yeah, and please talk about social issues and that you have a partner of the same sex! just like in family meals that's going to go down super well! /s
I think you're overstating this based on the internet. Sure, there are aggressively intolerant folks and maybe too many for this to work.
But the vast majority of folks aren’t going to get into a flame war over diner while staring into someone’s face. They might say crude things but they’ll probably also learn something.
I think the only thing that makes this idea really questionable is the proliferation of firearms in American culture
It's a little bit different when it's outside the family, though. Inside the family, a homophobic parent might feel emasculated, or like a failure, if their kid turns out to be gay. But when meeting an adult gay couple at a social function, or working with a gay colleague, the same person will probably at least remain cordial, if not explicitly supportive.
Food for thought: Maybe there's something wrong with your family if you can't share a meal together in peace.
Like families, societies need shared values. If a third of the population is religious extremist, another third believes in freedom and liberalism and the rest in Communism, fascism, or something even different, there is no common ground. I'm a tolerant person but I can't sit with people who preach that we should be treated differently depending on what race or gender we are. Or that gays shouldn't be able to get married. Diversity is good, but under a common denominator. Unchecked multiculturalism breaks nations apart. Smart people get divorces when they realize their partner is a disgusting swine who abuses them. Free societies need to do the same with groups promoting ideologies incompatible to their core values.
A big part of why I think my hypothesis would work is that I believe we have these shared values in the US.
The problem is that these shared values have been obscured by disagreement on how to attain them, and by focusing on group identities that mark us all as "Other" to someone else.
I like your idea. At worst, you'd find out sooner or later if these shared values are a myth. Getting to know others is never a mistake.
I met plenty of different strangers from around the world through Hospitality Club (the concept later copied by CouchSurfing) and never had a bad experience. Many of my friends and family thought it was dangerous inviting strangers into your home. And maybe today it is, I'm not sure. But back then practically everyone signed up there had the same open-minded spirit, they wanted to learn about people in other countries and further intercultural understanding and friendship. I've met lots of people from very different walks of life, people I might have never otherwise talked to. This is positive diversity, when there's a shared value and people can unite around it and trust each other.
To give a negative example many people in Western societies, in their strive to not be racist, have bought into the false belief that all cultures are equal, that you're assigned one by birth and that you're not allowed to criticize the culture of "other" people. Which ironically in itself is a racist idea. This in turn has lead to political movements that consider it taboo discussing certain problems connected with topics like religion, culture and ethnicity. And it's given birth to the kind of laissez-faire multiculturalism where problems never get addressed and crime, mistrust and conflict are rampant. Because people either get divided among identity lines like you mention, or unchecked immigration gives these societies the death blow (the Western European model).
In the early 20th century, “multiculturalism” meant northern, southern and eastern white Europeans living together. In the documentary Australia in Colour, vintage TV advertisements portray immigrant ships containing northern and eastern white europeans as being “good for Australia” — a point of controversy at the time. Tellingly, what modern Australians would consider actually multicultural, e.g. integrating with E.Asians or Australian Aboriginals, was utterly unthinkable.
Yet in Australia and the United States today, the zeitgeist is that we’ve “always been multicultural”. This is clearly only superficially true: multiculturalism was only recently redefined to mean the integration of non-white europeans into predominantly white european societies. In the documentary, they explain following World War II, it was feared that Australia would grow weaker than its Asian competitors oweing to Australia’s low population, which many in government thought made them susceptible to capture by aggressor nations. This, AFAICT, was the real impetus for the Australian government becoming increasingly accepting of Asian immigrants.
And more recently, during the pandemic, the Australian housing sector has been calling for more immigration. Apparently, immigration powers much of the Australian housing sector [1]:
> A fall in migrants during the pandemic is causing a sharp drop in housing demand, with the sector urging the government to create a migration plan and extend HomeBuilder incentives.
Modern multiculturalism seems to be primarily based on economic and militaristic concerns, and is in no way based on a desire for social cohesion. See also: One Billion Americans [2]. Some say the US should strive to increase its population size to one billion for more or less the exact same reasons modern day multiculturalism came about. These people were never concerned with social cohesion: they’re entirely concerned with militaristic and economic might.
just clarifying I wasn't talking about my family, but yeah, I do think that some families have something wrong: bigot/religious extremist members is one of those problems.
