The Downside Of Diversity

[FaninAma]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/?page=1

A liberal Harvard sociology professor's research indicates increasing diversity damages social capital.

[cleller]

Duh.

We've all heard countless stories from the early part of the 20th century of people growing up in their ethnic neighborhoods in the big cities.

Most of the time we've heard those stories have been when a very successful person is recounting the experience.

Plus most of the people that trumpet diversity all the time are loud mouth political know-nothing idiots.

[FaninAma]

Duh.

We've all heard countless stories from the early part of the 20th century of people growing up in their ethnic neighborhoods in the big cities.

Most of the time we've heard those stories have been when a very successful person is recounting the experience.

Plus most of the people that trumpet diversity all the time are loud mouth political know-nothing idiots.

The funny thing is if a conservative professor or politician had made these claims they would have been excoriated. Human nature is a hard thing to change by bullying the general population with political correctness.

[cleller]

I'm surprised the diversity crowd has not been pressuring zoos to institute more diversity in its housing arrangements, geniuses that they are.

[SoonerorLater]

If diversity was a good idea then Yugoslavia would have been Paradise.

[KantoSooner]

The one factor ignored in his study that springs to mind is the duration of the communities studied. If we're talking a short term (say first generation) community, his findings seem pretty much to match observation. If we're talking longer term, less so. For example, do you personally find it uncomfortable to be around people whose grandparents were born in Italy? Catholics? Irish-Americans? Who is more 'weird', the fifth generation Japanese American aerospace engineer or the Bengali software engineer?

It would seem to me that there's less to this study than originally meets the eye.

[FaninAma]

The one factor ignored in his study that springs to mind is the duration of the communities studied. If we're talking a short term (say first generation) community, his findings seem pretty much to match observation. If we're talking longer term, less so. For example, do you personally find it uncomfortable to be around people whose grandparents were born in Italy? Catholics? Irish-Americans? Who is more 'weird', the fifth generation Japanese American aerospace engineer or the Bengali software engineer?

It would seem to me that there's less to this study than originally meets the eye.

If the demographic trends of migration out of urban areas into suburban areas is any indication the effects seem to have been in place since the 1960's or going on 3 generations. Perhaps it is temporary but during every period of high immigration into this country we have seen withdrawal of different ethnic and racial groups into their own communities even in progressive communities like NYC.(Little Italy, Chinatown, Hell's Kitchen,etc in the late 1800' and early 1900' during the last large immigration influx). Now we are seeing the same thing with the current large immigration influx that started in the 1960's with LBJ's immigration legislation and illegal immigration from Latin America.

It would seem that in order to see if this effect from increasing diversity can be altered the country would have to have a period of assimilation in which immigration is decreased for a few decades like it was from 1920 to 1960.

[TheHumanAlphabet]

Diversity, pure and simple, was all about giving people permission to be slackers, not do their job and to promote people who in normal circumstances would never be promoted by merit. But add in diversity... we have to respect your fart sniffing, your time to have a tribal communal, etc. All this ever did was divide and make people seperate, not one America!

[KantoSooner]

If the demographic trends of migration out of urban areas into suburban areas is any indication the effects seem to have been in place since the 1960's or going on 3 generations. Perhaps it is temporary but during every period of high immigration into this country we have seen withdrawal of different ethnic and racial groups into their own communities even in progressive communities like NYC.(Little Italy, Chinatown, Hell's Kitchen,etc in the late 1800' and early 1900' during the last large immigration influx). Now we are seeing the same thing with the current large immigration influx that started in the 1960's with LBJ's immigration legislation and illegal immigration from Latin America.

It would seem that in order to see if this effect from increasing diversity can be altered the country would have to have a period of assimilation in which immigration is decreased for a few decades like it was from 1920 to 1960.

