Ethnic/religious groups very conservative in one city but very liberal in another?

[Capsicum]

It seems like when people talk about whether ethnic/religious groups are more left or right wing, it's spoken as if it is consistent across cities (eg. Black Americans are more Democrat in almost all cities etc., Orthodox Jews are more conservative than secular Jews in almost all cities). But are there cases where in one city, one ethnic group is heavily left but in another city, that "same" ethnic group is heavily right wing? It's the case probably mostly for "assimilated" Americans (not immigrant or recent family immigrant roots) that long-standing white Americans are "driving" the political differences. But it is true for other groups?

Like say Vietnamese Americans in LA being very Democratic but the same Vietnamese in Houston being very Republican.

What's the largest contrast where one group is extremely polarized on political lines depending on which city they reside in?

Also, from my older thread about places where minorities could be more conservative than whites, I questioned if Canadian cities are more left than American ones, it is mostly just white Canadians driving the trend or if minorities and ethnic groups in Canadian cities are also more left than their US counterparts.

Originally Posted by Capsicum

An interesting comparison would be to look at whether the equivalent racial/ethnic/religious groups in the US or Canada are more conservative or liberal.

My impression --

White Canadians -- more liberal than their US counterparts, for sure.

Black Canadians -- probably more liberal than their US counterparts, considering there isn't the equivalent of as many rural, small town Black Canadians relative to Black Americans.

Asian Canadians -- Maybe Chinese Canadians are more conservative than their US counterparts, since so many vote conservative but fewer Chinese Americans are Republicans. But South Asian Canadians are probably more a bit more left wing (eg. lots of NDP supporters).

Jewish Canadians -- probably similar to Jewish Americans, there are both conservatives and liberals in either case, and both sides of the spectrum are well-represented, so I'm not sure if they average out.

Muslim Canadians -- maybe the Muslim Americans are bit more liberal (those in Michigan supported Bernie Sanders)?

Latin American Canadians -- no idea, there are far fewer in number compared to in the US and there's not really a large bloc with a consistent voting pattern discernable.

[Crawford]

Jewish NYC is trending different politically than Jewish USA, because NYC-area Jews (especially those in Brooklyn, Queens and certain suburban enclaves) are much more observant than those nationally.

What's happening locally is not unlike what has happened in Israel over the last generation. Of course the difference is that Jews in U.S. are a minority, even in the NYC area, and one can always disappear into a pluralistic society.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Like say Vietnamese Americans in LA being very Democratic but the same Vietnamese in Houston being very Republican.

I've never heard this about Houston, but it's definitely true about New Orleans.

A lot of the variance in Vietnamese communities in the U.S. comes down to whether they are Catholic or not, with the Catholic Vietnamese neighborhoods being much, much more conservative.

I think there are similar splits in the Korean community, depending upon if the Koreans are more secular or evangelical (although second-generation Korean Americans don't tend to be that religious regardless).

Elsewhere, Hudson County, New Jersey (particularly Union City and West New York) has a relatively large Cuban community (which predates Castro). It's hard to tell, because the Cuban population is only around 1/5th of the area, but I have heard that New Jersey Cubans are pretty strongly Democratic.

Native Americans in Oklahoma are much, much more conservative than elsewhere. That said, it's not like they are all one ethnic group, and a lot of the enrolled members of say the Cherokee are only 1/8th or 1/16th and for all intents and purposes are white.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Like say Vietnamese Americans in LA being very Democratic but the same Vietnamese in Houston being very Republican.

I don't know about the Vietnamese-Americans in LA/LA County being Democratic, but I know that the large Vietnamese community in Orange County (specifically the city of Westminster) are actually conservative/Republican.

Years ago there were protests in Westminster over a Vietnamese video store proprietor who chose to display the Vietnamese flag---the current one, not the one of the former South Vietnam. When you do go to Westminster, you see a lot of South Vietnamese flags displayed during various occasions. Anyway, the video store owner insisted on displaying the current Vietnamese flag, and there was even violence directed at him and death threats. I assume because of the whole right wing/left wing thing, the Vietnamese who settled in Orange County tend to be Republican because they are anti-Communist. Kind of like the Cubans in Miami, I guess.

