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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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 Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:04 am Post subject: Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity |
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Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity
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Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity
A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, one of the world's most influential political scientists.
His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone from their next-door neighbour to the mayor.
This is a contentious finding in the current climate of concern about the benefits of immigration. Professor Putnam told the Financial Times he had delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it "would have been irresponsible to publish without that".
The core message of the research was that, "in the presence of diversity, we hunker down", he said. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us."
Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most diverse human habitation in human history", but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where "diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians' picnic".
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."
British Home Office research has pointed in the same direction and Prof Putnam, now working with social scientists at Manchester University, said other European countries would be likely to have similar trends.
His 2000 book, Bowling Alone, on the increasing atomisation of contemporary society, made him an academic celebrity. Though some scholars questioned how well its findings applied outside the US, policymakers were impressed and he was invited to speak at Camp David, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace.
Prof Putnam stressed, however, that immigration materially benefited both the "importing" and "exporting" societies, and that trends "have been socially constructed, and can be socially reconstructed".
In an oblique criticism of Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, who revealed last week he prefers Muslim women not to wear a full veil, Prof Putnam said: "What we shouldn't do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us."
Copyright 2006 Financial Times
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:13 am Post subject: |
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That last sentence is a tad strange.
Who is "us"? The whites? Or, in a majority Hispanic area, should the Hispanics change "us" to accommodate the blacks? Should Korea change her "us"? Huh? Change what? Who will change it?
Maybe we should just be realistic about what diversity is, and that maybe it isn't the end-all and be-all of social policy? Maybe England is for the English and India for the Indians? Who is America for?
Immigrants clearly can create a new identity in the face of diversity (America, for example) but if this is happening today, or if we are just seeing the opposite is a big question. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 5:15 am Post subject: |
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Related to the OP.
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Spread of race ghettos fuels gang warfare
Shiv Malik
AN east London teenager who became a drug dealer and a knife-wielding member of a street gang lays the blame on the transformation of his neighbourhood into an ethnic minority �ghetto� where turf warfare flourishes.
�I fell in with the wrong crowd,� said Syed Miah, 19, who regrets his life of crime. �Before, it was mixed and you would get to know other people, but now no one meets anyone. You grow up with this mentality that �we�re Bangladeshis, whites are whites and blacks are blacks�.�
Miah became a full-time gangster when he was expelled from school for holding a knife to his teacher�s throat. He says he eventually earned up to �960 a week dealing heroin before being sentenced to 18 months in jail.
Miah�s account of the failure of multiculturalism encapsulates the growing debate over how ethnic minorities should be integrated into society. At last week�s Conservative conference, David Cameron, the party leader, warned that in some cities �we have allowed ghettos to develop � whole neighbourhoods cut off from the rest of society�.
He spoke of �parallel lives�, citing �communities where people from different backgrounds never meet, never talk, never go into each other�s homes�.
There are ethnic gang fights in Manchester and Birmingham and last week they spread to Windsor, where rioting erupted around an Asian-owned dairy and nearby prayer centre.
Last year Lee Jasper, a policing adviser to Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, warned that one south London gang, the Muslim Boys, was the �most serious criminal threat� the black community had ever faced. It was accused of shooting a man, execution-style, after he refused to convert to Islam, and has been implicated in dozens of other muggings and attempted murders.
However, there is now strong evidence of the extent of segregation in the area. A recent report by Bristol University found 40% of Bangladeshi children went to schools where at least 90% of the pupils were Bangladeshi, while 60% of whites attended overwhelmingly white schools. The report described education in Tower Hamlets as �highly segregated�.
Abdi Hassan, a representative of the local Somali community, recently complained to the council that segregation was fuelling violence. �There are many groups here, Moroccans, Irish and Algerians, but nobody mixes with anybody,� said Hassan. �Why do we have community ghettos? Why shouldn�t people want to interact with each other?� Some local gangs were set up to resist racist attacks but turned to crime. In one incident in 1994, a Pakistani was left with severe brain damage after an attack by eight white thugs on Whitechapel Road. Emdad Rahman, 39, one of his friends, said: �The whole community was enraged. I remember a lot of my peers thinking, �Right, if they�re going out Paki-bashing, we basically need to go out honky-bashing now�.�
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-523-2393806-523,00.html |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:16 am Post subject: |
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Who is us? You seem to come from the segment of society that says 'us' means your daughter can also be your neice. You know, where family trees don't have branches.
Perhaps you could take a few minutes and read some of the threads about Korean-Western marriages. Or at least dating. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:19 am Post subject: |
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| Dude, what the hell are you talking about? |
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Adventurer
Joined: 28 Jan 2006
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:19 am Post subject: |
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| BJWD wrote: |
That last sentence is a tad strange.
Who is "us"? The whites? Or, in a majority Hispanic area, should the Hispanics change "us" to accommodate the blacks? Should Korea change her "us"? Huh? Change what? Who will change it?
Maybe we should just be realistic about what diversity is, and that maybe it isn't the end-all and be-all of social policy? Maybe England is for the English and India for the Indians? Who is America for?
