From the March 2019 issue of First Things:
We’re beholden to many false truisms. One is that our coasts are diverse places representative of the great mosaic of our country, while Middle America is boring and homogeneous. Not exactly. Echelon Insights crunched census data to come up with the 25 counties in the United States in which the mix of residents most precisely mirrors the country as a whole: race, political allegiance, income, educational level, religious affiliation, and age distribution… Douglas County, Nebraska, made the list.
…One of the irritating features of fancy-pants places like New York is the ignorant assumption that people from Omaha live in an insular, white-bread bubble. The opposite is the case. New York County (the island of Manhattan) ranks among the least typical places in the United States. In truth, an Omaha resident has immediate, everyday experience with the actual diversity of the United States, not the paradoxical hyper-diverse homogeneity of places like New York.
I think the “fancy pants” label was a bit unnecessary, but it plays to an audience I guess.
After living in Virginia, Hawaii, California, Texas, Florida and Nebraska (minimum of 2 years in each location, so not just vacations.) I can say that Omaha has diversity in the population, but has significant lack of diversity in the social interactions between ethnic groups. Please note that I am not saying there is “No” diversity in social interactions. But, North “O” and South “O” are not the same type melting pots that you would see in the Coastal cities that I have lived in.
There is a lot of improvement that can be done.