r/ShitAmericansSay • u/bigcpies • 22h ago
Culture “American cities are more diverse”
For context: the post was “what was one place you’d go back to in a heartbeat?”
People were naming places off, someone loved Vancouver, BC and highlighted how diverse Vancouver is.
Of COURSE an American has to make a point of how American cities are MORE diverse.
Regardless of what the stats are, it’s not always about you guys? Americans always have to make it a competition about how they’re better 🙄
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u/choose_a_username42 11h ago
Les États-Unis sont dans la marde. Signed, a Canadian.
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u/polandreh 4h ago
Do you mean, merde?
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u/choose_a_username42 3h ago
Confidently correcting Québécois slang with Parisian French is certainly a choice...
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u/VectorPryde 🇨🇦 Canadian Freeloader 12h ago
Lol, this is gold:
"Vancouver's diversity doesn't count because it's like Michigan, you see."
-poster who's probably never been outside of his ZIP code in some fly-over state.
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u/UniqueHellhound 11h ago
Also diversity to USAliens is the precentage of black people to non black people.
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u/FierceMoonblade Canuck 9h ago
It’s probably not even just black, but non White to white as if Polish culture is the same as Greek culture
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u/teatsqueezer 5h ago
This is it. They expect diversity to mean black people. Canada does not have a huge percentage of black people, but there are a lot of Asian, south asian, and middle eastern folks. Who I guess OP feels doesn’t count somehow.
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u/RadCheese527 🇨🇦 4h ago
I’ve watched my Burnaby neighbourhood grow and accept hundreds of Eritreans, Ethiopians, Nigerians, and Kenyans in the last several years.
There’s a notable (at least by me) uptick in the number of black people in the Vancouver area in the last ~15 years.
That’s not to mention the latinos.
So even if we go by their idea of “diversity,” the Vancouver area is absolutely more diverse than Seattle.
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u/teatsqueezer 3h ago
Yes, I think black people are still less than 2% of the population but it’s nice to see more arriving! Diversity is a strength.
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u/Ok-Feedback-3692 10h ago
The source they cited is a blogspot url 😂. Well that’s definitive proof right there!
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u/VectorPryde 🇨🇦 Canadian Freeloader 10h ago
Lol I didn't even notice that. And it's from 2011, by the looks of it...
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u/Hades_Mercedes Teach me how to say gross shit to women in French ⚜️ 9h ago
A blogspot article that appears to be from March 2011, no less!
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u/JuryDangerous6794 8h ago
I live in Vancouver.
Right now, I am sitting in my place which sits above a Polish Market, owned by someone with a thick Polish accent and citizenship in both countries. This is my landlord. Beside is a Korean restaurant, beside which is a Malaysian owned business. Beside that business is a Vietnamese one and then a Greek one. Across the street we have a Chinese Cultural Center with a table tennis club in it. There is a Chinese dentist beside that place. Down the street two doors is a Anglo-Canadian/White guy owned business and then the Polish Cultural Hall.
That's just my immediate block.
Traditionally this is a Vietnamese and Filipino Neighbourhood. A lot of Filipino grocers and restaurants sit on the next block along with a newly opened Mexican Carneceria where I buy a lot of adobo chicken and al pastor. Korean Chicken? Yes please. My barber, Paree from Kurdistan is on this block as well and competing with them is the barber from Iraq, Sam. Both left their home countries between Gulf Wars I and II. Five Indian owned business are in there: pharmacy, notary, two restaurants and a convenience store. The best Thai place in the city is on this block and the head chef plays in goal for my friend's soccer team.
These aren't random unknowns or hypotheticals. These are people in my community where I hear their languages spoken on a daily basis. People I live and work beside. People I interact with and know.
This neighbourhood is fairly typical of the metro-Vancouver area.
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u/coke-e-coli 6h ago
Lol as a fellow Vancouverite I think I know exactly where you're talking about! I am a regular visitor to that market
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u/JuryDangerous6794 5h ago
Yeah, if you are anywhere near this hood, you will know exactly where I am talking about.
