Is the US as tolerant as the UK ?

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Speaking as a British person and not an American, I've sometimes if America is as tolerant as the UK, as we appear welcome those fleeing from persecution in other countries and giving them a better way of life here and they have the right to say and do things here without fear of a knock at the door at night. In the UK we tolerate other peoples' cultures, tolerate different religions and tolerate those who define themselves as a man, a woman or neither. I'm hoping that in America they do this too. I know its unlawful to discriminate against those applying for a job just because of the colour of their skin, their sex, their age, their health status, disability etc. I'm obviously aware of the fact that both Britain and America are not perfect and both have had racism and intolerance and so on in their histories and it sadly still goes on in someway even now today in the early 21st Century.

I seem to think unlike in the past, Britain seems to be the place to go for the oppressed whereas in the past America was the place to go for those facing persecution and injustice in their own countries especially during the early 20th Century. But then even those people ended up facing injustice and racism in the countries they fled to. I seem to think it happens more in America than it did and probably still does in the UK, even though there have some cases of which it has happened here too. I keep hearing stories of about racism still in the UK police force, in sports (football) etc so that clearly shows it still happens but only in a tiny minority of cases.

Nothing I have seen in the news media has given me any reason to believe that the UK is more tolerant than the US towards anything other than alcohol consumption.

OTOH there's Mexico which is probably way more tolerant than either English speaking country, here is one example of what I mean:

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/latamcaribbean/2018/04/25/religion-the-state-and-the-states-explain-why-mexico-has-stronger-lgbt-rights-than-the-us/

Unfortunately Mexico has very little attraction for economic migrants if that's what you're looking for.

We're more intolerant.

Canada and Mexico are more tolerant than we are. Cuba has improved since Miguel Diaz-Canal took over, but they're still authoritarian.

Costa Rica is another tolerant place, maybe Panama.

The Caribbean is kinda iffy, especially when it comes to LGBT rights.

Honestly, it probably depends on what issue you're looking at and which part of the US. The US is massive and the level of tolerance for various things varies substantially depending on where you live.

There's no way the UK is more tolerant than the US. As for Canada, people there like to claim they're more tolerant without any need to show why. There does seem to be a high degree of wokeness in some of their institutions. A relative of mine who lives near Ottawa complained on IG that his kids (grade 9) were asked, as part of the curriculum, if they're gay or straight and if they expect to marry a member of the same sex. Nevertheless I don't know whether this makes Canada a more tolerant society. I think the average person there is similar to Americans in that regard.

Yes I think the question is hard to answer because it depends on who you are, where in the country you are, and what you're hoping to do.

This analysis puts the USA in 21st place and the UK in 10th, but it takes social and environmental progress into the calculation, so it's not trying to assess "pure" tolerance:
https://www.insider.com/the-worlds-most ... ies-2017-1

There is, first of all, a need to acknowledge that both countries have large populations, especially the US. Any "national character" is going to hide a lot of variance.

In 2015, the UK had about twice as many refugees per capita as the US. The UK also has slightly higher net migration and more immigrants per capita. I was actually completely prepared to say that the US was more tolerant on these measures than the UK, but I'm not sure that is true.

Of course, we should also look at policies. The UK recently left the European Union for reasons nobody can quite agree on but it definitely wasn't immigration honest (joke). The UK has had the Conservative government repeatedly state their desire to cut migration. In the Cameron/May days it was all about "tens of thousands". These days it's more about stopping refugees. The Rwanda plan is horrific. Deporting refugees without considering their case is horrific. And yes, the US has immigration detention centres... but so does the UK, and now they also contain children (the Tories have undone the Coalition policy ending that practice).

On LGBT+ issues, yes the US has all these horrific policies coming out of red and purple states, but it also has states which are way ahead of the UK, in the Northeast and on the West Coast.

On race, the US is very "good" at being racist towards black people, but the UK also had Windrush, and ask Marcus Rashford about racism. The US is a better place to be Jewish or Romani. I don't know about Islamophobia.

