Following my post looking at Harvard social scientist Robert Putnam's latest research on diversity and civic engagement, I got a chance to talk with Putnam and get his full perspective on what the research means from a progressive perspective. Putnam, a progressive himself, said much of his views have been omitted or downplayed by the conservative pundits and traditional media, who have seized on the reports to push an anti-diversity and anti-immigrant agenda. As always, full disclosure: I work for Vote Hope, which is independently supporting Barack Obama for president as well as state and local candidates in California.
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:
As noted by Jenifer there has been some talk about a new study about social connectedness and how it relates to diversity. The study which Robert D. Putnam conducted measures what he calls social capital. It is based on a survey and U.S. census data, both of which were collected in 2000. It took him some time to publish what he thought was troubling results because he wanted to throughly analyze them. His results, published in the journal Scandinavian Political Studies, was that people in cities or regions within the U.S. with more ethnic diversity have less social capital.
Robert Putnam, author of "Bowling Alone," released a new study this week on the effect of diversity on civic engagement, and the headlines in a Google news search are a uniform proclamation of Welcome to Doomsville:
"Greater Diversity Equals More Misery"
"The Case Against Multiculturalism"
"Diversity may not be the answer"
"The Downside of Diversity"
It goes on. The right-wingers have taken this and run with it, and they are unlikely to stop, especially as they continue to push an anti-immigrant and nativist agenda - at the federal level, but also in more and more states throughout the country.
My take: Putnam's research shows that just throwing people from different races together, with structural racism still very much intact, and without a stronger national anti-racist movement to counteract it, doesn't lead to automatic racial harmony. Here's how the Boston Globe (which by the way is the best straight-up read on the study thus far), puts it:
"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.
Call me overly optimistic, but I just can't buy that this data means we are all headed for segregated homogeneous doom. This study is important, I'm glad Putnam did it and got it out there, and I think ignoring these findings would be a huge mistake. We can't move people if we don't truly understand what's going on with them, and these findings give a clearer picture.
To me this research points to an enormous opportunity. A progressive view of diversity means that serious, pro-active organizing across race and ethnic lines is necessary to achieve social change. In our own political realm, we can look to the concept of community organizing as one obvious solution to the civic malaise Putnam's research describes.
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