Disney’s Small, Small World: the root of the problem.
The downside of diversity – The Boston Globe — And people are going to be surprised by this? One thing for sure, nobody wants to talk about it.
IT HAS BECOME increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
So #30, how is this any different? They do the same crap when they’re confronted with hard science that counters their junk science. I could go on for a page or two citing examples, but I won’t. All one has to do, is do searches for counter arguments for all the items in you listed. The fact is is, they spent a generation screaming “The sky is falling”, and now they have the attention they wanted. Now they’re under the microscope and it “Ain’t very confterble”, is it? So, all the can do is cry (insert catch-word here, for example ‘race’) ______ism when confronted with facts. Well, like all their other stupid causes, global warming IS junk science now just like global cooling was 30 years ago, along with all the other stupid little pet projects of theirs.
Friggen’ morons.
Hasta…
This post is kinda not off topic.
I watched part of the debate last night, it was gay.
Then watching that panel, in that forum, and realized… Salvation from Bush has to come from that???
OMFG we are screwed.
Sheeeet, I remember writing a paper on this very subject back in the olden days when people went to college for an education. It is for that reason I have no intension of reading the article.
When people emigrate to a new culture, they will ALWAYS tend to congregate closest to those like them. These factors include same culture, language, geographic area, and religion.
The next generation will bridge the gap. While generally they will stay in the same neighborhoods as the parents, they will learn the language and absorb many of the host country’s culture. They will however usually be bilingual and quite comfortable going between both cultures. It is unusual to marry outside their ethnic group.
The third generation will move out of the neighborhoods and be mostly assimilated with the host country. Many will still speak some of the original language in order to communicate with the grandparents, but they will not be fluent. Most will marry close, but outside their immediate group.
The fourth generation may speak only a few words of the original language and will most likely identify fully with the host country.
All these factors have tended to be common among new immigrants to the US and Canada. It is tribal and it is for self preservation. There has always been safety in numbers. There is also the comfort factor of being able to understand those around you.
*
As for the decline of volunteering? It is evolution of society. As the needs of war evolved, so did the need for a standing army over the local farmer / militiaman. When voluntary compliance with laws didn’t work we hired police to keep order. When volunteer fire departments couldn’t handle the high tech requirements or societies needs, they were replaced with professional firefighters. When we thought children needed protection from abusive parents, we hired professional social workers to intervene. When we wanted more people to be better educated, we built schools and hired professional teachers. When voluntary compliance to supply wholesome food was unheeded by industry, we hired professional food inspectors.
Today we still use volunteers where they are needed. When it is better in society’s interest, we will usually hire a professional to do it. Volunteers will still organize children’s soccer games, but we will hire an engineer to build a bridge.
#2, Phillep,
What the eff are you babbling about? Who is this “Black family”? What does cultural diversity have to do with a sound ecological system?
The most racist people I know grew up in mixed neighborhoods, living next to and going to school with the people they now despise.
The most liberal people I know grew up in completely homogenous areas. My girlfriend is a good example. She grew up in western France and did not see her first black person until she was 11-12 years old.
A lot of racisim is based on behavior not skin color. I live in an apartment building with about 100 units. We just had a large black family (the first) move in. Nobody made anything about it at first. For some reason these people are almost always hanging out in the parking lot in front of the building. This has been a scandal and a big problem for some. Yesterday a woman told me she was moving because of it.
Interesting. I’ve always had that voice in the back of my head saying “Why is diversity a good thing?” in anything other than genetics. More diversity can lead to more “groupism” and discrimination.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t respect others, but we shouldn’t tout diversity as a strength, just as an aspect of life.
I liked #18’s question—“What is the take-away from this?” Mr Fusion at 33 darn near has all four corners nailed down. I only have a few other notes to add:
If GOUSA is going to be a nation of immigrants, its good to champion “diversity” because that is what we have. Saying its no good would only be self destructive? So, as Lauren says at #3–there are good and bad things about it. Lets admit the negative, and strive for the positive and minimize the transition?
Does the four generation melting pot take care of the turtle reflex? Even if we agreed in principle, the individual steps along the way would all be contested? English only just one of the easiest to discuss, with maybe birth control for those on welfare on the harder end? How about loyalty (to GOUSA and constitution) oaths along the way–and what to do with those who put God above all? What is the take-away? What is diversity that it should be favored or denied? Are there different issues within diversity that require different considerations? Ethnic diversity melts fairly easily, with lumps of religion spoiling the broth?
