[hkt]

> In modern Western Europe, some immigrant groups assimilate fairly quickly (Russians, Indians, Vietnamese, Iranians), some other form parallel societies in a manner that Rome would not have tolerated well.

Like most sweeping generalisations, this is wrong. Whether groups live in parallel is determined community by community, not by nationality. I can think of examples of less integrated Vietnamese communities in the UK and more integrated Pakistani communities, and vice versa. What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem.

[cabalamat]

> I can think of examples of less integrated Vietnamese communities in the UK and more integrated Pakistani communities, and vice versa. What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them.

It's not all obvious to me that:

(1) some Vietnamese and Pakistani communities in the UK faced more racism than other Vietnamese and Pakistani communities in other parts of the UK,

and (2) that was the cause of the different amounts of integration between those communities.

Do you have any data to back up this contention?

[inglor_cz]

Not the OP, just a comment.

My 1990s experience says that a lot of people are casually racist, sometimes viciously so, but, at the same time, they are perfectly willing to engage in mutual commerce and other activites with the outgroup, as long as they gain something from it. If this hypocritical kind of racism dominates, the outgroup has a chance to establish itself through education and trade.

The "Kauft nicht bei den Juden" or KKK-like kind of racism that really strives to isolate and possibly exterminate the outgroup even at a financial or practical cost to the dominant group is rarer and if it prevails, it leads to really bad consequences.

[TMWNN]

>My 1990s experience says that a lot of people are casually racist, sometimes viciously so, but, at the same time, they are perfectly willing to engage in mutual commerce and other activites with the outgroup, as long as they gain something from it. If this hypocritical kind of racism dominates, the outgroup has a chance to establish itself through education and trade.

I don't think this is hypocritical; just normal human behavior.

Newcomers are always the "other", and treated as such. Over time, as the "in group" discovers that if the "out group" displays behavior that makes for good customers and employees, and that there are financial benefits (increased sales, being able to hire new staff at a lower rate than otherwise) the "out group" becomes integrated with the "in group".

>The "Kauft nicht bei den Juden" or KKK-like kind of racism that really strives to isolate and possibly exterminate the outgroup even at a financial or practical cost to the dominant group is rarer and if it prevails, it leads to really bad consequences.

Yes, but thankfully such behavior is (very) rare. Anti-Semitism has existed in Europe for centuries but conditions had gradually improved everywhere. When fascism/authoritarianism became a thing in Europe in the first half of the 20th century, most regimes at worst maintained the existing casual anti-Semitism. Hitlerian genocidal anti-Semitism was very much an aberration, not seen in Hungary, pre-Anschluss Austria, Poland, or Italy. Mussolini's Italy had many Jewish supporters and leaders; it reluctantly implemented anti-Jewish racial laws just before the war began, after it became clear that Germany was now the more powerful Axis power.

More to the point, the integration can only occur when the "out group" behaves in ways that the "in group" accepts. In the US and Western Europe such integration happened or is happening with Jews, Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, Asians, South non-Muslim Asians, and Latinos. This has not happened with blacks and Muslims.

[selimthegrim]

What's your proof that Muslims in the US are resisting integration?

[TMWNN]

>What's your proof that Muslims in the US are resisting integration?

The San Bernardino, Orlando, and Boston Marathon attacks immediately comes to mind, among others. (I'm not sure what's worse about the San Bernardino attack, that a woman was involved or that her husband was American-born.)

But the US is still better off than Western Europe. In Britain, you have three groups from the Indian subcontinent:

* Indian Hindus

* Indian Sikhs

* Indian and Pakistani Muslims

Sikhs and Hindus have been very successful; they are more likely than the average to be part of the British middle class (<http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/dec/14/middle-britain-...>). Muslims are, by contrast, worse than average in every single social measure despite being, racially speaking, indistinguishable from the other two groups to any outsider (since none knows, or cares, about the myriad of caste differences); they are all "Asians" in Britain.

Beyond the obvious big French attacks (whether Nice truck, Bataclan, or Charlie Hebdo), the Islam-terrorism connection (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_terrorism>) is quite firm. According to a Muslim MP, twice as many British Muslims joined ISIS as the British armed forces (<https://www.newsweek.com/twice-many-british-muslims-fighting...>), despite the much lower pay and much greater difficulty of traveling to and enlisting.

The list of Islamic terrorist attacks (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_att...>) is so long that one's eyes and mind become numb after a while. One thrilling 12-day period in July 2016 had four Islamist attacks in Western Europe (Nice truck attack, Germany train attack, Germany suicide bombing, France priest attack)! 2017 saw the *third* London incident involving civilians attacked on a bridge!

And before you say "they're not real Muslims", as The Atlantic explained in detail (<http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isi...>), ISIS was and is ISIS because its members and leaders are sincere in their fundamentalist Islamic beliefs. They are telling the truth when they call themselves devout Muslims.

[selimthegrim]

While these are solid points, I'm not talking about Western Europe (and I'll note, that black Africans and African descent people do _better_ than Pakistanis on UK achievement tests). Why are you skipping over the fact that Muslims are middle class in the US? Why ignore Sikhs in Canada in the 80s (Air India bombing, etc) which Trudeau got in hot water over when visiting India.

[TMWNN]

>What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem.

I disagree. In Britain you have three groups from the Indian subcontinent:

* Indian Hindus

* Indian Sikhs

* Indian and Pakistani Muslims

Sikhs and Hindus have been very successful; they are more likely than the average to be part of the British middle class (<http://www.theguardian.com/money/2010/dec/14/middle-britain-...>). Muslims are, by contrast, worse than average in every single social measure despite being, racially speaking, indistinguishable from the other two groups to any outsider (since none knows, or cares, about the myriad of caste differences); they are all "Asians" in Britain.

Indian Sikhs and Hindus are willing to assimilate. Indian and Pakistani Muslims, far less so.

[inglor_cz]

"What can't be ignored is the level of racism groups are subjected to: it seems obvious to say that people will integrate better if they have people willing to integrate with them. I suspect this is far more often the problem."

It does not seem as obvious to me. This theory seems to have too many outliers.

At least here in Central Europe, racism/anti-semitism against visible minorities tended to be very strong. Historically, Jews were treated horribly, and in the more recent history, Vietnamese also. Growing up in the 1990s, there was a lot of shockingly casual racism against them.

Looking across the pond, Japanese-Americans were herded into concentration camps during WWII. The only worse level of racism is probably genocide.

In all these cases, the communities are now very well integrated, though the memories of really bad treatment aren't that distant.