Powerline Blog: Diversity Is Our Weakness

From the Powerline Blog post entitled "'Diversity' Is Our Weakness":

The shibboleth that “diversity is our strength” is one of the worst canards of our time. There is a great deal of empirical data indicating that in general, cultural diversity is a weakness, not a strength. Culturally diverse societies (which can mean ethnically diverse, but doesn’t have to) are generally lower-trust societies, which inhibits economic growth. Western Europe is living proof of that proposition.

This sounds good in a "propositional American" way, but it ignores the science. Robert Putnam's work--the work that he voluntarily suppressed for years because it was so bad for liberals--found that it was racial and ethnic diversity that reduced social capital and trust. (See also Putnam's paper, "E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-first Century"). Putnam specifically states in the abstract to his paper that "evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer." Culture is part of it, but it isn't the whole story.