I think British people, when comparing us to the US, have a tendency to ignore the good things about the US and ignore the bad things about the UK. Of course that's probably also true in reverse, and between most countries. A lot of left-leaning Brits will talk up continental Europe but ignore the ways the UK is better, while right-leaning Brits will do the opposite.

It's hard to stipulate what you mean by tolerance.

This Reddit post from a couple of years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/jodpcu/cmv_america_is_one_of_the_most_tolerant_nations/ raises some good points. For example one study asked non-muslims whether they would mind having muslim neighbors then asked those people if they'd want a member of their family to marry a muslim. The two questions lead to substantially different conclusions

Take a look at a map to see the actual scale and size of the USA and Canada compared to the UK.

The UK is a teeny tiny island. The USA and Canada are more like the size of Europe and Africa kind of thing.. countries the size of continents.

So, you'll find some very welcome tolerant/accepting areas - mostly along the coasts - and then some areas where foreigners are made to feel.. less than welcome. But the USA/Canada are so large and so diverse that you can't just say they're one way or the other like a teeny tiny little island like the UK where the culture is much more homogeneous since everyone's so geographically close to each other.

But if you must have a generalization, Canada has a reputation for being more accepting than the USA in modern times.

The UK is speedily following the US in terms of intolerance. What the US does, we follow. Especially if you are any sort of minority.

e.g. UK MPs were talking about how women shouldn't have bodily autonomy when pregnant. And they already stopped Brits' right to protest freely.

Hello America

Oh, this is about immigration. Never mind.

Actually no. The point is that tolerance can be measured according to different indices. Somebody can be very tolerant of racial differences but transphobic. Or vice-versa.

Take a look at a population density map.

Half the population of Canada lives in a line between Windsor in SE Ontario to Quebec. And the large majority live in a major city with an airport

Canada has a lot of empty space. That empty space is neither tolerant nor intolerant. Additionally, the native population has been pushed to the fringes of society. The country is effectively only a few hundred years old, and for a large part of that history it has been possible to communicate at the speed of light and get from one side to the other in less than a day.

The UK is much more culturally diverse. Firstly because we have more people. Secondly because we’re a much older country. Thirdly because our history greatly predates telephones, aeroplanes, and the internet.

If you think Edmonton and Calgary are much more culturally distinct than, say, Manchester and Liverpool, or Manchester and Leeds, then your model is wrong.

Canada has a bit of the country where people mostly speak French. Quebec is very culturally distinct. The UK has Welsh speakers, and regional dialects that are barely understandable to standard English speakers: https://youtube.com/watch?v=le3cBRlWSE8
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QdzZXibW3B8 ... YWxlY3Q%3D
https://youtube.com/watch?v=DSkmAL9kTxI ... VjdA%3D%3D

There’s more to cultural diversity than physical distance.

But it's not to be ignored nor insignificant. Go take a look at a map and see how far apart major Canadian cities are from one another. May as well be oceans in between. The culture in Vancouver is dramatically different from Calgary or Toronto. etc. You can't just take a population count and say Canadians are all the same. It isn't anywhere close to true.

Vancouver/BC is extremely diverse in people (race/ethnicity), language, religion etc and is very VERY liberal in terms of drug policy and culture and environmentalism. Calgary/Alberta is much more.. white/christian/anti-drug conservatives that work for Big Oil - basically Canada's trump country.

Hell, there are accents across the country that make even the English language damned near impossible to understand - was good fun trying to understand the 3 kids from Newfoundland that came to stay at our house for a sports tournament when I was kid. We'd have to ask them to repeat themselves several times sometimes, and then even when we heard the words they said we had no idea what they meant because the phrases they said were completely foreign to us on the West Coast.

UK, on the other hand, you have a higher population crammed into a space smaller than Vancouver Island, all living close enough to each other to hold each others' hands. MUCH more likely people are going to be similar than when you have a thousand Kilometers of distance between major cities.

Ok. I was going to bring up how in the UK you can be arrested for stupid stuff.

Like peacefully protesting, now days.