Does Diversity Do Damage?
A recently-released study by renowned Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam is causing somewhat of a stir on account of its suggestion that diversity may not be the unvarnished social blessing we sometimes make it out to be. Putnam looked specifically at ethnic diversity in a number of contexts and concluded that the more integrated the social milieu, the less its constituents trust each other—even members of the same ethnic group. In spite of his well-known affinity for that squishy brand of everybody-hold-hands white liberalism we all know so well, Putnam’s research has been seized upon by the middle rungs of the neo-segregationist movement as evidence of why different races shouldn’t live together. But are those really the conclusions we ought to draw from this study? At the risk of being wrong in assuming that this article represents the scholarship faithfully, I’m gonna go with “no.”
But first, we need to acknowledge from the get-go that diversity is a complicated social construct with a particular set of advantages and drawbacks. Instead of simply asking whether or not it’s a “good thing,” we need to look at whether it’s still worth pursuing after all the arguments have been accounted for. So, since we’re on the subject, let’s start with trust: assuming Putnam’s methods are sound, diversity diminishes it. While lower levels of trust in a community is certainly A Bad Thing, higher trust premised upon racial homogeneity isn’t necessarily such a hot idea either; after all, someone who looks like you can screw you over just as easily as an outgroup member. My mother once related a story from her childhood in which family drove by a black guy being accosted by a policeman at night. Her mother pulled the car over, claimed he was a relative (although he wasn’t), and took him back to their house and let him stay for awhile. Long story short, dude ended up stealing from the family and vanishing without a trace.
The point is, choosing your associates according to race doesn’t insulate you from breaches of trust. But leave us not forget that trust isn’t the only social variable of interest at play here. If we still care about minority rights, the idea that mere superiority of numbers do not license one group to force another to bear a disproportionate amount of the weight of social order, we certainly ought not to work to reduce diversity. When a single racial group holds the lion’s share of the power in a community and uses that power to codify its own already-formidable social privileges, that leads straight to an almost completely inflexible caste system (cf. American history before the 1960s).
Furthermore, upon closer inspection, the idea that rising diversity harms the community (and that something should be done about that) starts to look curiously communist. Without issuing any value judgments on the merits of that particular political system, I can uncontroversially state that as creeds go it’s about as un-American as you can get. But the root of communism lies the elevation of the collective above the individual, and that’s exactly what this concern over diversity does. In essence, it asks that we forget about unleashing everyone into the same free marketplace to see who rises to the top and instead consent to having the game rigged so that ethnic homogeneity is allowed to disproportionately benefit members of the privileged class(es). Which is great if you’re a member, but not so much if you’re stuck on the outside. Americans decided awhile back that political majoritarianism of this stripe was something we weren’t gonna do anymore (although sometimes it looks like it’s making a comeback), and since it directly contravenes the principles of free trade, we kind of have to choose one or the other.
Speaking of free trade, I just realized what this whole to-do reminds me of more than communism— mercantilism, the obsolete economic system of the Enlightenment period that advocated the hoarding of capital and strict protectionism. And that had begun dying even before America won its independence.
Published on October 11, 2006 at 1:01 pm.
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Filed under racism, academia, mainstream culture.
