Quote:
Originally Posted by SHiRO
There are a hundred Captain Americas on here, including obviously you. I didn't say anything about Europe, just amazed at ignorant people who don't know or deny American imperialistic history or the fact that immigration and multiculturalism existed before 1624 when New York was founded by the Dutch.
There are a dozen cities in the world that can make the same claims as New York regarding # of languages spoken and diversity and there are hundreds who can in a historical equivalent context.
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Perhaps I didn't give enough credit to all the great slave-importing empires of the past, but this is exactly what I referred to in my original post. Why is it so unpalatable to people from Europe to recognize the exceptionalism of the New York immigrant experience? Why are you so desperate to one-up a truly original and impressive thing? Are there really 12 cities with the diversity found in New York? Name them. Thats right, name each and every one of them. I suspect by the time you get to city number seven or eight, we'll all have a good laugh.
Let me be as clear as possible, what happened in the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries was a historical novelty. New York, Chicago, LA were all created through voluntary immigration from around the world in hitherto unseen scale and scope. Furthermore, the New York of the latter 20th century was the first real global society, with significant populations of people (not 100 malays shipped in from the colony) from every corner of the world (not 20% Irish and 40% Huguenot to make 60% immigrant). In fact, once people saw that it provided enormous benifit for cities like NYC and LA, it created a new paradigm that the rest of the world quickly copied. Don't believe me? Lets look at the relative ethnic populations of London and New York in 1980 and 2010. For this, New York deserves a special place in history.