Incidentally, in Los Angeles' Little Tehran, many fly the flag from the Shah era, not the current Iranian flag.

Originally Posted by eschaton

A lot of the variance in Vietnamese communities in the U.S. comes down to whether they are Catholic or not, with the Catholic Vietnamese neighborhoods being much, much more conservative.

I don't know if Catholicism necessarily has anything to do with this. Many Vietnamese in Orange County are Mahayana Buddhist yet tend to vote Republican. Might also have to do with the Republican "culture"/tendencies that Orange County has, too.

As an aside, Catholics in the US, at least in years past, have generally been on the more liberal side and have gotten involved in issues of social justice, I assume because historically, Catholics have been a discriminated-against minority in Protestant-majority US.

[Docere]

I don't know if Chinese Americans are "more liberal" than Chinese Canadians because they overwhelmingly vote Democrat but more likely it reflects a different context.

I think a less xenophobic or "red state Christian" GOP would appeal to Chinese and Indian American voters in larger numbers.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

I don't know if Chinese Americans are "more liberal" than Chinese Canadians because they overwhelmingly vote Democrat but more likely it reflects a different context.

I think a less xenophobic or "red state Christian" GOP would appeal to Chinese and Indian American voters in larger numbers.

Well, I'm thinking of something like this. I can't think of many places where Chinese Americans would drape themselves in the US flag (like these Chinese residents of Markham are doing with the Canadian flag) and tell the refugees to "go home" and telling the government to "put Canadians first".


https://www.yorkregion.com/news-stor...der-crossers-/

In the US, Chinese and other Asian-Americans would probably more likely think of themselves as "one of the immigrants" who show solidarity to the other immigrants, rather than the "locals" opposing the immigrants.

Also, in Canada, you see things like Chinese and Pakistani immigrants uniting with white conservative Christians against (back in the 2000s) same sex marriage, and now more close to the present day, legalizing weed, and sex-ed. I can't imagine say, a conservative Muslim Michigander, Chinese Californian, Orthodox Jewish New Yorker and white Baptist southerner in say Alabama, all uniting on the whole "we're all social conservatives here" tack.

[Docere]

Toronto has the most "diverse" far right in North America.

[Docere]

My hypothesis is that Canadian-born conservative Christians and anti-immigrant recognize they are too small a group not to have to find allies.

In the US there are enough white evangelicals and hyper nationalists and natives in the so-called red states that they don't.

Another possibility is there isn't really an "Asian umbrella" in Canada to the degree there is in the US.

[sopas ej]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Well, I'm thinking of something like this. I can't think of many places where Chinese Americans would drape themselves in the US flag (like these Chinese residents of Markham are doing with the Canadian flag) and tell the refugees to "go home" and telling the government to "put Canadians first".


https://www.yorkregion.com/news-stor...der-crossers-/

In the US, Chinese and other Asian-Americans would probably more likely think of themselves as "one of the immigrants" who show solidarity to the other immigrants, rather than the "locals" opposing the immigrants.

Also, in Canada, you see things like Chinese and Pakistani immigrants uniting with white conservative Christians against (back in the 2000s) same sex marriage, and now more close to the present day, legalizing weed, and sex-ed. I can't imagine say, a conservative Muslim Michigander, Chinese Californian, Orthodox Jewish New Yorker and white Baptist southerner in say Alabama, all uniting on the whole "we're all social conservatives here" tack.

All of this being said from a Canadian is very interesting to me...

Many years ago, around 2000-2003, I used to participate in another online message board where Canadians and Americans (myself sometimes included) would get into these really long arguments (flame wars... haha, remember that term?) about the differences between the US and Canada, etc. etc.

Anyway, many of the Canadians would talk about how Canada is "multi-cultural" as opposed to the "US' melting pot model"; according to a lot of Canadians who posted on the board, Canada is more of a tossed salad vs. the US being a place where everyone sort of assimilates into one American culture. A lot of Canadians would make it out (or try to make it out) that people in Canada basically keep their own culture whereas in the US, people are somehow forced to assimilate. And of course I would argue that that isn't the case, at least not in the big cities, and definitely not in Los Angeles. I basically told some Canadians that Canada seems to have an "official" stance of being multi-cultural, whereas the US is pretty much de facto multicultural.