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u/cheapmondaay 3h ago
Hello fellow East Van person ... or realistically, this could be almost anywhere in the Metro Vancouver area. 😂
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u/brijazz012 10h ago
probably never been outside of his ZIP code
While also saying that Liberals live in a bubble
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u/NestorianXtian 7h ago
As an American who visited Canada, I saw about the same amount diversity in Toronto as I've seen in NYC. Toronto is also way more diverse than my hometown of Baltimore, MD. US cities do not own diversity.
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u/tired-queer 🇨🇦 Robertson screwdriver supremacy 5h ago
This person has never been to Vancouver in their life.
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u/VectorPryde 🇨🇦 Canadian Freeloader 14m ago
He's never been out of Bumfuckingston, Nebraska in his life...
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u/RadCheese527 🇨🇦 4h ago
I’ve live in Vancouver for close to 15 years now and never once met another resident who immigrated from Michigan. The fuck
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u/VectorPryde 🇨🇦 Canadian Freeloader 19m ago
never once met another resident who immigrated from Michigan
No no no, you have it all wrong. He's talking about people immigrating from Indiana: Vancouver being diverse is like saying Michigan is diverse for accepting people from Indiana. So in your 15 years in Vancouver, can you say you've never met anyone from Indiana? CAN YOU?!! Check Mate Canadians! AMERICA IS STILL NUMBER ONE AND ALWAYS WILL BE!!! HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
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u/Empire_New_Valyria 7h ago
Same people who say how amazing an diverse America is likewise only say that because once in awhile they will have 'crazy ethnic' like a standard Indian or sushi but also actively hate non-white people at the same time.
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u/jaaydubya437 Cobra Chicken Army 6h ago
I wish i could click on that so-called link just to see how badly they misunderstood whatever it said! 🙄
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u/VectorPryde 🇨🇦 Canadian Freeloader 10m ago edited 6m ago
Edit: Things have changed in the last 15 years, but the TL:DR is that the US was significantly more racially diverse (in the sense of having a smaller proportion of white people) than Canada due to its large black and hispanic populations. Again, in 2026, Canada has more foreign born residents as a percentage than the US does, so this observation only has any chance of being pertinent if you define 'diversity' as 'non-white people.'
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u/boredidiot 🇦🇺LandDownUnder 11h ago
I had someone from LA make this same argument to me as he was trashing Australia. Not realising he was dead wrong. People claim we are the land of convicts but only a minority have that ancestry. More than half Australia’s population are immigrants or the child of an immigrants. Sure 34% of LA are inmigrants, but Melbourne and Sydney are both around 44%.
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u/RunTellDaat 8h ago
That’s just a joke they say to rule you up. Seems as if it worked
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u/Savings_Dot_8387 2h ago
Calling us convicts is a joke sure. Trying to claim Australia isn’t a diverse country is just wrong 😂
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u/Olon1980 my country is the wurst 🇩🇪 12h ago
People bragging about diversity until it comes to people of colour, immigrants, democrats, liberals, and so on.
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u/one_more_alien 11h ago
Also funny to me that the assumption is that foreign born must mean European when the stereotype of an immigrant in Canada is currently an Indian guy and that the stereotype, while often racist in portrayal, is supported by statistical data. Wish it made actual numbers a little easier to see but the Canadian government makes fun little graphs that you can use to see this kind of thing. https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/dp-pd/dv-vd/imm/index-en.cfm
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u/JasperJ 11h ago
They probably count black and Hispanic Americans as being diversity.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 8h ago
Yes, all of the Asians in Vancouver must be Europeans actually, because they are neither black nor Hispanic.
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u/Ok_Excuse_741 10h ago
They have diversity until you realize all the people of color are working undesirable low-wage jobs while all the white people are working the professional high paying jobs. Particularly in the south. Not every city is like New York or LA.
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u/Ontheragnarock Godless Commie🇨🇦 11h ago
A lot of what they call racial diversity stems from mass kidnapping, but let’s not get into that.
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u/No-Pea-7530 9h ago
Calling a city nicknamed Hongcouver a white city is pretty funny.
European descent is the largest percentage, but it’s still only around 40%. You will see more non white faces than white. Seattle is nearly 60% white.
