Posted by Helen on: 08.13.2007 /
My Mom sent me a recent newspaper article called The downside of diversity after I posted about diversity on Saturday. It begins
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.
I thought there were lots of interesting points made by the article. The diversity which reduces civic engagement is beneficial in the workplace: “by hanging out with people different than you, you’re likely to get more insights. Diverse teams tend to be more productive.”
It points out that Putnam the researcher was brave to publish results at odds with his own favoring of diversity. His results are being used against what he wants by conservatives who want to limit immigration.
Putnam’s own response is “We need to work harder to overcome these problems in communities with greater diversity”. He thinks increased diversity is inevitable so in fact, we have no choice.
Comment by: Laura M.
1“…the diversity which reduces civic engagement…”
This statement assumes that diversity is the cause of the problem. Correlation does not equal cause.
A factor which is likely to be closer related to the cause is income level/economic class of families living in neighborhoods where there is more diversity.
Lower income families tend to live in areas where there is more diversity. Due to financial constraints, they have less ‘choice’ about where they can live.
There is also a culture of low civic engagement among low income populations.
I’ve lived in ‘poverty’ (by American standards) my entire life, so I have quite a bit of personal experience with this.
Comment by: Helen
2Laura, I respect what you’re saying. To be fair to the researcher, he did try to analyze exactly what it was about more diverse neighborhoods that reduced civic engagement. From page 2 of the article
I think this is a complex issue and I wouldn’t be surprised if the analysis of it doesn’t go far enough.
What I do like is that the researcher’s response is “Let’s accept the diversity and try to fix the problems” rather than “This means we need to limit immigration more”.
Comment by: Laura M.
3I like that too. I wouldn’t have my children if it weren’t for immigration, as their father ‘immigrated’ here from Mexico.
I will say that I have yet to read of any explanation as to how a factor like the effect of poverty on behavior could possibly be accurately ‘statistically taken into account’.
My personal experience tells me that income level is likely the primary factor.
I’ve lived in areas of great diversity my entire life. When I lived in areas of extreme povery I saw ample and continual examples of the very behaviors described in the article. I grew up with it, as a child raised by a single mother and living in a housing project (my mother was 22 years old with five children to feed when my father was sent to prison- he served a 16 year term).
I saw noticeably less of this type of attitude in more middle income neighborhoods. I now live in North Dallas right on the outskirts of the Park Cities area, the wealthiest part of Dallas. Most people here are very ‘engaged’.
The major change in these neighborhoods has been income level (as well as attitude). I continue to live in an area of diversity as far as other factors go: race, ethicity, nationality, religion, even income level is very diverse (or I wouldn’t be able to afford to live here). Overall though, there is no denying that North Dallas is the part of town where the average income level is far higher than anywhere else in the city.
I attend a church (First Unitarian Church of Dallas) that again is a prime example of amazing diversity, including that of sexual orientation and even of religious beliefs, or lack of beliefs – it is a UU church after all. It is the most socially engaged, politically active church I’ve ever seen or heard of.
The only area where it lacks diversity? Income/social class. It is located smack in the heart of Park Cities, surrounded by mansions.
My children attend a magnet school very near where we live. By law it has been required to be racially diverse (32% white, 32% hispanic, 32% black, 4% other). It is also required that children come from all sections of the city- each area must be equally represented. Naturally as a result of all this we have a large variety of cultures, religions etc.
This school has the largest PTA membership of any school in Dallas, and I can personally testify as to how ‘engaged’ the families are, despite the fact that most of them do not live in this part of Dallas! The vast majority have to come from far across town (in rush hour traffic) in order to spend any time at the school.
And never a complaint about that to be heard.
I think the fact that the school happens to be located in the wealthiest part of Dallas is directly related to why the waiting list to get in is hundreds of names long.
If the exact same school with the exact same programs, teachers, materials, school district support system etc. existed in the poorest neighborhood in Dallas, would the waiting list be as long? Would it have the same PTA membership/involvement level? Would as many people drive from all over the city to spend time there and send their children to school there?
Physical environment has an affect on behavior. Middle class and wealthy people don’t even like driving
through poor neighborhoods, let alone spend any time visiting, hanging out or being otherwise ‘socially engaged’ there.