So, Capsicum, I think it's interesting that it seems that you're saying that many American ethnic groups *don't* assimilate into the larger culture but somehow certain Canadian ethnic groups assimilate into conservative Canadian culture.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Anyway, many of the Canadians would talk about how Canada is "multi-cultural" as opposed to the "US' melting pot model"; according to a lot of Canadians who posted on the board, Canada is more of a tossed salad vs. the US being a place where everyone sort of assimilates into one American culture. A lot of Canadians would make it out (or try to make it out) that people in Canada basically keep their own culture whereas in the US, people are somehow forced to assimilate. And of course I would argue that that isn't the case, at least not in the big cities, and definitely not in Los Angeles. I basically told some Canadians that Canada seems to have an "official" stance of being multi-cultural, whereas the US is pretty much de facto multicultural.

So, Capsicum, I think it's interesting that it seems that you're saying that many American ethnic groups *don't* assimilate into the larger culture but somehow certain Canadian ethnic groups assimilate into conservative Canadian culture.

The multiculturalism vs melting pot thing is very much overblown and doesn't have much of a discernible difference on the ground. That said, the existence of Conservative-voting immigrants in Canada wouldn't really contradict that even if it weren't. These aren't immigrants assimilating into conservative Canadian culture anymore than immigrants Stateside might assimilate into Democrat American culture - they're coming from places that are already conservative in their own way, and are simply transposing those politics into their Canadian equivalent.

Whether they're going to Canada or the US, immigrants from a given place aren't going to be too politically divergent. But given the binary, polarized political landscape of the US - and the fact that the right-wing party is often outright racist - immigrants and ethnic minorities be tend to become Democrats by default. In Canada, it's just a bit easier for right-leaning immigrants to vote along ideological lines than ethnic ones.

[Docere]

NYC and California are more mosaic than melting pot.

[big W]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Muslim Canadians -- maybe the Muslim Americans are bit more liberal (those in Michigan supported Bernie Sanders)?

I know you indicated this this may show that they are more conservative vs liberal for this group. However I take issue with being Bernie Supporters for example as being Liberal vs Conservative as the political spectrum in Canada is different than the US and therefore cannot be taken to be the same.

Issues like health care, subsidized post secondary tuition, fair trade etc while may appear to be very liberal in the United States are non issues here in Canada as they are the accepted norm.
Gay marriage for example has been in place for almost 20 years in Canada with the most conservative PM in recent memory Steven Harper, being in power for over 10 years in that time frame, made no attempt to reverse it.
Single Payer Health came to Canada in the 1960's and no attempt has been made by all political parties at all levels have tried to scrap it.
Higher income taxation levels to pay for social services etc AKA wealth redistribution is accepted.
Immigration is at much higher levels than in the United States, however they are more likely to be accepted based on merit (points system) than family reunification. In Canada no political parties mention stopping immigration from any region of the world but how many more immigrants we take in.

The issue of illegals in Canada vs the US is one where a Canadian would be very much a conservative in the United States as they each get a hearing for asylum and depending on the outcome can stay or get deported (economic migrants are gone). No political party in Canada would accept granting illegals citizenship. On this issue a liberal in Canada would be considered a conservative in the US.

Therefore what constitutes a conservative in a Canadian context could very well be a Bernie supporter and left wing in the United States when looking at it based on these issues. Just something to keep in mind when we make cross border comparisons.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by Docere

Toronto has the most "diverse" far right in North America.

There are individual far right politicians (eg. Bobby Jindal, Nikki Haley) and famous political commentators (eg. Dinesh D'Souza, Michelle Malkin) who are visible minority and this can even be seen outside North America (eg. the Czech half-Japanese descent far right politician that was very anti-immigrant), but interestingly enough there aren't any that I can think of in Canada (what's the most right-wing visible minority Canadian politician or major cultural figure of the right? Canada's got lots of South Asians but no version of Jindal or D'Souza) yet ironically in terms of support base from the populace it's got the most "diverse" far right as you put it than most other western countries, more than those other places that do have non-white far right politicians.

