By Michael
Jonas
IHT via The
Boston Globe
Sunday,
August 5, 2007
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.
"The
extent of the effect is shocking," says Scott Page, a University of
Michigan political scientist.
The study
comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of
intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools,
and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is
already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale
immigration causes to the nation's social fabric. But with demographic trends
already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real
question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that
Putnam's research predicts.
"We
can't ignore the findings," says Ali Noorani, executive director of the
Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition. "The big question
we have to ask ourselves is, what do we do about it; what are the next
steps?"
The study
is part of a fascinating new portrait of diversity emerging from recent
scholarship. Diversity, it shows, makes us uncomfortable -- but discomfort, it
turns out, isn't always a bad thing. Unease with differences helps explain why
teams of engineers from different cultures may be ideally suited to solve a
vexing problem. Culture clashes can produce a dynamic give-and-take, generating
a solution that may have eluded a group of people with more similar backgrounds
and approaches. At the same time, though, Putnam's work adds to a growing body
of research indicating that more diverse populations seem to extend themselves
less on behalf of collective needs and goals.
His
findings on the downsides of diversity have also posed a challenge for Putnam,
a liberal academic whose own values put him squarely in the pro-diversity camp.
Suddenly finding himself the bearer of bad news, Putnam has struggled with how
to present his work. He gathered the initial raw data in 2000 and issued a
press release the following year outlining the results. He then spent several
years testing other possible explanations
When he
finally published a detailed scholarly analysis in June in the journal
Scandinavian Political Studies, he faced criticism for straying from data into
advocacy. His paper argues strongly that the negative effects of diversity can
be remedied, and says history suggests that ethnic diversity may eventually
fade as a sharp line of social demarcation.
"Having
aligned himself with the central planners intent on sustaining such social
engineering, Putnam concludes the facts with a stern pep talk," wrote
conservative commentator Ilana Mercer, in a recent Orange County Register op-ed
titled "Greater diversity equals more misery."
Putnam has
long staked out ground as both a researcher and a civic player, someone willing
to describe social problems and then have a hand in addressing them. He says
social science should be "simultaneously rigorous and relevant,"
meeting high research standards while also "speaking to concerns of our
fellow citizens." But on a topic as charged as ethnicity and race, Putnam
worries that many people hear only what they want to.
"It
would be unfortunate if a politically correct progressivism were to deny the
reality of the challenge to social solidarity posed by diversity," he
writes in the new report. "It would be equally unfortunate if an
ahistorical and ethnocentric conservatism were to deny that addressing that
challenge is both feasible and desirable."
Putnam is
the nation's premier guru of civic engagement. After studying civic life in
Italy in the 1970s and 1980s, Putnam turned his attention to the US, publishing
an influential journal article on civic engagement in 1995 that he expanded
five years later into the best-selling "Bowling Alone." The book
sounded a national wake-up call on what Putnam called a sharp drop in civic
connections among Americans. It won him audiences with presidents Bill Clinton
and George W. Bush, and made him one of the country's best known social
scientists.
Putnam
claims the US has experienced a pronounced decline in "social
capital," a term he helped popularize. Social capital refers to the social
networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood
associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When
social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods
are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote.
The results
of his new study come from a survey Putnam directed among residents in 41 US
communities, including Boston. Residents were sorted into the four principal
categories used by the US Census: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were
asked how much they trusted their neighbors and those of each racial category,
and questioned about a long list of civic attitudes and practices, including
their views on local government, their involvement in community projects, and
their friendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture
of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the
state of social ties.
Putnam knew
he had provocative findings on his hands. He worried about coming under some of
the same liberal attacks that greeted Daniel Patrick Moynihan's landmark 1965
report on the social costs associated with the breakdown of the black family. There
is always the risk of being pilloried as the bearer of "an inconvenient
truth," says Putnam.
After
releasing the initial results in 2001, Putnam says he spent time "kicking
the tires really hard" to be sure the study had it right. Putnam realized,
for instance, that more diverse communities tended to be larger, have greater
income ranges, higher crime rates, and more mobility among their residents --
all factors that could depress social capital independent of any impact ethnic
diversity might have.
"People
would say, 'I bet you forgot about X,'" Putnam says of the string of
suggestions from colleagues. "There were 20 or 30 X's."
But even
after statistically taking them all into account, the connection remained
strong: Higher diversity meant lower social capital. In his findings, 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, to volunteer
less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to
register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith
that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of
the television."
"People
living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down' -- that is, to
pull in like a turtle," Putnam writes.
In
documenting that hunkering down, Putnam challenged the two dominant schools of
thought on ethnic and racial diversity, the "contact" theory and the
"conflict" theory. Under the contact theory, more time spent with
those of other backgrounds leads to greater understanding and harmony between
groups. Under the conflict theory, that proximity produces tension and discord.
Putnam's
findings reject both theories. In more diverse communities, he says, there were
neither great bonds formed across group lines nor heightened ethnic tensions,
but a general civic malaise. And in perhaps the most surprising result of all,
levels of trust were not only lower between groups in more diverse settings,
but even among members of the same group.
"Diversity,
at least in the short run," he writes, "seems to bring out the turtle
in all of us."