Its been said too often before–there are many “multi-lingual” societies, but there are no multi-culturral ones? ((Please add grains of salt where needed?))
>>Dumbass PC fuckwits can’t permit that, though.
Gosh…lot’s of pent-up hostility towards the “PC” notion of “love they neighbor”, isn’t there?
The opposite of “PC fuckwit” diversity is NOT “living happily every after, like Beaver and Wally and June and Ward did”, btw. It’s KKK lynch mobs, cross-burnings, dragging gay people behind the pickup truck until dead, gang wars, hate crimes etc.
As to Mr. Dvorak’s contention that “multi-cult” (is that some kind of San Fran cosmo/elitist nickname?) is a failed elitest experiment, a luxury item, I must disagree. Even if the notion that better educated and more intelligent people are likely to adapt better to multi-culti (and I would agree; you don’t find many Bloods, Crips, KKK members, mafiosi, Aryan Nationals, or other members of homogeneous non-multi-culti hate groups that have advanced degrees or mensa-level IQs), it’s better to aim high and fail than aim low and succeed.
We ALREADY have Bloods, Crips, KKK members, mafiosi, Aryan Nationals, and so many other homogeneous non-multi-culti hate groups. Is this our criterion for success?
In my town, we have Israeli-Americans, Palestinian-Amreicans, African-Americans, Caucasian-Americans, Latin-Americans, gay-Americans, straight-Americans, bi-Americans, Mulsim-Americans, Catholic-Americans, Hindu-Americans, Wiccan-Americans, auto mechanic-Americans, professor-Americans, housewife (and husband)-Americans, police-Americans, criminal-Americans, and just about every other type of -American you could imagine.
And with a few notable exceptions (like the criminal-Americans X police-Americans hybrid), we all get along fairly well, socialize, live in the same neighborhoods, and occasionally even intermarry.
Of course, it figures I’d move to a failed experimental cosmopolitan elitest latter-day Walden such as this, being a Dumbass PC Fuckwit!
i’m not surprised at all by the study.. if you look at nature, even after thousands of years you’d be hard pressed to find inter-special racial group co-mingling on a regular bases except were odd circumstances or brought them together. I fail to see why we should be any different.
while i have no doubt that in time, we would naturally become multicultural, the problem (which is blatantly obvious) is that we, in our case, just aren’t emotionally ready for it. -far from it. i say that because above all things, its human emotion the defines and separates us more than anything else, from all the other animals on the planet. -i still question our intelligence at times.. (or lack thereof)
-so a few high minded do gooders thought they were doing a good thing, but they didn’t think it through.
*forcing* us to be multicultral on the scale that it has been done was doomed from the start.
as was said, we are tribal. we still have alot of tribal instincts in out blood. We still needs alot more time to before everyone is content cohabitating amongst “strangers”
forcing it on us is just plain dumb and unnatural. it only serves those who’s power is derived by division and civil unrest. in time we will for the most part, act as one. this is not that time.
i need to get some sleep. you figure out the rest..
-soundwash
I think a number of people are intrepreting this backwards. Multiculturalism/diversity is aimed at preserving differences and the byproduct is segregation by ethnicity and it doesn’t work.
The opposite of this is “assimilation” which leads to the homogenous culture cited that does work. Assimilation is the difference between the 200 years of immigration that worked and today’s that doesn’t.
>>Assimilation is the difference between the 200 years of
>>immigration that worked
Ah, I see. You mean like the Sicilian Mafia, the Russian Mafia, the Jewish mob, Yakuza, Jamaican Posse, On Leong Tong, Tsung Tsing Association, Nazi Lowriders, MS-13, Greek Mafia, the Westies, ‘Ndrangheta, Gangster Disciples, and so forth?
Wow, what a success story!
>and today’s [immigration] that doesn’t.
Fucking Beaners. Everything’s their fault, right?? And anything they can’t be blamed for, the Puerto Ricans did.
Thank you, soundwash. You nailed it. That’s it in a nutshell.
Not letting people be around the other people they’re around, but forcing it. Coercing people to be neighborly, accepting, respectful, &c is utterly unnatural and will never work. Unengineered, unforced exposure to other people will sand off each groups rough edges over time. It’s the PC fuckwits who insist on jamming it down everyone else’s throats while themselves living in homogenous, lily-white environs with a token smattering of members of ‘approved’ minorities.