Originally Posted by Docere

In the US there are enough white evangelicals and hyper nationalists and natives in the so-called red states that they don't.

Regarding hyper-nationalists and nativists, and the diversity of the "far right" theoretically, you could have say a movement of African-American nativists saying "American first" and being opposed to later-arriving minorities (be they Hispanic, Asian, or newer African arrivals) but how often do you see that happen? African Americans were even less pro-Trump than Hispanics and Asians I think, even though, the "birther" thing aside, nativism is targeted way more at the latter (most African Americans are native born but still, many seem to have sympathy with non-native born minorities who are targets of racial animus).

I don't even know if you can call those Chinese Markham residents claiming to "defend" their town from refugees nativists since a lot of them sound like they didn't grow up there to begin with. If native born multi-generational American minorities like African Americans don't really often express anti-refugee sentiment, how is it that these Chinese Markham residents, who might be targets of nativism literally not even a generation ago, already start acting like nativists towards "their town" (oh, I guess Markham's big enough to be a city now, not just a town) so quickly.

Those Chinese in Markham holding the banners telling refugees to go home are more like Italian or Irish Americans who argue "we were the good immigrants who assimilated, came legally etc." when discussing illegal immigrants, but would the Chinese in California, in NYC act that way towards say the central American refugees?

Originally Posted by Docere

Another possibility is there isn't really an "Asian umbrella" in Canada to the degree there is in the US.

A while back you had brought it up in the thread on whites leaving Asian ethnoburbs, and most people had really strong feelings about it for some reason and argued that pan-Asian identity did not exist at all in the US. I (and at least another Canadian poster I think) did bring up that as Canadians, by comparison we noticed young student/activist Asian Americans being a bit more unified than their Canadian counterparts, on university campuses, so some "pan-Asian-ness" even if very weak is present stateside etc.

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

The multiculturalism vs melting pot thing is very much overblown and doesn't have much of a discernible difference on the ground. That said, the existence of Conservative-voting immigrants in Canada wouldn't really contradict that even if it weren't. These aren't immigrants assimilating into conservative Canadian culture anymore than immigrants Stateside might assimilate into Democrat American culture - they're coming from places that are already conservative in their own way, and are simply transposing those politics into their Canadian equivalent.

Whether they're going to Canada or the US, immigrants from a given place aren't going to be too politically divergent. But given the binary, polarized political landscape of the US - and the fact that the right-wing party is often outright racist - immigrants and ethnic minorities be tend to become Democrats by default. In Canada, it's just a bit easier for right-leaning immigrants to vote along ideological lines than ethnic ones.

But the fact that immigrants to Canada vote along ideological lines vs. those to the US voting along ethnic ones is kind of some sort of "assimilation" you could argue in both cases, because they're assimilating into the political culture of their new home.

In the US, the new immigrants "assimilate" to the idea of the "ethnic bloc" or voting along ethnic lines because they pick up the ideas about identity politics from the locals. They might not have had to think too much about identity politics in their homelands where they might have been the demographic majorities. In Canada, they might pick up on other cues. But there's still some "learning" from the locals as to what the political talking points are.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Capsicum

Black Americans are more Democrat in almost all cities

The ones who register and vote may all be Democrats (well, not all since the only African-American currently in the US Senate is a Republican as was the first African-American ever in the US Senate) but they vary a lot on the conservative/liberal spectrum, especially in terms of social values. Black voters were generally held responsible for banning same-sex marriage by ballot initiative in California (the ban did not pass exclusive of black votes) and the current Mayor of San Franciso is an African-American woman who, although a Democrat like just about every serious politician in the city, was the most conservative candidate in the race.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by Docere

NYC and California are more mosaic than melting pot.

I see. So is that why I hear very white teens chatting in colloquial Spanish with their Latino friends at bus stops? Or why one of the most in-demand language courses in San Francisco for white pre-schoolers and primary schoolers is Chinese?

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

All of this being said from a Canadian is very interesting to me...