The overall
findings may be jarring during a time when it's become commonplace to sing the
praises of diverse communities, but researchers in the field say they shouldn't
be.
"It's
an important addition to a growing body of evidence on the challenges created
by diversity," says Harvard economist Edward Glaeser
In a recent
study, Glaeser and colleague Alberto Alesina demonstrated that roughly half the
difference in social welfare spending between the US and Europe -- Europe
spends far more -- can be attributed to the greater ethnic diversity of the US
population. Glaeser says lower national social welfare spending in the US is a
"macro" version of the decreased civic engagement Putnam found in
more diverse communities within the country.
Economists
Matthew Kahn of UCLA and Dora Costa of MIT reviewed 15 recent studies in a 2003
paper, all of which linked diversity with lower levels of social capital. Greater
ethnic diversity was linked, for example, to lower school funding, census
response rates, and trust in others. Kahn and Costa's own research documented
higher desertion rates in the Civil War among Union Army soldiers serving in
companies whose soldiers varied more by age, occupation, and birthplace.
Birds of
different feathers may sometimes flock together, but they are also less likely
to look out for one another. "Everyone is a little self-conscious that
this is not politically correct stuff," says Kahn.
So how to
explain New York, London, Rio de Janiero, Los Angeles -- the great melting-pot
cities that drive the world's creative and financial economies?
The image
of civic lassitude dragging down more diverse communities is at odds with the
vigor often associated with urban centers, where ethnic diversity is greatest. It
turns out there is a flip side to the discomfort diversity can cause. If ethnic
diversity, at least in the short run, is a liability for social connectedness,
a parallel line of emerging research suggests it can be a big asset when it
comes to driving productivity and innovation. In high-skill workplace settings,
says Scott Page, the University of Michigan political scientist, the different
ways of thinking among people from different cultures can be a boon.
"Because
they see the world and think about the world differently than you, that's
challenging," says Page, author of "The Difference: How the Power of
Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies." "But
by hanging out with people different than you, you're likely to get more
insights. Diverse teams tend to be more productive."
In other
words, those in more diverse communities may do more bowling alone, but the
creative tensions unleashed by those differences in the workplace may vault
those same places to the cutting edge of the economy and of creative culture.
Page calls
it the "diversity paradox." He thinks the contrasting positive and
negative effects of diversity can coexist in communities, but "there's got
to be a limit." If civic engagement falls off too far, he says, it's easy
to imagine the positive effects of diversity beginning to wane as well. "That's
what's unsettling about his findings," Page says of Putnam's new work.
Meanwhile,
by drawing a portrait of civic engagement in which more homogeneous communities
seem much healthier, some of Putnam's worst fears about how his results could
be used have been realized. A stream of conservative commentary has begun --
from places like the Manhattan Institute and "The American
Conservative" -- highlighting the harm the study suggests will come from
large-scale immigration. But Putnam says he's also received hundreds of
complimentary emails laced with bigoted language. "It certainly is not
pleasant when David Duke's website hails me as the guy who found out racism is
good," he says.
In the
final quarter of his paper, Putnam puts the diversity challenge in a broader
context by describing how social identity can change over time. Experience
shows that social divisions can eventually give way to "more encompassing
identities" that create a "new, more capacious sense of 'we,'"
he writes.
Growing up
in the 1950s in small Midwestern town, Putnam knew the religion of virtually
every member of his high school graduating class because, he says, such
information was crucial to the question of "who was a possible mate or
date." The importance of marrying within one's faith, he says, has largely
faded since then, at least among many mainline Protestants, Catholics, and
Jews.
While
acknowledging that racial and ethnic divisions may prove more stubborn, Putnam
argues that such examples bode well for the long-term prospects for social
capital in a multiethnic America.
In his
paper, Putnam cites the work done by Page and others, and uses it to help frame
his conclusion that increasing diversity in America is not only inevitable, but
ultimately valuable and enriching. As for smoothing over the divisions that
hinder civic engagement, Putnam argues that Americans can help that process along
through targeted efforts. He suggests expanding support for English-language
instruction and investing in community centers and other places that allow for
"meaningful interaction across ethnic lines."
Some
critics have found his prescriptions underwhelming. And in offering ideas for
mitigating his findings, Putnam has drawn scorn for stepping out of the role of
dispassionate researcher. "You're just supposed to tell your peers what
you found," says John Leo, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a
conservative think tank. "I don't expect academics to fret about these
matters."
But
fretting about the state of American civic health is exactly what Putnam has
spent more than a decade doing. While continuing to research questions
involving social capital, he has directed the Saguaro Seminar, a project he
started at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government that promotes efforts
throughout the country to increase civic connections in communities.
"Social
scientists are both scientists and citizens," says Alan Wolfe, director of
the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life at Boston College, who
sees nothing wrong in Putnam's efforts to affect some of the phenomena he
studies.
Wolfe says
what is unusual is that Putnam has published findings as a social scientist
that are not the ones he would have wished for as a civic leader. There are
plenty of social scientists, says Wolfe, who never produce research results at
odds with their own worldview.
"The
problem too often," says Wolfe, "is people are never uncomfortable
about their findings."
Michael
Jonas is acting editor of CommonWealth magazine, published by MassINC, a
nonpartisan public-policy think tank in Boston.