The most united, yet, most divided country in the world, America.

 

        America is the most culturally diverse country in the globe; a country that has more than 4 thousand different cultures, yet, being the country with a lot of Ethnocentrism, discrimination, and Anti-socialization, a divided country. 

    When I first arrived in America, I was surprised by the sheer number of cultures I encountered every single day. But I was just as surprised by how often those cultures kept themselves isolated, quietly away from one another. America often feels like a country at odds with itself, one where a single dominant social group sets the standard everyone else is expected to meet; to talk like them, look like them, and become like them. America is united in name, and its people are proud to call themselves American, yet some who are born here carry a quiet shame about it instead.

    What struck me most, once life opened back up after COVID and I began engaging more with the world outside my own bubble, was how physical proximity doesn't automatically create connection. You can walk down a single city street and hear half a dozen languages, yet watch people carefully remain within their own invisible borders, like if they had carried those borders to keep there beliefs and customs isolated from others. We share the same public transportation, the same workplaces, the same schools, but our social lives often stay strictly divided by race, religion, and heritage. It feels less like one blended community and more like several separate worlds existing side by side, where people interact out of necessity rather than any real desire to understand one another.

    In Argentina, however, it is a different story. Like America, Argentina was built by immigrants, mostly European and Latin American, alongside a meaningful population of Indigenous people and Asian and African immigrants. But in Argentina, people from different backgrounds actively seek each other out. They're curious about one another, they listen to each other's beliefs, and over time they form something closer to one large, extended family. It doesn't matter whether you're Asian or Black, rich or poor, European or Bolivian, or whether your politics differ. in Argentina, people still find their way to each other.

    But in Argentina, people will say America was the dream land, which it is, but after being here, it was one of the first times that I felt lonely in a room full of people.