Some social change – no, MUCH social change has to take place in the time it takes to occur, no more no less. Affirmative Action and school busing are the prime American examples of the failure of trying to rush things to get the social result mandated by the Marxist champions of group rights over individual rights. Look around you at the racial and ethnic mess America has become and try telling me that that’s a success with a straight face. The excuses come fast and thick, but it amounts to the same logic used by the Drug Warriors; “Well, we’ve only had maybe some limited success, and the harder we try, the worse the problem gets, so the solution is obviously to keep doing the same counterproductive things, only more of them.”
Despite idiotic insinuations to the contrary, I personally was born, grew up and lived most of my life in three extremely multicultural areas, Washington, DC, South Florida and Houston. My closest friends and associates are remarkable for the fact that there are very few white American-born among them. My best and oldest friends consist of a Columbian, a Cuban, a Hungarian and another Irish / English / French / German mongrel like myself. So take your “KKK” bullshit and jam it up your sorry multiculti PC sheeple ass sideways.
I know multiculti by living it, from the inside out, not as some ivory-tower elitist asshole living in safe, ignorant isolation from the very cultures he so desperately wants to artificially mix. I went to school next to blacks, whites and Hispanics from all classes. We weren’t bussed there, the school was where we also lived, at a true intersection of cultures. And we did quite well. Now, 30+ years later of well-meaning but idiotic multiculti social policy, my old neighborhoods have been destroyed in the very name of diversity.
My home through my junior high years in Miami was in an area that had true, natural diversity, and it worked. It was reasonably safe, clean and quiet. The last time I checked, after the PC racists had done their number, the very block I grew up on, among blacks, Cubans and whites, where locking your doors and taking your keys out of the car ignition was optional, had been featured in the Miami Herald as the worst, most violent, crack-and-murder-infested slum in the entirety of the city of Miami.
Thanks, PC fuckwits. Your work there is done.
#17. No you don’t have to put any types of programs in place. Leave the system alone don’t force either diversity or segregation and the system will find it’s own level.
Guess I’m getting into this late. I’ll read the comments later. For now, I’ll just point out that here in New York City, one of the world capitals of cultural diversity, it is true that we are not a particularly trusting bunch. However, it is also true that this is the safest large city in the U.S. And, it is also true that the population growth we’re experiencing right now is enormous. People are moving here from all over because they want to live in such a great place to live. Cultural diversity gives endless entertainment, excellent food choices, and a chance to broaden one’s mind.
>>global warming IS junk science now
Yeah, just like that fucking “theory of evolution”. Commie pinko fags.
Let me guess: You’re a Republican.
Am I the only one that doesn’t care? This story just reads like an attempt to say “suburbanites, who are mostly white, give more to charity”.
I don’t see anything of value in this study, and I don’t see how it can be applied to improve things.
What I found so interesting in this article was an honest liberal. He came up with results that he didn’t like, tried and tried to fix them to get the result he wanted and then shrugged his shoulders and told the truth.
People feel closest to those beings that most closely resemble them. So it is no surprise to me that people volunteer to help those who most closely resemble themselves.
Dogs can be cute, loyal creatures with human like expressions, but in their natural state they are ruthless, effecient killers. It cracked me up when people went ape shit when Micheal Vick et. al let his dogs be the killers they were meant to be. In nature as in Micheal Vick’s backyard, it is killed or be killed. But it amazed me to realize that people were unable to emotionally seperate Vick’s dogs from their own. Had Michael Vick been fighting with insects, cows, or fish, outside of the gambling issue, no one would have given a shit.
I have often thought the issue with race has more to do with being allowed to congregate more than people actually physically being forced together. I remember in high school a teacher saying hanging out with blacks made you a better person. Really, all blacks? Hanging out with black pimps and pushers would make me a better person? That teacher was a blatant racist.
Two of my best friends in high school were Korean and black, and they both wanted to and did marry women of their own race. In other words, the minorites knew that forced integration was crap.
To me, the great equalizer is the work place. I want someone good, and I don’t care about their race or background.
However, it does raise an interesting point about admissions to graduate schools and quotas. If there is a shortage of inner city lawyers and doctors, should graduate schools admit more minorites who are more likely to work there even if those minority students have lower grades? After reading this study, I am more inclined to say yes.
#42, Lauren,
…the very block I grew up on, … as the worst, most violent, crack-and-murder-infested slum in the entirety of the city of Miami.
So how is that the fault of diversity? Most cities have experienced slums and ghettos originating in the inner sectors. Too often neighborhoods that had once been beautiful are now overrun with crime and poverty.