Now just imagine if you had to walk every day through the worst neighborhoods of your town if you wanted to go anywhere (because you live there and you’re too poor to be able to afford a car). How much time would you begin to spend safe at home in front of your TV?
Comment by: Helen
4Thanks Laura – wow, I had no idea about the family situation you grew up in. That must have been really hard.
I think the researcher should have interviewed you as part of his research! Studies and theories are all very well, but the first-hand experience of thoughtful people can provide information beyond what they can come up with.
Comment by: Karen
5Very interesting. Actually, his findings make some sense if you think about it from a strictly evolutionary viewpoint, in terms of “in group” and “out group” behaviors.
I listened to a renowned neurologist’s audio course on the brain last year, and in it he made the point that humans really are genetically “programmed” to preserve the life and health of our closest relatives. He kept using the phrase: “We’d give our lives for two brothers or eight cousins,” to explain how we have that innate drive to affiliate with and protect those most similar to us genetically.
Feeling more comfortable, more trusting and more engaged with people who look like us goes right along with that trait.
I agree with the author when he says we should work to overcome that tendency, of course. I think studying it and recognizing it actually helps do that.
Comment by: Laura M.
6Karen,
I agree with what you’re saying, almost completely (if that makes any sense).
I just had a discussion (argument)
with my ‘conservative’ brother about this very subject just a few weeks ago. I said that I thought it was important for us to admit our prejudices. I feel the denial of the issue is worse than the actual bigotry itself.
But how would what you’re saying explain Putnam’s finding that where there is more diversity people are less likely to vote, and volunteer or donate to charity?
Why don’t people just look for charities that benefit people who are like them? Why don’t they just leave their diverse neighborhoods to find a more homogenous setting where they are more comfortable volunteering and being active in the community?
How would ‘out group’ dynamics of a diverse neighborhood prevent people from voting?
Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to “distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders”
Notice the distrust ‘regardless of skin color’ and even towards friends.
I still believe most of the issues he’s referring to apply not exclusively, but for large part, to what goes on in neighborhoods where people have little money.
How many unmowed lawns and broken windows do you find in wealthy neighborhoods, compared to middle class neighborhoods, compared to poor neighborhoods?
Poor people often can’t afford to mow lawns, or fix things once they’ve been broken. That halfway answers the question.
But it doesn’t exactly explain why wealthy people are so ‘active’ or ‘engaged’ that they rarely leave things broken or messy. Why do people who can afford to mow their lawns care if their lawns are mowed in the first place? Why do they spend so much money to grow grass just to turn around and murder it.
Because people feel better in certain environments.
It feels good to have a neat, well cared for home and lawn. If feels good to be thin and physically fit. It feels good to have nice clothes, a good car. Sometimes a really nice haircut/style can make you feel as if you can take on the world.
You smile and people smile back.
How would you feel if you spent virtually all of your life in some of the worst neighborhoods in your town? Not to visit or volunteer, but because you live there and you have no way out. A neighborhood full of broken windows, roads, streetlamps, cars, buildings… broken everything?
You frown and people frown back. You become distrusting.
Comment by: David H
7Not sure, but there might also be a control factor here. Poorer people feel less able to take direct control over factors affecting their lives. The rich tend to see things differently in my experience. Also, in diverse neighborhoods their might not be enough homogeneity to feel as if there is support or a bloc behind your civic involvement. Without that group, there might be a sense you don’t have enough clout to control things.
I actually feel more comfortable in diverse settings. My wife is Vietnamese and my children look different enough to trigger a response in many people (they can’t quite put their finger on it, but my kids don’t look American). But my experience of living in diverse neighborhoods was that very few people shared my interests.
Comment by: Steve S.
8Couple quick thoughts:
My European friends would laughingly point out the uniquely American focus on ethnic tensions that blinds us to the much larger realities of class. (Which has been touched on by others here.)
I find it a profound experience of (what I would call) the Spirit of God (you may explain it in whatever language you choose) when I am able to discover that I have a deeper bond that exists with those who have deeply committed their lives to the person of Jesus, than I do with family members, or members of my own culture, ethnicity, class, etc. (We just this weekend spent an amazingly intimate, and joyous time with a group of three foreigners who stayed at our home; we did not know them, they emailed us asking if we would be willing to open our home to them.) I would die for these new friends as easily as I would my brother (for the record I don’t know just how easily that would be…).
