[speeder]

Depends on the country and how much the population is mixed.

Yes, it may sound evil or anti-immigrant, but it does not matter where, if the location has people of uniform ethnic identity, they tend to treat everyone around them as distant cousins (and there are biological reasons for that) and some negative actions people don't feel like doing it.

In places with lots of random ethinic identities mixed, leaving your baby outside is BAAAAAAD idea.

[PavlovsCat]

Nordic countries are just as diverse as the US.

[speeder]

I do not mean specifically the US.

And Sweden is NOT diverse as US, Sweden has as the "biggest minority" the Finnish (that are not that different from Swedes), any other population is very small except on some specific cities.

US has a great population of people from several backgrounds.

Also the same is in my country (Brazil).

Here, I see people being much more lax with their security when everyone near them are of the same ethnic background, be it white, black, native american, whatever.

It is just that everyone is born to not trust strangers, foreigners, etc... And "race" is a very quick way to assess that.

Not that I think we should go hating each other or anything like that, but it is how it works, and it is very visible, the more mixed a place is, the less people trust each other, with some specific exceptions (ie: places that are truly cosmopolitan like Universities or some workplace cities).

[guylhem]

As shocking as it may sound, I noticed the same thing in the caribbean where population is very mixed. It's not about racism - it's more as if a shared group identity encouraged cooperative behaviour.

Even weirder - there seems to be a trigger effect : until the non visible minority reaches 5% the cooperative behaviour keeps working.

Funny thing - it seems to works even if you account your own ethnicity - i.e. when you are in the <5% you will get more cooperation by people with a different ethnicity than you !!

Cross the 5% mark and it won't work as well - apparently even with people of the same ethnicity as you. Weird.

Some may call that parochialism. I find that interesting.

I've been quite puzzled by this (it contradicts all the mainstream thoughts about diversity) and I would love to know more about such issues (scientific research - can anyone with a sociology background give more details about that?)

[vinkelhake]

The Finnish minority is followed closely by immigrants from former Yugoslavia (166k vs 155k). Sweden has accepted a large number of refugees from Iraq & Iran, together they outnumber the Fins.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Sweden

[PavlovsCat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model

Here. Why shouldn't something like education, and generally doing a great job at not being completely depraved by consumerism, lead to less stupidity, and therefore also less stupidity in the form of racism? Why assume instead they're just as racist, but it's just they're all the same, so they trust each other? You can't just latch on to the first random thing that comes to mind, to me there is zero indication that any of this has to do with racial diversity, and pointing out differences in said diversity, even if I accepted them, would still be a non-sequitur, correlation ain't causation.

Maybe these people have simply realized there isn't any point whatsover in stealing random babies, which is not rocket surgery. Kidnapping? Sure. But stealing babies because you care less about people because they have a different skin colour? WTF. That's such a brainfart if you ask me.

[nacker]

Heck, in Brazil your baby isn't safe even if you are keeping it in your womb !

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mother-reunited-with-ba...

[mrgoldenbrown]

Do you have some stats to back that up? What is the non white population in Norway? The cia worldbook seems to say it is over 94%: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

[PavlovsCat]

It's called World Factbook, not worldbook, "white vs. non-white" has nothing do with it as far as I'm concerned (skin color is related to sunlight, not culture), and last, but surely not least.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_State...

"nearly 15% of Americans were foreign-born in 1910, while in 1999, only about 10% were foreign-born."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Sweden

As of 2010 however, 1.33 million people or 14.3% of the inhabitants in Sweden were foreign-born. Of these, 859,000 (9.2%) were born outside the European Union and 477,000 (5.1%) were born in another EU member state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Norway

At the beginning of 1992, immigrants and Norwegian-born to immigrant parents totalled 183,000 persons, or 4.3 per cent of Norway’s population. Twenty years later, at the beginning of 2012, these groups had risen to 655,000 persons or 13.1 per cent of the population.

So, my bad; at least these two nordic countries are even MORE diverse than the US. Which is hilarious because I was totally gambling with my initial post, thanks for making me look for confirmation. Of course you might say the real problem is that many US-born citizens have dark skin, while many immigrants to nordic countries have white skin, but that's the point where I leave the discussion.

At any rate, there are differences between the US and those countries, but immigration does not seem to be especially prominent. So no, that can't be it.

[BashiBazouk]

20 years? Try going back 400. 99.1% of the US population are descended from immigrants. Ignoring genetic differences and only going with cultural, you are really talking about how quickly immigrant groups homogenize to a standard culture of the country (or region when talking about America). The answer is it varies. A lot. Take any major Scandinavian city. How big and old is the china town? Japan town? Little Italy? German town? Irish population? Puerto Rician population? All the many flavors of Hispanic populations? Asian populations? Slavic populations? African populations? Many American cities have long standing examples of most of these. China town in San Francisco, for example, started shortly after the gold rush. There are many Chinese there who are multi-generational Americans but have not homogenized to the standard culture (if such a thing exists in SF). I have known families in the central coast just south of the silicon valley who can trace their Spanish descendents to pre-gold rush and even have some Ohlone descendents in their past, the people who originally inhabited this part of California. They are very Hispanic culturally.