Shoot, in our little burg of less than 4,000, even we have our slum area. And they don’t come more homogeneously white then us !!! The area has nice winding streets, mature trees, and the remains of what were once nice houses.
I understand your distaste with what happened to your old neighborhood. Sheet, I’d be just as upset. I know the neighborhood I was born into (we moved when I was three) and my grandmother’s have changed to where English is a second language. Remember, Alice, you can’t go home anymore. Especially after 50 years of progression. My mother sold our grandma’s house to some Italian immigrants after grandma’s death. They later sold it to some Portuguese. If that area was a crime ridden cesspool, I’d probably be even more upset then you are. Luckily it isn’t.
The crime and decay you see should not be confused with ethnic diversity.
If we control for social class, all ethnicities have a very similar amount of street crime activity in their populations. When ethnic minorities move to “white” neighborhoods that are lower in crime, their crime rate is the same as the rest of the neighborhood, while whites living in lower class areas tend to be as criminal as their minority counterparts.
http://www.sociology.org.uk/pblsdce.pdf
As Scott mentions, ethnic diversity has brought so many riches to our shores. Be it German Beer, French Pastries, Italian Spaghetti, Polish Sausage, Japanese Sushi, Chinese Noodles, Indian Curry, Polynesian Pineapples, Lebanese Falafel, or Mexican Burritos, everyone is enriched. Of course, if you still prefer the diet Americans ate around the time of the Revolutionary War, …
Ethnic diversity also brought us Santa Claus, Halloween, and the Easter Bunny.
#30 Lauren the Ghoti
and BAM science is racist bullshit!
actually, i never said anything to even imply that i thought it was racist , that’s all you.
#42 Lauren my old neighborhoods have been destroyed in the very name of diversity
i thought conservatives were all about personal responsibility and that blaming environmental factors for criminal behavior was coddling criminals, now you’re blaming diversity? wtf?
#49 – “As Scott mentions, ethnic diversity has brought so many riches to our shores. Be it German Beer, French Pastries, Italian Spaghetti, Polish Sausage, Japanese Sushi, Chinese Noodles, Indian Curry, Polynesian Pineapples, Lebanese Falafel, or Mexican Burritos, everyone is enriched. Of course, if you still prefer the diet Americans ate around the time of the Revolutionary War, …
Ethnic diversity also brought us Santa Claus, Halloween, and the Easter Bunny. “
What you’re mentioning are the items that have been assimilated into mainstream culture, they’re no longer diverse.
grog – I took your post and copied it word-for-word, substituting left for right to show how the ideologically-bound of both left AND right are such total hypocrites when it comes to science that doesn’t support their respective agendas…
Rightists sieze on junk physical science to deny global warming and evolution; leftists seize on junk social science to deny heritability of intelligence and behavior. Neither side is objective or honest when it comes to promoting what their ideologue leaders’ve already determined for them must be true, in order for their ideology to remain valid.
• • • • • •
On the second one, I apologize – the phrase should’ve read, “..in the cause of ENFORCED, ARTIFICIAL, EXTERNALLY IMPOSED diversity.” I somehow assumed that those qualifiers were clearly implicit from the context.
The knee-jerk liberals running the city at that time determined in their wisdom that there were insufficient numbers of blacks in my neighborhood, even though the ethnic balance was very close to that of the city as a whole – i.e. similar % of Hispanics / whites / blacks.
So in order to force “diversity” on us, they worked with the county to erect low-income housing which, they made sure, whites and Hispanics, no matter how poor, were ineligible for.
Today, as per the Herald article, and eyewitness reports from friends still in S. Fla., you cannot walk down the street there in broad daylight without risking your very life.
• • • • • • • •
Where do you get the bizarre idea that I am a *shudder* ‘conservative? Just because I refuse to put on the blindfold and drink PC Kool-Aid?? Apparently you have not encountered my type before. We’re quite unusual in contemporary America, although we were once commonplace. We’re called “independent thinkers.” We perversely refuse to be bullshitted or bullied into thinking what someone else with an agenda wants us to think. Like I said, we’re scarce on the ground these days…
#52 – iGW,
As society becomes more and more one single global society, nothing will be considered diverse, that’s true. However, we still do consider these separate items even though they are fairly mainstream now, though not so mainstream that you knew what Shawarma was.
