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This page contains all of the posts and discussion on MemeStreams referencing the following web page: Bowling With Our Own. You can find discussions on MemeStreams as you surf the web, even if you aren't a MemeStreams member, using the Threads Bookmarklet.

Bowling With Our Own
by possibly noteworthy at 10:22 pm EDT, Jun 26, 2007

It's interesting to see how little this kind of analysis seems to factor into the debate about immigration reform in the US.

Robert Putnam’s sobering new diversity research scares its author.

Putnam’s study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one’s own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn’t ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: “In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’—that is, to pull in like a turtle.”

If he’s right, heavy immigration will inflict social deterioration for decades to come, harming immigrants as well as the native-born. Putnam is hopeful that eventually America will forge a new solidarity based on a “new, broader sense of we.” The problem is how to do that in an era of multiculturalism and disdain for assimilation.


 
 
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