?) and this is non-violent? Who knows?)

So, yeah, that one doesn't even make sense. If you're going to be randomly racist, since you can't have facts on your side, at least try to have logic there!

Comments

[dragonwolf]

There have been studies done that suggest that mixed culture groups tend to segregate themselves, because people tend to group together based on what they have in common, which is often cultural. Where he was going with the violence thing though, I have no idea. Look for discrimination hard enough and you'll find it anywhere, I suppose.

[conuly]

There have been studies done that suggest that mixed culture groups tend to segregate themselves, because people tend to group together based on what they have in common, which is often cultural.

Probably true (I've read that kids in more diverse schools have LESS friends of other races than kids in less diverse schools, probably because That One Kid can't isolate himself, but The $ETHNICITY Kids, as a group, can), and I can even see some potential good points to this - for example, it can preserve your culture better.

[dragonwolf]

From what I've learned in various psych/psych-related studies, humans are "tribal" by nature. That is, we form groups of various sorts and compare outsiders to the people in our circle. Evolutionarily speaking, it's a defense mechanism. This is why using uniforms in schools to stop cliques from forming doesn't generally work, they just find something else to distinguish "us" from "them."

Yes, that means we are "xenophobic" by nature, in a sense. That, of course, doesn't excuse discrimination, but it does help explain it, which can ultimately help overcome it.

[chaos-by-design.livejournal.com]

That claim doesn't even make sense. If you're mixing races, how are you segregating them? And if you're segregating them, how can you mix them?

It. Does. Not. Com. Pute!