Immigrants clearly can create a new identity in the face of diversity (America, for example) but if this is happening today, or if we are just seeing the opposite is a big question. |
Well, this is an interesting issue. It sparks controversy. We do know people who are generally similar can find it easier to attain common ground. Of course, religion complicates matters when looking at immigration.
I look at immigration as having some positive effects and negative effects. There has to be a sense of a national identity. If the amount of immigration creates too much confusion in the society, than it will create too much instability.
The United States may resemble South America eventually with a large Caucasian population and a large Indian population from the Mexican population entering the country. It, however, be different in many ways because of its history. I think if immigration of whatever groups come in the country go against a country's ability to effectively assimilate the new arrivals, then it is a recipe for trouble. It would create societal, national deficits. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:24 am Post subject: |
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| Dude, what the hell are you talking about? |
Did you graduate 8th Grade? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 6:40 am Post subject: |
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Did your wife?
I asked who is "us". And you go one some rant about me and my sister? |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:05 am Post subject: |
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| Adventurer wrote: |
| BJWD wrote: |
That last sentence is a tad strange.
Who is "us"? The whites? Or, in a majority Hispanic area, should the Hispanics change "us" to accommodate the blacks? Should Korea change her "us"? Huh? Change what? Who will change it?
Maybe we should just be realistic about what diversity is, and that maybe it isn't the end-all and be-all of social policy? Maybe England is for the English and India for the Indians? Who is America for?
Immigrants clearly can create a new identity in the face of diversity (America, for example) but if this is happening today, or if we are just seeing the opposite is a big question. |
Well, this is an interesting issue. It sparks controversy. We do know people who are generally similar can find it easier to attain common ground. Of course, religion complicates matters when looking at immigration.
I look at immigration as having some positive effects and negative effects. There has to be a sense of a national identity. If the amount of immigration creates too much confusion in the society, than it will create too much instability.
The United States may resemble South America eventually with a large Caucasian population and a large Indian population from the Mexican population entering the country. It, however, be different in many ways because of its history. I think if immigration of whatever groups come in the country go against a country's ability to effectively assimilate the new arrivals, then it is a recipe for trouble. It would create societal, national deficits. |
I think the USA will be OK. But Europe, I don't know. I don't think they either 1) want to assimilate the new arrivals or 2) have the cultural ability to do so.
I plan to migrate to the USA in about 9 months, and when there I may take Yank citizenship (if they will have me). I will be American. But, I (even a white Canadian) can never move to Germany and be German (If I can't do it, how can an African or Asian?) This is a big difference. Immigrants in Europe start from a point of exclusion that I don' think many immigrants to America do. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:10 am Post subject: |
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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:25 am Post subject: |
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| There is a lot of ethics problems with this issue. A real discussion would derail everything so real discussions are avoided. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:26 am Post subject: |
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| Uh, elaborate eh? |
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happeningthang
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 7:55 am Post subject: |
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What's to stop you going to Germany and taking up citizenship?
I don't follow.
Oh, and don't worry about Dulouz... this his way of being mysterious so he can launch into his "the final solution" spiel. Apparently genocide is all hunky-dory and sunshine. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 8:01 am Post subject: |
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Nono. I don't mean Germany wouldn't grant me citizenship, but that I could not become German. American isn't an ethnicity, German is.
My larger idea is that European identities are closely related to ideas of race and ethnicity (not to mention religion) whereas in America they are less so. This makes it easier to assimilate in America for the very obvious reason that full assimilation in Germany, for example, is impossible. You can never become German, you can only be born German. In my opinion, this is why European nations opted for multiculturalism over the so-called melting-pot. They never intended to permanently absorb the immigrates because 1) they can't and 2) they don't want to. |
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dulouz
Joined: 04 Feb 2003
Location: Uranus
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| Posted: Tue Oct 10, 2006 8:02 am Post subject: |
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Oh sure, immigration into Europe means the end of the European White Race. I'm sure more than a few here of that will gleefully guffaw over that statement and thats always been the big part of the discussion but that whats needed to be said.
You're touching on a real visceral part of human nature and you need to be careful when doing so. Most of the imigration into Europe has been conducted on dare. Thats really really wrong. Its wrong to do it to anyone. The US didn't even try to pull that off on our natives. We still don't. Anyone from anywhere can now be a native European but Native Americans are still named Tonto and Running Deer.
There are objective reasons and subjective argument against the change. I could phrase that as tasteful reasons and distasteful reasons but its sufficient for me to say I advocate stability.
Relating to the article, I'm often told how great diversity is but its never proven to me. People aren't zoo animals, diversity has zoo like characterisitcs. Its unatural and leads to a decrease in quality of life. I am usually presented anecdotal evidence submitted to me but here's some evidence thats more scientific.
The diversity advocates have to big flavors of egg on their face. Islam and The Mexican Invasion. Both groups used unethical or abusive tactics to enter tolerant societies and after entrance, roped off the area to outsiders. The ethics associated with diversity fell flat right out of the gate. |
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