Elect a new people

Elect a new people

Professor Robert Putnam, author of the phenomenally successful Bowling Alone, who also coined the phrase 'social capita'l, is the high priest of social diversity. At least he was until the results of his massive research project on 'diversity' came in. Bob undertook the research to prove how happy-clappy multiculturalism created social capital, you see.

Sadly for Bob, the results, as anyone other than a Sociology professor could have told him, were the exact opposite. The research reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer.

In the 41 sites Putnam studied in the U.S., he found that the more diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors. This proved true in communities large and small, from big cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Boston to tiny Yakima, Washington, rural South Dakota, and the mountains of West Virginia. In racially and ethnically mixed communities, not only do people not trust strangers, they do not even trust their own kind. They withdraw into themselves, they support community activity less, they vote less.

"People living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down,' that is, to pull in like a turtle," writes Putnam. They tend to "withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television."

Scandalously, and in flagrant defiance of the norms of peer-reviewed research, Putnam withheld the research until he could ‘develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity. He is quoted as fearing – fearing, mindhttp://irishsavant.blogspot.com/2007/08/elect-new-people.html