Many years ago, around 2000-2003, I used to participate in another online message board where Canadians and Americans (myself sometimes included) would get into these really long arguments (flame wars... haha, remember that term?) about the differences between the US and Canada, etc. etc.

Anyway, many of the Canadians would talk about how Canada is "multi-cultural" as opposed to the "US' melting pot model"; according to a lot of Canadians who posted on the board, Canada is more of a tossed salad vs. the US being a place where everyone sort of assimilates into one American culture. A lot of Canadians would make it out (or try to make it out) that people in Canada basically keep their own culture whereas in the US, people are somehow forced to assimilate. And of course I would argue that that isn't the case, at least not in the big cities, and definitely not in Los Angeles. I basically told some Canadians that Canada seems to have an "official" stance of being multi-cultural, whereas the US is pretty much de facto multicultural.

So, Capsicum, I think it's interesting that it seems that you're saying that many American ethnic groups *don't* assimilate into the larger culture but somehow certain Canadian ethnic groups assimilate into conservative Canadian culture.

Originally Posted by Docere

NYC and California are more mosaic than melting pot.

One explanation as to why Canada appears to be less assimilationist superficially might just be that Toronto and Vancouver make up more of Canada's population than NYC and California make up of the US. Even though Canada's stereotypical image is sparse, small town, and wilderness-filled, the cities make up a larger % of the nation. The GTA's like a fifth of Canada's population. California might be larger in population than Canada itself but it's only got 12% of the American populace. There seems to be less of an equivalent of "Middle America" making up a large part of Canada, and the most assimilationist parts of Canada (eg. Quebec, perhaps the Maritimes) ironically are so culturally distinctive that any immigrant assimilating into them would assimilate to a distinctive regional culture and not any "small town Canadiana" the way people argue for there being a heartland or "middle America" where immigrants learn to love folksy Americana. So there's that. If native-born Canadians can't agree what's their version of "middle America", how can you expect immigrants?

That said, you can still get a very large contrast in the assimilationist vs. multicultural feel only a short distance away from one another in Canada -- in the diverse GTA for instance filled with ethnoburbs, not that long a drive away, you get small town Ontario where you get people who may not have met or grown up with black, Arab, Asian people or whose first exposure to them were going into the GTA say as an adult.

[Capsicum]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

Many years ago, around 2000-2003, I used to participate in another online message board where Canadians and Americans (myself sometimes included) would get into these really long arguments (flame wars... haha, remember that term?) about the differences between the US and Canada, etc. etc.

Those were the Bush years and the more left wing Canadians seemed kind of eager to build an image to contrast with their southern neighbor, so I can imagine why some of those discussions went the way they did.

[kool maudit]

Most Middle Eastern and North African diaspora communities in Europe vote centre-left despite a broad lack of sympathy, to put it mildly, for the social innovations favoured by these parties.

[Centropolis]

the heavily orthodox community that i live in i feel is fairly conservative (although conservative in ways that don't reflect within the standard american political context), even though the university-suburb i live in is fairly left leaning. the adjacent business-oriented municipality leans far more towards reform judaism, who seem to be much more standard liberal.

another way to confuse this is one is bernie territory and one is hardcore hillary territory, which is a funny geographical split i've seen over and over in american regions.

edit: i didn't read the op comment but this thing with orthodox vs reform seems to have been covered already.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

The ones who register and vote may all be Democrats (well, not all since the only African-American currently in the US Senate is a Republican as was the first African-American ever in the US Senate) but they vary a lot on the conservative/liberal spectrum, especially in terms of social values. Black voters were generally held responsible for banning same-sex marriage by ballot initiative in California (the ban did not pass exclusive of black votes) and the current Mayor of San Franciso is an African-American woman who, although a Democrat like just about every serious politician in the city, was the most conservative candidate in the race.

The "black Americans are really social conservatives" meme is way overblown. Even if you put aside economic issues entirely, black Americans tend to have left-of-center to far-left views on criminal justice, gun control, foreign policy, climate change, immigration, abortion, etc. Same-sex marriage is really the only social issue where the median black voter is still to the right of the median white voter.