I think diversity tends to prohibit true communication, understanding and intimacy. However, when we push through and work towards deep communication, understanding, and intimacy, and begin to love one another then diversity becomes a wonderful strength!
Comment by: Helen
9Steve, I used to think I had a deeper bond with people deeply committed to Jesus, but now I think it was probably just in my imagination.
Well put, Steve.
Comment by: Elaine
10Great discussion. I love how each of you brings your knowledge, life experience to the discussion — ahh the diversity of it all.
I will have to check out Putnam’s new research.
Thinking about what Laura M has said about income/social class, I can appreciate what she is saying and agree with her. Was there any mention of how much of what Putnam found was related to classism? (I also agree with Helen’s European friends on the classism issue.)
In the 8 years, I experienced as a single parent with 3 children – I didn’t have much energy or time left at the end of the day or on the weekend to volunteer. Financially, I made just enough not to qualify for any assistance. I think they call that the working poor. I’m glad that chapter of my life is past. (Hmm, I just remembered being the only single parent in a meeting and listening to these couples talk badly about how single parents (females) don’t really care about their children – until I embarrassed all of them by letting them know that I was one of those single parents.)
And so, it makes sense to me, that when you are putting all your energy into surviving – it is difficult to think about volunteering, or that your vote counts, or that banding together as a neighborhood could and would make things better for all – and, yet some people have the strength and courage to do that. I’ve met many of these people.
My friend, Vanessa is one of these people. She lives in a very poor neighborhood in downtown Cincinnati – Over The Rhine. She is a single mom with 4 children and 1 grandchild. She is also handicapped. And yet, she has created a non-profit to help the children in her community. She runs an after school program for them. In the summer, she runs other activites to engage them in making their community better. And in all of this, the City of Cincinnati puts up road blocks to her work. She keeps on, keeping on.
I have watched a system that has been created to support the status quo of classism.
Comment by: seekingsomething
11Mmmm, I’ve been googling for hours about all this. How exciting!: Prof Putman is currently over in the UK, as part of a 5 year tenure at Manchester University. One of his projects is a comparative study of civic engagement between the US and the UK: http://www.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/socialchange/research/social-change/civic-engagement.html It will be interesting to follow their progress.
My first thoughts on this echoed Laura’s: that correlation doesn’t necessarily imply causality and that it would be interesting therefore to explore the differences/similarities between diverse communities of different socioeconomic staus. However, based on what I’ve read so far, Putman does seem to have explored these issues reasonably extensively. One hypothesis that springs to my mind is that whilst one might perhaps expect to find greater levels of tension within diverse communities of lower socioeconomic status, it still might not necessarily follow that levels of tension within a community are directly related to levels of civic engagement. That is, being rich may facilitate civic engagement to the extent that rich people may have more time and less stress to get in the way. But maybe SES status alone is insufficient to increase any given individual’s ‘botheredness-to-engage’ to a level that they should be proactive in a community where difference looms larger than sameness.
Oh dear I don’t feel I’m expresing myself very articulately here… I’m guessing that I probably won’t be getting a call from either Harvard or Manchester to explore further the ‘botheredness-to-engage’ phenomenon…. ;)
Comment by: Helen
12ss and others, I really appreciate the thoughtful points you have made about socio-economic status (SES) and botheredness-to-engage. It would be neat to know more about Putnam’s research and the extent to which he looked at the effects of them.
It makes sense to me that SES is a factor and also that diversity would strongly mitigate against people with low SES overcoming the obstacles associated with their SES. If you are poor and powerless in a group in which everyone is the same way, you have as much of a shot at having a voice as anyone else. But if you are poor and surrounded by richer people, everything is obviously stacked against you; how can you hope to compete against people with more resources than you? Why would anyone listen to you rather than those other people?
This makes me think how amazing it is when people from very disadvantaged backgrounds, in locations where not everyone is poor, manage to beat the odds and become influential leaders. They must be incredibly brave, persistent people.
ss, I looked at some of the links after reading your comment (following your lead :)) – wow, there is a lot of interesting stuff out there! I hadn’t heard of the Saguaro Seminar on Civic Engagement in America until now. And I didn’t realize until I looked at that page, how many recent articles have been based on their work.
