Thread: Questions about the USA, Russia, other countries

Originally Posted by Romik

Hi, I'd like to ask Americans and those who were in there. It's quite a variegated country. There are a lot of different ethnicities there. How do they live, get along, intercourse? Your feelings of particular ones?

What mudrets said is accurate from my experience.. It's a hard question to answer, because of what he was mentioning - most people here really try to be fair and respect one another's freedoms.. Because of that, most people are uncomfortable thinking along the lines of ethnicity in culture, even though they are present in our society.. People will gladly discuss their own ethnicity and culture, and they will represent the good things about it.. and most of us are hesitant to discuss the bad parts of another person's ethnicity and culture, because nobody wants be offensive or to seem racist and so on.. That's not often said, but it's true about us.

That said, there are a lot of little pockets of culture.. Most places now, though, are similar to each other, a lot less divided between cultures, because of the new media and the internet.. Standing on a street in suburban LA, for instance, or on a street in suburban Las Vegas - I couldn't be sure where I was. There are subtle differences.. no one in Vegas exercises (or so it seemed when I visited) and everyone in LA seems to exercise.. In general, the West coast has a lot of foreign cars, the South has a lot of domestic cars, and in the East a lot of people don't own cars.. there are things like that. And there are accents, and dialects. Little details for each place.

Where I'm from, there's not too much culture. There is a lot of ethnicity lended to us from the Native Americans and the Latino peoples that live here. There's a little bit of a "cowboy" culture but mostly it's disrespected, and whether it's because it's become passe, or because white folk here are a bit embarassed about the actions of their ancestors (land-stealing, genocide, corruption, it's all there) I can't say for sure.

If you want to know more, I would suggest looking at New York City first. Foreigners are fond of saying "NYC is its own country" and they're not far off - there you'll find a bit of almost every culture our country has, and you'll also have a good idea of what the whole country is like.

That's all I can think of to say for now. But if you have more specific questions I'll be happy to try and answer.

Culture of New York City - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (in english, sorry, i couldn't find these in russian!)
Culture of Chicago - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Los Angeles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Miami - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Culture of New Orleans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by kidkboom

What mudrets said is accurate from my experience.. It's a hard question to answer, because of what he was mentioning - most people here really try to be fair and respect one another's freedoms.. Because of that, most people are uncomfortable thinking along the lines of ethnicity in culture, even though they are present in our society.. People will gladly discuss their own ethnicity and culture, and they will represent the good things about it.. and most of us are hesitant to discuss the bad parts of another person's ethnicity and culture, because nobody wants be offensive or to seem racist and so on.. That's not often said, but it's true about us.

That said, there are a lot of little pockets of culture.. Most places now, though, are similar to each other, a lot less divided between cultures, because of the new media and the internet.. Standing on a street in suburban LA, for instance, or on a street in suburban Las Vegas - I couldn't be sure where I was. There are subtle differences.. no one in Vegas exercises (or so it seemed when I visited) and everyone in LA seems to exercise.. In general, the West coast has a lot of foreign cars, the South has a lot of domestic cars, and in the East a lot of people don't own cars.. there are things like that. And there are accents, and dialects. Little details for each place.

Where I'm from, there's not too much culture. There is a lot of ethnicity lended to us from the Native Americans and the Latino peoples that live here. There's a little bit of a "cowboy" culture but mostly it's disrespected, and whether it's because it's become passe, or because white folk here are a bit embarassed about the actions of their ancestors (land-stealing, genocide, corruption, it's all there) I can't say for sure.

If you want to know more, I would suggest looking at New York City first. Foreigners are fond of saying "NYC is its own country" and they're not far off - there you'll find a bit of almost every culture our country has, and you'll also have a good idea of what the whole country is like.

That's all I can think of to say for now. But if you have more specific questions I'll be happy to try and answer.

Culture of New York City - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (in english, sorry, i couldn't find these in russian!)
Culture of Chicago - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Los Angeles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Miami - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Culture of New Orleans - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In the northeast (New Jersey) where I live most people have cars. It's in the big cities that have public transportation is generally where people can live without a car.

Scott