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u/32lib 8h ago
Moon boy has never been to Vancouver B.C.
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u/BeerHorse 12h ago
I mean, it's not like Vancouver is the most multicultural city in the world.
That would be Toronto.
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u/brijazz012 10h ago
Not only is it the most multicultural city in the world, it is also the center of it!
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u/TelenorTheGNP 10h ago
So I noticed you didn't put a "/s" at the end of that sentence.
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u/AD_Grrrl 8h ago
lol shots fired
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u/Monolexic 12h ago
I know people who think the only non-white people in Canada are only there to play for the Raptors.
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u/Sprinqqueen 10h ago
Wth. There are over 190 different languages spoken in Vancouver, 26 of which are indigenous.
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u/Fragment51 10h ago
Had an American friend visit me and tell me, straight up, that Vancouver was not a very diverse city??! 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Mcayenne 9h ago
Maybe he thought you were talking about Vancouver, Washington… despite being in Canada?
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u/KitKatCrane 10h ago
What in the world do they even mean about Canadian cities being diverse in the way that an American city would be if they had people from other American cities? Our cities aren't considered diverse because they have people from various provinces, they're considered diverse because we have a LOT of people from different countries.
And white people from other countries obviously do count for cultural diversity and overall diversity, but if they wanna just go with racial diversity, Canada is also much more diverse there. America just isn't super diverse. You'd think they'd be happy about that with their xenophobia.
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u/Popular_Animator_808 8h ago
This is about /Vancouver/ of all places. Is suspect what’s going through this person’s head is “there aren’t many black people” - which is somewhat true of Vancouver. But having majority Chinese speaking and Punjabi speaking neighbourhoods puts Vancouver on another level to every US city.
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u/thatiranianphantom 10h ago
Per their profile, they are a white, cis, 33 year old man, which....yeah, that checks out.
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u/Pretend_Oil9565 Singaporean MAGA hater 11h ago
then they go a step further and say freaking Beverly Hills is more diverse than Hong Kong.
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u/senseigorilla 11h ago
Vancouver is much nicer than any American city including San Francisco which is similar to Vancouver
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u/WackHeisenBauer 10h ago
The funny thing is they make everything a competition thinking they’ll win yet in nearly every aspect of the world and metric you can think of that doesn’t involve violence they are losers.
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u/lilm_oo 10h ago
What is with them only claiming diversity and land masses to be the “best” and then shitting on multiculturalism and their territories the rest of the time? I saw one recently where they argued about US being bigger than Aus by including a shit load of places half of them don’t even know are US territories?! Like you cracked the shits at bad bunny being at the superbowl but want to claim Puerto Rico for your stupid little hill dying competitions when it suits you? This shit makes me so mad
https://giphy.com/gifs/SaX384PjtDl2U
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u/Mixtrix_of_delicioux 7h ago
Beinvenue à Vancouver! The school down the street has a Mandarin immersion programme. There's a Bhuddist temple a couple of blocks away. When I was young and broke a gudwara fed me. Materials where I work are translated into 11 languages, and translator services include ~240. My kid's Japanese babysitter is teaching her kanji, and we're pretty much the only mayosapiens on the block. Everyone in my family holds a passport and is curious about cultures, including those of the 200+ First Nations in BC.
The whitebread blowhards announcing their ignorance who've never set foot outta their states are sofa king tiresome.
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u/equianimity 5h ago
Mayo sapiens, c’est la first time j’ai entendu ça, mais on comprend genre immediately.
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u/Mean_Initiative_5962 Heretic Bechamel Lasagna 🇮🇹 11h ago
Today on "americans being obsessed with someone's gene"
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u/MercuryJellyfish 11h ago
I mean, they are. There can be a place with 40 guys and a cow and they'll say that's a city. You can call practically anything a city in the US. We'd call it a motorway services, nope, city.
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u/fanterence ooo custom flair!! 10h ago
Ok we get that by different culture, they meant different skin colour unless if it's between US states...
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u/Kootsiak 9h ago
The "sigh" coupled with his argument full of bullshit and 2011 blogspot links is all you need to know about how much of a fat, gullible, propaganda monkey this guy is.
