Taffy, I couldn't agree more.
It's been an interesting dust-up, to say the least!
I think one thing people who haven't spent their entire lives in America don't understand is that it really is a deeply divided country. There's lots of violent crime, racism, poverty, etc. etc. etc. *but* those things all go together. American society is structured very, very well to keep the poor as isolated as possible. Visit any American city and its pretty clear where you should and shouldn't go.
For example, my mother lived in St. Louis, which has one of the highest murder rates in the country. Did I ever feel unsafe there? Only once, when I had to drop my brother off at the bus station. My mother isn't well-off by American standards and her neighborhood wasn't that nice, but it was nice enough. It was far enough away from the housing projects (which have since been torn down and replaced with condos, because they were near the city center and so sitting one some valuable real estate).
On my way out to St. Louis, I used to drive through Ohio. I believe it's in Columbus where the housing project is actually separated from the rest of the city by an 8 lane highway.
East St. Louis, probably the worst city in America in terms of poverty, is completely invisible thanks to some smart planning by the department of transportation, which has made it entirely possible to not only by pass the city, but to literally not see it at all. If you want to go to the riverboat casino, you take a specially constructed highway that runs through the city right to the casino parking lot.
I could go on and on, but as an American it is completely possible to avoid the unpleasant realities and surround yourself with like-minded individuals. I've had pretty heated discussions with other liberals who are from the South about racism--they actually argue 'it's not in my city/town/community, it's all those other places in the South.'
What makes NZ different goes back to that egalitarianism. Of course, it can cut both ways. When you don't create too many enclaves and don't encourage or mandate separation, you can't ignore the realities of the underside of society. If you don't want to see racism in Boston, you stay out of Southie. If you don't want to see poverty there, you stay out of Jamaica Plain. And if you want to avoid reality altogether, you live in the People's Republic of Cambridge. (I'm probably the *only* person on the forum who will get that.) Here in Chch, it's both nowhere and everywhere. Because there aren't really serious 'bad parts of town' what trouble there is could be found anywhere (except for Sumner, of course
... oh, and Halswell).
Does that make any sense?