On 9/20/2010 9:02 PM, brandelune at gmail.com wrote:
> I partly agree with SA's reply but I want to add something: "what if"
> the Latino population in the US was muslim ?
> When cheap labor/different culture/different language/different religion/different color all come together into roughly one "ethnic" group then you're likely to see what you see in France (or other European countries).
Let me add another crucial variable here that no one seems to realize, much less acknowledge: Immigrants are much more spatially segregated in the US than they are in Europe. This is why the self-congratulation of blue-state Americans about the wonderful experience of immigrants in the Northeast leaves me so nonplussed. So many liberals delight in their enlightened contact with immigrants - they go to the convenience store and they have a friendly chat with the Pakistani owner and they think they're such cosmopolitans and why can't everyone be like them? To quote Martin Amis, they're just hugging themselves with the deliciousness of it all.
The reality is this:
> Generally, levels of segregation, both ethnic and racial segregation
> and socio-economic
> segregation are lower in cities in European countries than in cities
> in the US. We also find
> a relatively larger mix of various population categories and this
> holds for the population
> which recently immigrated to European cities. Most so-called ethnic
> concentrations in
> neighborhoods are actually very mixed in terms of the countries of
> origin. By implication,
> only a few mono-ethnic areas can be found; furthermore if we do find
> concentrations, the
> size of the concentrations will generally be lower. These assertions
> can be illustrated on the
> basis of several research projects, which have been carried out in
> Europe.
From: "Social and Ethnic Segregation in Europe: Levels, Causes, and Effects," Sako Musterd, Journal of Urban Affairs, Volume 27, Issue 3, pages 331–348, August 2005.
This is something Loic Wacquant also talks a lot about.
Eyeballing Figure 1 in this article, I see that the segregation index level (on a 0-100 scale) for blacks in US metro areas is about 64; for Hispanics in US metro areas it's about 51; for Asians in US metro areas it's about 41. For Algerians in Paris it's about 23.
And segregation by socioeonomic status is even greater in the US relative to Europe, so to the extent that our immigrants do live amongst the natives, they're more likely to be of a higher SES than in Europe.
So in practice, the only segment of the native US population that actually lives cheek-by-jowl with immigrants is probably....blacks. Because they "have to." And wouldn't you know it, there is endemic gang violence between blacks and Latinos in prisons and in cities; there were riots targeting immigrants and such in Crown Heights and Los Angeles, etc. And polls show blacks have strong anti-immigrant sentiments. So America doesn't necessarily experience such a glowing embrace of difference compared to Europe. I don't recall any recent episodes of mass violence directed at Paris Algerians, unless you go back to the drownings in 1960.
SA