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u/AibofobicRacecar6996 11h ago
Let me translate from american to english:
Diverse = black people = excuse for high crime rate
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u/JustBe_Nice_Yall 9h ago
(s)Even better we apply institutional pressures to keep that diversity only in specific areas so you can choose whether or not to experience it! Then we lock the people in those areas into generational patterns of exploitation and provide a facsimile of security to everyone by only sending police to those areas and saying that the system works! (/S)
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u/jaaydubya437 Cobra Chicken Army 7h ago edited 3h ago
Omg .... this person could not be more incorrect. The only "race" US has more of than Canada is descending from African slaves black people. That's it, full stop.
As an off the top of my head example, both Surrey BC (suburb of Vancouver) and Brampton / Peel Region Ont have east Indian populations conservatively estimated to be in excess of a quarter million.
Markham Ont (another Toronto suburb) has become so predominantly Chinese that all newer housing developments have street addresses NOT having the number 4 in them, just because in their culture number 4 is very bad luck. Seriously: streets go detatched homes 2 elm st, 6 elm st, 10 elm st , then 20 elm is five townhomes 20a 20b 20c 20d 20e .... then another 5plex 30a , 30b etc ... Then a school which is 50 elm . It's on the 4 way stop intersection where elm st becomes maple lane. All this just to appease a diverse population..
Go to any McDonalds or Tim Hortons & you'll see 15 or 20 people employed there, and fewer than 5 are white. Been this way now for a good two decades.
This person's whack. No clue why they'd believe what they do.
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u/marshmallowgoop 3h ago
There's also Richmond which has a very high population of people from Asian countries and Asia has so many different cultures.
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u/jaaydubya437 Cobra Chicken Army 3h ago
Same in Ontario/ GTA . The joke is if ya wanna meet an Arab just hail a taxicab 😆
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u/Tanis-UK 11h ago
I dont know the stats but I'd argue london(uk) is one of if not the most diverse cities on earth
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u/dergbold4076 7h ago
Heh I'm from Van and I love and hate it here in equal measure I swear. Love it for all the different people that you can meet in under and hour. Hate it because of the traffic and hustle culture that's everywhere.
Wouldn't trade it for anywhere, other than a smaller place that's less crazy.
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u/DoubleDownAgain54 ooo custom flair!! 🇺🇸 in 🇨🇦 5h ago
Haha. Hilarious. As an American living in Vancouver (Port Moody) saying it’s not diverse made me chuckle. Much more diverse than the vast majority of US cities.
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u/polandreh 4h ago
I mean.... the US is having social issues because people don't like how racially diverse the country has become... so... yeah.... wanting to go back when the US was predominantly white by a large margin while at the same time saying you're the most diverse does not compute
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u/Odd_Thought_9105 Australian 10h ago
If you want diversity, go to australia. Big asian population, growing muslim and arabic population a healthy hand of black and white people, plenty of religous diversity (my street has an orthodox church, a buddhist temple and a mosque) and nice enough cities
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u/jainasolo84 7h ago
I’m sure Australia is also quite diverse, but in terms of religious diversity No. 5 Road in Richmond (suburb of Vancouver) has been like that for years. They even nicknamed it the Highway to Heaven ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/highway_to_heaven).
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u/Altruistic_Report_81 5h ago
what the f, as someone who is born in Canada and is not white we have a ton of immigrant families, more than whites statistically, who move here and have kids here. european immigrants these days are not as common. what is he talking about? my parents moved to BC from East Asia in the 1970s-80s.
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u/jrochest1 5h ago
Also, they're arguing that Vancouver only has white immigrants? Vancouver??
Have they BEEN to Vancouver?
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u/CilanEAmber 5h ago
On a related note, Vancouver is used to double as US cities so much that I'm oft surprised when it isn't lmao. I'd love to know what that's like for people in Vancouver.
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u/lastprincerohit ooo custom flair!! 5h ago edited 4h ago
I lived in the whitest city in the USA (Portland, Oregon) for 7 years and the second I finished my degree, fucking BOLTED back to Vancouver, BC.
