The research of Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, has led him to conclude what anyone who has spent any time on a college campus knows empirically: Diverse communities are often comprised of people who prefer to stick with people like themselves. Putting people in communities with others unlike themselves makes them less trusting, less sociable, less involved in their community than they are in more homogenous settings.
Actually Putnam's findings are more profound than this brief summary make make them sound because they bear on the problem of immigration and its short and mid-term consequences. Putnam describes these consequences in terms which sound pretty dire.
John Leo writes about Putnam's conclusions at City Journal. He says:
Neither age nor disparities of wealth explain this result. "Americans raised in the 1970s," he writes, "seem fully as unnerved by diversity as those raised in the 1920s." And the "hunkering down" occurred no matter whether the communities were relatively egalitarian or showed great differences in personal income. Even when communities are equally poor or rich, equally safe or crime-ridden, diversity correlates with less trust of neighbors, lower confidence in local politicians and news media, less charitable giving and volunteering, fewer close friends, and less happiness.
Read Leo's whole column at the link.
RLC
