Interview With Robert Putnam: On Diversity, Megachurches, and Barack Obama

by: Jenifer Fernandez Ancona

Sun Aug 19, 2007 at 16:00

Growing up in the 1950s, Robert Putnam knew the religion of everyone in his high school classes - particularly the attractive girls. To this day, he says, he could look at a yearbook and tell you who was Catholic, Protestant or Jewish. Why? Because back then, dating outside of one's religion was not common practice, and to a teenager, little is more important than who you could or could not date.

"Now, over those 50 years, that line of social distinction has more or less vanished," he said. "Everybody still knows what their own religion is, but we stopped using it as a line of distinction among us."

Putnam tells the story to illustrate one of the key interpretations of his new research, which focuses on the "social capital" of diverse communities in America - mainly its effect on civic engagement. He believes a similar re-imagining of ourselves and our common identity is possible in America, as we become more and more diverse over the next 20 to 30 years.

"We are going to become more diverse, and it's great, with lots of long-term benefits," Putnam said. "But in the short term, adjusting to diversity is not a simple matter."

The latter part of his statement is what much of the traditional media - egged on by right-wing conservatives who have distorted the findings to fit their nativist, anti-immigrant agenda - has focused on. But Putnam said there is a lot for progressives to learn from the data.

The core of the research shows that people who live in more diverse neighborhoods tend to "hunker down." It's not the same as conflict, Putnam said, but it's a phenomenon of everyone pulling in and trusting each other less. It's true for everyone, he said - all racial groups, rich and poor, younger people as well as older folks. "It means you volunteer less, give to charity less, have fewer friends and are less likely to work on community projects," Putnam said. "The only things that go up are protests/marches, and TV watching." The statistical analysis Putnam and his team conducted did take into account outside factors like economics and the different nature of cities and suburbs. Through it all, he still found a higher correlation of diversity and "hunkering down."

Which brings Putnam to the progressive opportunity to help nurture these increasingly diverse neighborhoods and communities for long-term social change. There are two main points, which he argues in more detail in his recent journal article:

1. These lines can change, and have changed in our history.

"These lines that we draw on each other are not God-given and immutable," Putnam said. "One of the great achievements of human civilizations is the ability to erase lines between different kinds of people."

Similar to his story about religious lines being erased, Putnam says ethnic lines have changed socially in America as well. He relates the story of two friends, a woman who has an Irish background and a man who has an Italian background. "When they got married in the 60s, they called it a mixed marriage," he said. "Today that seems absurd. We've successfully erased that line."

Putnam acknowledges that lines between groups such as whites and African Americans will be more difficult to change, but points out that erasing lines such as those across white ethnic groups only seems easy now because we've done it. Back then, the physical differences were seen as quite stark and were a line of social demarcation, whereas now they are not.

It's not that people with those ethnicities have lost their identity, Putnam stressed, it's that the rest of us do not condition our behavior based on their ethnicity. This is an important point, because Putnam is in no way advocating for "colorblind" policies, which are also often pushed by right-wing conservatives to harm people of color.

2. Proactive effort and common purpose in communities can speed up the process.

In the course of his research for an upcoming book on religion, Putnam visited one of the nation's largest evangelical megachurches, Lakewood, in Houston. It was a Friday night, so the former basketball arena wasn't as packed as it usually is - only 6,000 people. In his "pew" were a blonde woman, a Korean couple, and an African American couple - and that was how it was throughout the arena, he said. In that setting, people were not "hunkered down," but were quite comfortable around each other.

"For part of the week, there is some identity that is more important to them than their ethnic identity," Putnam said. "Progressives ought to be encouraging people, not to give up their identity, but to see one another at least part of the time in some other terms."

Megachurches like Lakewood are an example of where that's happening now, Putnam said, and the other one he uses in his paper is the U.S. military. But there are plenty of other possibilities, he said, politics certainly being one of them.

Putnam's disclaimer is that he thinks all of the current Democratic Party candidates are great, and would be happy if any of them were elected. But he said there is much to be learned from Sen. Barack Obama, in terms of what is possible to re-imagine a more common identity.

"Obama embodies the fact that people can across connect racial lines - he wouldn't exist if people couldn't connect," Putnam said.

Putnam agreed that progressive community organizing is a good solution to the short-term effects of diverse communities, and said perhaps Obama's experience as a community organizer helped shape the abilities he sees in him now.

He said he has observed Obama in settings of people with very diverse opinions and backgrounds, and has been impressed with his ability to get people to find common ground.

"Community organizing 101 is to have people tell their stories, and look for commonalities, especially across racial lines," Putnam said.

He said the large multi-racial crowds Obama is attracting in diverse parts of the country are also an important phenomenon. Americans feel very divided from one another right now, he said, but in reality we don't disagree as much as we think we do.

"Obama has the ability to help us see that the things we have in common are more important than the things that divide us," Putnam said. "It's a remarkable ability."