I read an article a while ago about problems teaching immigrant kids English in the Alum Rock school district. This is just a single school district out of many in San Jose. If you are unfamiliar with San Jose, think south Silicon Valley. They typically have to deal with students who speak 40 different languages. Now that is diversity. Anything similar in Scandinavia?

As I have never been to the Nordic countries, I think it's possible but highly unlikely they are anywhere close to the diversity of the US. I would need to see a lot more than 20 years of immigration statistics to believe it though...

[youngerdryas]

>"white vs. non-white" has nothing do with it

Yes they have an amazing diversity of Nordic people.

[PavlovsCat]

That has nothing to do with anything I said, try to respond in context. However, they have an amazing diversity of people in Nordic countries, and there is also amazing diversity among "whites", as well as similarites to "non-whites".

[youngerdryas]

>amazing diversity among "whites", as well as similarites to "non-whites".

I'm not sure why you persist with this laughable line of argument. I have yet to visit Sweden but I hope to eventually as I have free lodging with family friends. I am quite sure they would get a good chuckle from your assertions.

[speeder]

Cia Factbook on norway:

Norwegians + Sami 94.4%

Other europeans: 3.6%

Sweden according to wikipedia (and CIA factbook) has most of the population being Swede + Sami

Cia factbook on United States:

79.96% are white, but this include some hispanics.

Brazil the most recent census (I will find the link to IBGE site later) is about 45% of the population being white. almost 50% being mixed race (usually between black and white) 5% black (and some below 1% minorities).

[bjornsing]

As irrefutable proof I give you Fox News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2qTdFX6thg&t=0m13s. ;)

I live in Malmö and IMHO FN didn't quite live up to it's "fair and balanced" motto here. :)

On a more serious note I'd say the nordic countries are much more homogeneous than the US, ethnically and politically.

[dalke]

Politically? I moved to Göteborg a few years back. The day after I arrived was May Day. The Socialists, Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, Social Democrats, Leftists, and Red Front political parties each had their own march. Then of course the Christian Democrats, the Moderates, Center Party, and the Green Party are 5 of the 8 parties with representation in Parliament. (The Pirate Party has 2 people representing Sweden in the European Parliament.)

In the US there's the two major parties, and Bernie Sanders as the only self-described socialist in Congress. In non-national offices there is a handful of Greens and Libertarians. When was the last time you saw people who were self-described as something other than Republican, Democrat, or independent as a regular commentator on a political discussion show in the US?

That seems like a lack of political diversity in the US, compared to Sweden.

[ptaipale]

parties each had their own march

Sure, but they were all Protestant Social Democrats, nevertheless. I mean, they may call themselves Marxists or Sweden Democrats or Red Front or whatever, but still they'll fundamentally believe in a society where everything's lagom.

But of course there's been political diversity in the Nordics; however e.g. the likes of Arvo Kustaa Halberg were a bit too politically diverse to live in Finland so moved to the U.S.

[dalke]

All Protestant Social Democrats? Here I thought only the Social Democrats were Social Democrats. I think you mean 'social democrats', meaning the belief and not membership in the party named 'Social Democrats.'

To think that the Christian Democrats, which were founded out of the movement against removing religious education from elementary schools and is most strong with the evangelical Christians, has the same idea of "lagom" as the Left Party is like saying that the US parties are the same because they all support a free market.

All Protestant? Given the number of atheists in Sweden, that's also unlikely.

I looked up a bit about Arvo Kustaa Halberg. As far as I can tell, he never lived in Finland or any of the Nordic countries. "Hall was born Arvo Kustaa Halberg in 1910 to Matt (Matti) and Susan (Susanna) Halberg in Cherry, a rural community on Northern Minnesota's Mesabi Iron Range" says Wikipedia.

I see no evidence that he moved from Finland to the US, much less that the move was based on a lack of diversity, so I fail to understand your point.

[greenert]

I did a very basic search for racial demographics of Sweden, the US and Brazil (since someone else mentioned it), then calculated the Shannon diversity index (lower essentially meaning less diversity) and the Pielou evenness (a number between 0 and 1 - higher means less size variation among groups). I didn't find great numbers to work with in the few minutes that I looked. I used these:

US: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...

Brazil: http://www.indexmundi.com/brazil/demographics_profile.html

Sweden: http://www.populstat.info/Europe/swedeng.htm

And got:

US:

With Hispanic/non-hispanic breakdown

Shannon: 1.258355 Pielou: 0.5064

Without breakdown

Shannon: 0.9705 Pielou: 0.4987

Sweden:

Shannon: 0.4498 Pielou: 0.2795

Brazil:

Shannon: 0.9509 Pielou: 0.5908

So in terms of diversity, US >= Brazil > Sweden.

[abraininavat]

Do you have any evidence or other basis for this belief? Or is it just a hunch that you share as if it was fact?

[barry-cotter]

Robert Putnam's research confirms that ethnic diversity reduces trust levels and civic engagement, even when the ethnic diversity is as risible as Norwegian vs Swedish Americans in, say, Minnesota. If I recall correctly he's a Harvard faculty member in either sociology or political science. He wrote Boewling Alone and he sat on those results for like, three years because his political preferences are typical for his position. The explanation the grandparent offered may be wrong but the phenomenom is real.