Quote:
Originally Posted by emathias
When will people stop believing that the U.S. is completely homogeneous?
Sure, we have one currency, one federal system, and mostly the same language, but I think in many ways California and, say, Alabama, are more different than France and Spain or even France and Sweden.
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I don't know anybody who thinks the U.S. is homogenous.
With a nation as geographically expansive as the U.S., there are going to be regionalisms which lead to differences between Alabama and California. A place like Denmark is too small for this, but it isn't like this doesn't occur in other European nations. Scotland and England could easily be two countries. Bavaria is very distinct from Hamburg and Berlin. And what about Walloon and Flanders? Or Paris and the South?
The point is there is still a unifying "American" culture, regardless of if you're in suburban Montgomery or on Sunset in L.A. Germany has a unifying culture that is distinct from Poland, though.
Also, lumping Europe, a vast swath of very distinct official nations (not subnational entities), together like the article does and you appear to have no problem with is doing the same thing as your claim of it seeming to make the U.S. "homogenous." Homogenous isn't the term I'd use though. Maybe a single, unified, national identity and culture (with subcultures within?). Europe isn't one country and has much more distinctions and variations than the U.S. (which has a lot of that in it's own right). I'd say Belarus is a lot more different from France than Alabama is from Cali.