The downside of diversity

These are some very interesting (and troubling) findings.  I wonder what the same analysis would show about the impact of diversity in school settings?  If all other variables were held constant (a rarity, to be sure), might schools with little or no diversity yield better educational outcomes?  It seems heretical to even ask the question, but it's important to think about because many of our schools are de facto segregated and some (like Jonathan Kozol) feel a huge effort should be made to desegrate them (somehow), while others (like me) view the segregation as unfortunate but largely inevitable and that efforts would be better made to improve the schools as they are.  I've visited roughly two dozen KIPPs nationwide and recall only two that had even a single white student, yet that isn't preventing the minority children from achieving at extraordinarily high levels.  (Speaking of KIPP, co-founder David Levin has married Nikki Chase.  Congratulations!!!)

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?"

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The downside of diversity
A Harvard political scientist finds that diversity hurts civic life. What happens when a liberal scholar unearths an inconvenient truth?
By Michael Jonas  |  August 5, 2007

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/05/the_downside_of_diversity/

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.