If one were "to impress upon their youth that America can be a wonderful country and the people aren't the monsters that Jockstrap has lead them to believe", then NYC might be less than ideal place to do so, for one might be looking for a place more representative of the country. How representative are Hillary voters?
NYC is a great choice!
I live in a suburb just outside NYC. Last year about 14 of us hosted a group of Swedish hs students. They were great! They were smart, their english was incredible and they were interested in everyting. They didn't spend a lot of time in our houses because they went into the city just about every day, but they had serious assignments to observe our culture. (Each one had a different aspect to cover.) They did spend 1-2 days in our town, in classes with our kids, going out at night to the movies and other kids homes. This was during the Yankee-Boston ALCS series, and one was lucky enough to be with a family with an extra playoff ticket. He went home with tons of pin-striped stuff!
Our town and HS are very diverse, the Swedes were in an incredible variety of homes. One was with a one-child family, one shared a room with a bunch of kids of a family of 9 kids. The large family is a born-again Christian family, about 5 families were Jewish, the rest Catholic & 1 one other protestant. I think all the families were white, but the hs is very mixed so they were with lots of black & hispanic kids too. One stayed in an apt, the rest in private homes. They were spread among the real affluent areas and the middle class homes. We tried to match the Swede & host by gender, but otherwise it was pretty random. Worked perfectly!
Among the must-sees on their lists?? Times Square, Ground Zero, Chinatown, a movie theatre (their english was good enough for that!), Empire State building, shopping, shopping, shopping!
Since it was a few weeks before Thanksgiving, we had a pot-luck traditional American Thanksgiving dinner for them at the hs one night. We all shared our impressions of eachother. What an experience for ALL the kids.