🚀 go-pugleaf

On Feb 5, 4:44 pm, "Ralf" <90835x...@sneakemail.com> wrote:
> Fragmented Future
>
>   In the presence of [ethnic] diversity, we hunker down. We act
>   like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been
>   imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are
>   not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who
>   do look like us.
>
>   -Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam
>
> It was one of the more irony-laden incidents in the history of
> celebrity social scientists. While in Sweden to receive a $50,000
> academic prize as political science professor of the year, Harvard's
> Robert D. Putnam, a former Carter administration official who made his
> reputation writing about the decline of social trust in America in his
> bestseller Bowling Alone, confessed to Financial Times columnist John
> Lloyd that his latest research discovery--that ethnic diversity
> decreases trust and co-operation in communities--was so explosive that
> for the last half decade he hadn't dared announce it "until he could
> develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity,
> saying it `would have been irresponsible to publish without that.'"
>
> {snip}
>
> When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they
> showed that the more people of different races lived in the same
> community, the greater the loss of trust. `They don't trust the local
> mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people
> and they don't trust institutions,' said Prof Putnam. `The only thing
> there's more of is protest marches and TV watching.'
>
> Lloyd noted, "Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, `the
> most diverse human habitation in human history.'"
>
> continuedhttp://www.amren.com/mtnews/archives/2007/02/fragmented_futu.php

Can't argue with Putnam on this issue.

gregory