We Can't Pick Our Relatives, But We Can Pick Our Friends

At City Paper, John Leo examines Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam’s latest research on diversity, which is interesting on several grounds. Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, has apparently discovered (surprise, surprise) that societal heterogeneity, a.k.a., "diversity" is disruptive and destructive of “the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities.” Suffice it to say for the moment that this is not the sort of speaking truth to power the folks in Moscow on the Charles had in mind.

Ordinarily, this is where I’d dish up the usual disclaimer about reading too much from a mere review, itself from a mere summary of these results without examining the data directly. Therein, however, lies the second interesting point here – there’s nothing to look at.

Putnam has long been aware that his findings could have a big effect on the immigration debate. Last October, he told the Financial Times that “he had delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity.” He said it “would have been irresponsible to publish without that,” a quote that should raise eyebrows. Academics aren’t supposed to withhold negative data until they can suggest antidotes to their findings.... Nor has Putnam made details of his study available for examination by peers and the public. So far, he has published only an initial summary of his findings....

Now isn't that interesting?

Race, as between African Americans and Americans of European descent, is a special case for all the obvious reasons, but ethnic strife in general is as American as it gets. Little wonder, since the entire history of America has been the New World recapitulation of the ethnic and tribal warfare of humanity since time immemorial. We like people who look and act like we do, tolerate minor differences reasonably well, major differences not well at all. Whatever its evolutionary adaptive advantage may once have been, such lingering but deeply seated suspicions and animosities are rationally irrelevant in contemporary society; but human beings aren’t merely rational animals, so such irrelevance is, itself, irrelevant.

In the Bad Old Days (and here is where African Americans were, involuntarily, the most glaring exception) the American solution to this was assimilation. You want to be an American? Learn English, if you don’t already speak it, forsake huge chunks of whatever culture you physically left behind and get with the program of baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Oh, wait a minute. What’s that smell? Can I have a taste of that? Okay, forget the hot dogs and give me the recipe for that. Hey, someday it could become as American as pizza pie.

Without a doubt, assimilation works better from the dominant culture’s perspective than from the assimilatee’s. Typically, it’s a generational thing. Worse yet, it has tended to work best for the assimilating group only when they’ve been here long enough for the next boatload of huddled masses to hit the shores. Still, last time I checked all the “No Dogs or Irish” signs have been taken down in Boston.

Given the opportunity, people still self-segregate and the fact has far less to do with whether they are living in an open, welcoming society or not. Racial and ethnic strife are way lower today than they were when I was a teenager, but check out any public high school in America to see self-segregation in action. Or hit a few churches on Sunday morning.

Groups don’t integrate, the efforts of social planners to shuffle them together like a deck of cards notwithstanding. Individuals do that, one person at a time, over time, voluntarily. Of course, on balance immigration is a net benefit to the United States. It isn’t the mere fact of immigration that endangers the social fabric nearly so much as the cognitive dissonance driven theories of how such immigration should be processed. Leo again:

Though Putnam is wary of what right-wing politicians might do with his findings, the data might give pause to those on the left, and in the center as well. If he’s right, heavy immigration will inflict social deterioration for decades to come, harming immigrants as well as the native-born. Putnam is hopeful that eventually America will forge a new solidarity based on a “new, broader sense of we.” The problem is how to do that in an era of multiculturalism and disdain for assimilation.

Putnam can hope all he wants, for whatever little good it will do him personally. The solution to the problem lies obviously and exactly in a rejection of the delusions of our multicultural, anti-assimilation era.