BootsnAll Travel Network



The New York Identity

This is a city of 8 million people-Bangkok’s is 9 million-but unlike Bangkok, it’s diversity is extreme. Therefore any generalization is sweeping. New York is a city for the young; the median age of residents is 34. Sixty-two percent of the population is white while 16 % is black, 15% is Latino and almost 6% Asian. 19% of New Yorkers live below the poverty line. A whopping 32% is foreign-born (46% in Queens) that speak hundreds of languages. An average of 73% has graduated from high school while 27% of these have completed some form of higher education. 12% is Jewish, around 70% are Christian, many Catholic, with the remainder adhering to Eastern religions, mostly Islam and Hinduism…14% of New Yorkers claim no religious affiliation whatsoever-a figure that is twice what it was a decade ago.

Of the city’s population aged five and over, 48% speak a language other than English at home. Of those, 52% speak Spanish, 27% speak an Indo-European language and 18 converse in an Asian or Pacific language. Walking the street you can hear as many as five languages in an hour. Hundreds of foreign-language papers are published in New York in everything from Hebrew and Arabic and German to Russian, Croatian, Italian, Polish, Greek and Hungarian.
all this from Lonely Planet guidebook.

But New York’s diversity doesn’t stop there. Hop a subway and take a look around. You will see a dreadlocked hipster plugged into his iPod, an older Latino guy asleep, a black lady shushing her baby in a stroller, a boy with a T-shirt with “Luxury Of Dirt” on the front, an artist covered with paint, an unfazed white guy with an ipod paging through the New York Times, a muslim girl in a blue plaid head scarf, others with smooth loafers, ratty sneakers, thigh-high furry boots that look like they are from Mongolia, a closed-eye black wannabe gangster nodding his head to the hip hop plugged into his ears.

And then there is the guy carrying a maroon monk’s bag with a trucker’s hat, highwater Thai fishermen’s pants and running shoes. Guess who?



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