Comment by: Karen
13In my experience with community organizing and civic involvement, people in “like” enclaves do tend to more likely share goals and become engaged in working together in their communities. They might be lobbying for a new playground, a better school system, a new stop sign, whatever.
It seems harder for people from un-like backgrounds (whether that’s religious, social, racial or whatever) to find common bonds and cooperate. Not saying it can’t be done, just that it rings true to me that it’s more difficult and happens less naturally.
One of the best things about the CCDA, as I mentioned when writing about that, was that it deliberately encouraged people from various ethnic and racial backgrounds to work together for the common good. They recognized that this wouldn’t happen naturally, so they called it “intentional” cooperation- in other words, you had to start out with the deliberate and conscious intent.
Yes, those who are just scraping by economically are less likely to have the time or energy for community involvement, no question. Those who can make it happen anyway are true heroes, in my book.
Comment by: Steve S.
14The wonder of it is that this is not a contrived ‘spiritual’ bond. (If by spiritual you mean ‘whispy’) But rather a deep commitment to the same purposes, intentions, and desires (this is what I understand ‘spirit’ to mean). We are not members of the same club who call each other brother so as to create a bond, but rather vastly different people who share very little in common and yet discover a shared central core (our spirit) of our person.
It is this that I see as the driving force for ‘good’ diversity. When people are linked together by spirit instead of geography, race, worldview, political persuasion, gender, class, or religious affiliation, then something special (I would argue heavenly) is occuring…
Comment by: seekingsomething
15Steve S, said
I’m not sure that I agree that diversity itself prohibits communication etc, but I think rather that our tendency to prefer the saftety that comes from sameness, inhibits our ability to communicate with those v different from us.
But, yes, I agree with you here absolutely!
I think I’d probably need to better understand what you mean by ‘bond’ to get deep into discussion on this. But, may I suggest, Steve, that entertaining ‘new friends’ for a weekend is a bit different to living in a diverse community, week in, week out. Loving people for a short, identified, finite period doesn’t seem to me to be really demanding in the same way as loving our neighbours who are a permanent fixture :)
I think it is interesting that Putman’s findings suggest that while diversity is viewed as a strength in the workplace (where two heads are better than one and there is a common urge to make profit), it is something that we don’t seem collectively to want to engage with at home. Maybe as a society we are just too focused on engagement with activity that brings material rewards and don’t recognise properlythe ‘payoff’ that comes from working at relationships in our communities.
Comment by: Steve S.
16I agree completely! …and I stand corrected. I believe that God smiles at the wondrous diversity that exists, it is a result of that fundamental twist in our natures that makes diversity uncomfortable and challenging.
I also agree, (it is funny how written words can be both more precise and yet also more confusing), there is a whole context to what I was trying to communicate with that story; that I had a profound experience with these people that revolved around our common purposes irrespective of vast differences in worldview.
I have, in the last year, had my romantic notions about living in diversity summarily trashed. I still believe it is beautiful and worthwhile, but having schitzophrenics sleeping on the front porch of your family home is anything but romantic. Sharing a deep friendship with a person from Kenya is beautiful, but it is not easy. Having people in your Church who disagree with what your Church teaches is wonderful, but at times frustrating. Loving people who are sexually broken is a priveledge, but not ‘fun.’
Comment by: Helen
17Steve, I appreciate your honesty throughout this diversity discussion, in admitting it can be very challenging and frustrating; that the reality is not necessarily the romantic ideal we might like to wish it was.
I know that in reality this blog community is NOT very diverse. But perhaps it can be a small step in improving our ability to deal with diversity if we can learn to handle the small amount here well.
Comment by: seekingsomething
18Well said, Helen.
And my thanks too, Steve, for sharing. I really appreciate that you are so willing to be open about your thoughts and beliefs, despite our constant questions! I hope you realise that the questioning comes because a desire to understand, and in view of your willingness to share, rather than from any desire to pick apart and undermine your beliefs.
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog too :)
Comment by: Laura M.
19Sorry I missed this entry earlier Helen. Thanks for your comments 8-)
I often forget just how different my childhood was from most. Well…not just my childhood.