And how will we get new things into the mainstream? Diversity continues to add new cultural items, and not just food. Theater, music, art, alternative viewpoints, all are increased by increased diversity.
And, again, where diversity is great, people will pay top dollar to be around it. That must mean that people find something good about it. Manhattan real estate purchase price is currently at over $1,000 per square foot!!
>>t cracked me up when people went ape shit when Micheal
>>Vick et. al let his dogs be the killers they were meant to be.
“the killers they were meant to be”?? wtf post-nuclear holocaust land do you come from?? Obviously, you’ve never had any pit bulls, American Staffordshire terriers, Rottweilers, Dobermans or any of the other “killer” dogs. I’d say the most “dangerous” dogs, based on inborn temperament, are cocker spaniels and dalmations. Check with any dog breeder.
Those dogs aren’t born killers. They are made that way, buy (alleged) fuckwads like Vick who chain them, beat them, and reward them when they rip something to bits.
#53 sorry, when i hear people freak out about PC, i assume they’re conservatives
what’s going on in miami is going on many cities, and it has nothing to do with diversity, it has to do with the fact that section-8 housing brings down property values and so those who can afford to, leave — leaving neighborhoods populated by people who take more in services than pay in via taxes, and it starts the duo of the vicious circle of poverty begetting crime begetting poverty, and of ghetto colonialism where shop owners no longer live in the community so the money just leaves.
i would point out that the article discusses the feeling of community engagement, and not socio-economic impact and/or crime.
also 90% percent of what’s referred to as Political Correctness is just common courtesy, like how the Mormon’s prefer their church be referred to as The Church of Later Day Saints, it’s good to be polite and respectful of other people’s feelings, and it’s rude to be rude. and yes, it’s right to shame people who are rude and inconsiderate.
#33 Lauren – One of the great things about talking these things out is the opportunity to find common ground. I, for one, fully agree that anything worth doing is most easily ruined by trying to force it upon people. Truly, the sort of diversity I cherish is the sort you and I grew up with, places where many cultures live side by side, not segregated off into their own little ghettos. And, further, this is the sort of diversity that prevailed in places like the Ohio valley before the puritanical and racist types moved in during the 1800’s; many old line Americans (i.e. from pre-revolutionary families) gained a lot of genetic diversity from this era of exploration and cooperation.
#48 JZ – As a biologist, I find your assertions about dogs (and by extension, their ancestors the wolves) to be laughable. In their wild state, canines rarely if ever are observed to kill each other, even in fights between packs. They kill their prey, but it is a waste of energy to kill each other when a brief fight and some posturing will suffice. It is only through abusing dogs that they can be made into killers, and while nature may be harsh, she does not match Men for cruelty. Generally speaking, natural systems value energy too much to waste it on cruelty.
As for associating with pimps and pushers; Jesus Christ broke bread with prostitutes and tax collectors. He even ate dinner with the Pharisees once, and they were literally ruining the Jewish society. Did that make him a worse person? If they had happened to be black prostitutes, would that have made a difference?
With a few rare exceptions, I think what all this boils down to is not a disagreement on the ideal end: that is, a color blind and cohesive society. As Lauren noted, we are disagreeing about the meaning of the word. Some think diversity means the state of cohesive community that some of us have enjoyed in the past; some think it means the practice of screwing this state up by insisting that everyone must band into tribes, and look to their past differences, instead of to a brighter future. This only goes to show the danger of redefining words to mean their opposite, as Orwell warned. Both “sides” in the US would do well to end this practice.
>>Jesus Christ broke bread with prostitutes and tax collectors.
Better watch those reference to Jesus, Li. You’re liable to be attacked by worshippers at the Altar of Atheism 😉
I’m used to it, Mr. Mustard. The mentality of the those that make victims of themselves and those that make aggression their method of problem solving are but mirror images; the roles often alternate through history from the aggressor to the aggrieved, forever and ever. Some militant atheists have a compulsion to attack because they see that some ‘Christians’ have a serious victim complex. And the reason that some ‘Christians’ focus on these attacks (though they are usually impotent) is that Atheists make the most convenient persecutor to feed their complex. As for some atheists inability to draw distinctions or understand metaphor, and their constant generalizations, these too are the fundies main disabilities. The reason some atheists attack ‘Christianity’ is that in it they see a reflection of themselves.
#54 – Diversity simply means we’re still immature. The final goal is the best parts get kept, everything else discarded and we end up in homogeneity.
#49
You forgot Nachos, taco sauce, americanised chinese food and pokemon.