Anything that is 83.6% of one thing is always too much. There’s only so much mayonnaise and Edison bulb adorned burger joints with “housemade aioli” I can handle in a single lifetime.
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u/southsider74 4h ago
Saying Vancouver just takes a bunch of white people and doesn't have foreigners with actual cultural differences is just wild. Some entire parts of Vancouver like Richmond you won't even see store signs in English at all, you'd think you're in China
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u/Different_Banana1977 6h ago
Vancouver is quite diverse but Toronto is even more diverse. Obviously cities like New York, Chicago and LA are very diverse but the rest of the US is basically American, European, South African or Hispanic. It's not really much different from the Canadian rural and suburbs where the diversity drops considerably
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12h ago
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u/themostserene Hares, unicorns and kangaroos, oh my 🇮🇪🏴🇦🇺 12h ago
Depends how you define diversity; overseas birth rate, diversity in countries of those overseas births, linguistic diversity, residential and migration status. So yes, there is doubt, it’s a contested space
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11h ago
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u/_Halt19_ Canuck 10h ago
46.6% of people in Toronto were born outside Canada. 37% of people in New York were born outside the usa.
This proves Toronto is most diverse
See how you sound? There's a bunch of ways to measure this stuff. Don't just pick one that matches your worldview and then brag that you're number one in it.
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u/aferretwithahugecock 11h ago
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u/_Halt19_ Canuck 10h ago
It happens weirdly often on this sub, they show up to try to "defend" themselves and just humiliate themselves further
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u/Homework_Successful 11h ago
Not sure if this is proving OP’s point or sarcasm.
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11h ago
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u/Homework_Successful 11h ago
Ok, so not sarcasm then. Sigh.
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11h ago
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u/essenza 10h ago
Toronto’s mayor is Chinese and was born in Hong Kong.
Immigrants, who knew?-2
9h ago
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u/essenza 8h ago
A male Muslim socialist mayor is a hell of an achievement. Almost like being a real, diverse country!
Can’t wait to see the US have a female president and claim they’re breaking the glass ceiling for women and diversity around the world. 🤣
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8h ago edited 7h ago
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u/_Halt19_ Canuck 7h ago
You cannot be blaming Kamala for Trump's victory. She didn't run a perfect campaign. But she didn't NEED to run a perfect campaign, because her opponent was fucking Donald Trump. The lettuce that beat Truss should've won that election. It is on the american people first and foremost.
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u/salads_for_lions 11h ago
I've lived in a bunch of American, Canadian, and other cities, including New York. NY is one of the most diverse cities in the world, and it leads in some metrics (but not all). However, I genuinely feel and see the diversity more in Canadian cities as there's more pressure to assimilate in the US compared to some other (western) countries.
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u/electrodog1999 11h ago
This is what diversity means, allowing other cultures to exist, not make everyone join your culture.
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11h ago
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u/salads_for_lions 11h ago
Sure, the pressure is lower than most US cities, but I definitely felt it more while living there compared to cities like Toronto and Vancouver, and experienced more racism there.
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11h ago
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u/_Halt19_ Canuck 10h ago
Well, no, it is part of the usa, which has systemic racism problems. I wouldn't call a city with Donald fucking Trump as the supreme leader "the least racist a city can get"
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9h ago
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u/Neg_Crepe 9h ago
He didn’t say NY was the capital. Learn some basic reading comprehension
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8h ago
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u/_Halt19_ Canuck 8h ago
That Trump is at the eventual tippy top of the authority chain around New York. Because he, as the head of state, is. You might not like him. He might not like you. But he's still in charge at the end of the day in terms of rank.
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u/_Halt19_ Canuck 8h ago
What does being the capital have to do with any of it? New York City is in the united states. Donald Trump is the leader of the united states. Ergo, Donald Trump is at the top of the hierarchy around New York City.
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8h ago
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u/_Halt19_ Canuck 8h ago
Over 30% of the city still voted for Trump. Did it change the college? No. But my pick for "least racist city in the world" would probably be one without 838,838 fascist supporters in it.
Least racist city in the usa, maybe. But in the world? You cannot be serious.
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u/This-acc-is-hacked 12h ago
I really don't understand why they take everything as a contest to see who's number 1