You can't handle the truth!
Posted on 01/06/2007 7:19:14 AM PST by shrinkermd
...It was one of the more irony-laden incidents in the history of celebrity social scientists. While in Sweden to receive a $50,000 academic prize as political science professor of the year, Harvard’s Robert D. Putnam, a former Carter administration official who made his reputation writing about the decline of social trust in America in his bestseller Bowling Alone, confessed to Financial Times columnist John Lloyd that his latest research discovery—that ethnic diversity decreases trust and co-operation in communities—was so explosive that for the last half decade he hadn’t dared announce it “until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it ‘would have been irresponsible to publish without that.’”
In a column headlined “Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity,” Lloyd summarized the results of the largest study ever of “civic engagement,” a survey of 26,200 people in 40 American communities:
When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. ‘They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,’ said Prof Putnam. ‘The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.’
Lloyd noted, “Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, ‘the most diverse human habitation in human history.’”
As if to prove his own point that diversity creates minefields of mistrust, Putnam later protested to the Harvard Crimson that the Financial Times essay left him feeling betrayed, calling it “by two degrees of magnitude, the worst experience I have ever had with the media.” To Putnam’s horror, hundreds of “racists and anti-immigrant activists” sent him e-mails congratulating him for finally coming clean about findings
(Excerpt) Read more at amconmag.com ...
You can't handle the truth!
" The south has much..much better race relations than the north..."
To the extent this is true [not just different]
Oh yeah..it's true. You could feel the relief of tension down here. Now this was the 1978-1982 period and racial tensions might have been extraordinary at that time in the north. One thing that struck me right off was how many more mixed couples there were. You almost never saw that where I lived in the north. Also the young people were hanging out together. You never saw that in the north. I've lived here a long time now and don't know if it's ever gotten better in the north.
Multiculturalism is shattering communities across the US by craeting physical and social borders and alienating the sense of "one people" we once shared as a nation. It is renewing many old tribal and race-based feuds that are only simmering below the surface.
Politicians have supported multiculturalism and they are writing the doom of America by not acknowledging us as one people, but a collection of hyphenated Americans.
so very true.
Isn't spending the only thing the government can do? They goof up everything else they try.
It depends on which cultures are mixing. I find that certain culture work well together, others do not. Think of LA LA Land's gang wars.
I remember that as well a couple of years later.
Also that families became linked to others, slightly extending the area of trust.
I get the same impression from middle eastern acquaintances today.
I've spent a good deal of time in the South & obviously like it. Point was that there are always some people who simply don't like 'others' and there is always some way to express it...the ways vary from place to place and person to person.
The lesson learned here is that rose-colored glasses are still a poor way to see what's in front of your very eyes.
It probably depends on where you live in the south and in what kind of town too. I moved from a city of about 40000 to a city of about 50000. Larger cities in the south are possibly not much different than larger cities in the north. There are also some notorious counties in the south but I suspect they are not the same as they were 20 or 30 years ago.
Bookmarked.
Harvard finally learns what the rest of America has known for 45 years!
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