L.A. is crazy international. USC has the most foreign students of any university in the nation. There are people in L.A. from island nations you've never even heard of. There are people here whose names are spelled with chemical-element symbols! (We kid. Sort of).

So, after Forbes did an “America's Most Diverse” cities top-10 list, the only question is:

Why is Los Angeles not on it?

We'll tell you precisely why. We're so diverse, that we're Oppositeland-diverse. In other words, Forbes used as its measuring stick a low but healthy percentage of the “largest group” in each city to determine diversity.

In Mitt Romney's world, that group would be white, and more diversity would equal a lower percentage for said group.

For Forbes, this means that San Jose, with its biggest ethnic group comprising 35 percent of the population, takes the top prize. Next is New York (39 percent) and, after that, Oakland (40 percent).

Credit: Marc Evans

Credit: Marc Evans

L.A., of course, is dominated by Latinos, with one of every two of us, roughly, having south-of-the-border heritage which, strangely, makes our town not-so-diverse.

Boyle Heights, at 95 percent Latino, is one of the least-diverse neighborhoods in the nation. Downtown is said to be the area's most-diverse community, with its biggest ethnic group at 31 percent.

Forbes says Beverly Hills is about 83 percent white, which is, according to the latest U.S. Census figures, somewhat true. But good estimates have the city's Persian-heritage population at 20 percent. A lot of those folks identify as white but can also bee seen as Central Asian.

In any case, given the huge ethnic enclaves here, from Koreans to Chinese, Salvadorans to Bangladeshi, and given our near-10-million county population, you'd have to take this top-10 list with a caveat.

And that caveat is that L.A. is way more diverse than San Jose.

[@dennisjromero / djromero@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]

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