I don't think the evidence is one sided. Flight to the suburbs has reversed in many places and is being replaced by a return to the city core...with neghborhoods rearranged on the basis of income more than ethnicity.Clearly, however, the first gen immigrants are going to have a set of needs and interests that set them apart from earlier immigrants or even from their own children. You and I, for example, would likely have very little interest in ESL classes or Citizenship Exam prep; but those are a mainstay in many immigrant heavy neighborhoods.
Another factor to be considered is age. Kids, young adults and young adults with kids tend to be more gregarious and outgoing than empty nesters and older simply because they are more actively living outside the home.
Yet another would be the exclusionist tendencies present in some religions. Jews and Sikhs, for example, define themselves to a large degree through birth into their faith. That makes it more difficult to live in communities that lack a critical mass of co-religionists.
I am curious whether the prof considered generalized mobility as a driver in lessened 'social capital'. There would, it seems to me, be a lessened participation in communal activities when you had a population of 'newcomers' versus old time residents. Just on the basis of the greater difficulty of starting somethiing versus keeping that same thing going.

When one looks at the far greater vitality of the US as compared to more mono-cultural societies in Europe or Asia, it's hard to accept the general principle that our society is somehow less healthy than theirs.

[FaninAma]

I don't think the evidence is one sided. Flight to the suburbs has reversed in many places and is being replaced by a return to the city core...with neghborhoods rearranged on the basis of income more than ethnicity.

I have practiced in areas in which the median income was less than $30,000 a year and in communities where the median income was above $70,000. Guess which had more racial and ethnic diversity? I don't think it is necessarily a positive development that community segregation along socioeconomic status is occurring.

[KantoSooner]

Well, just for giggles, I'm assuming you've practiced most of your career around here? If you'd been in Cali, that affluent neighborhood would have been mostly Asian (still, perhaps diverse, the Asians find it funny that Indians can be lumped in with Koreans, for example in American demographic studies) and the lower income one would have been either Mexican or left over Okie ... and pretty much without diversity of any note.

I would agree that segregation on the basis of income level is firstly simply unstoppable to a certain degree. People with more money will crowd out those with less in the more desireable neighborhoods. An extreme example: none of the ski instructors or wait staff who work in Aspen live anywhere close. They can't afford to. As is the case in most big cities today, however, that segregation tends to be more economic than ethnic. First gen immigrants tend to live in lower income places. When their kids are doing better, they move away to more affluent neighborhoods.

[FaninAma]

Well, just for giggles, I'm assuming you've practiced most of your career around here? If you'd been in Cali, that affluent neighborhood would have been mostly Asian (still, perhaps diverse, the Asians find it funny that Indians can be lumped in with Koreans, for example in American demographic studies) and the lower income one would have been either Mexican or left over Okie ... and pretty much without diversity of any note.

I would agree that segregation on the basis of income level is firstly simply unstoppable to a certain degree. People with more money will crowd out those with less in the more desireable neighborhoods. An extreme example: none of the ski instructors or wait staff who work in Aspen live anywhere close. They can't afford to. As is the case in most big cities today, however, that segregation tends to be more economic than ethnic. First gen immigrants tend to live in lower income places. When their kids are doing better, they move away to more affluent neighborhoods.

Oklahoma, Texas and Nebraska. I definitely agree with your upward mobility scenario overcoming the lack of diversity in better off communities but that development has been less than uniform across the ethnic spectrum.

[KantoSooner]

I'm also thinking that cars, air conditioning and two earner households have probably had as much to do with a decline in 'social capital' (ie community involvement) as ethnic diversity has.
Throw teevee and other private entertainment in there as well.

[yermom]

my problem with this is the level of diversity. if you are talking about a company or something, that is totally different than if you are talking about a city with pockets of ethnic populations that barely interact with each other

[KantoSooner]

But, and this is the important thing, people from all walks of life, from all confessions, from every race and tribe and calling on this wonderful, wide earth can come together, in a manner not dissimilar to Coca Cola commercials of yore in the passionate agreement that Texas Sucks.

It's what binds us together, not what tears us apart that is truly important.