U Not Gonna Like This

Found this post at the Don't Marry Forums it's a story from MSN Money:




Harvard study paints bleak picture of ethnic diversity

A bleak picture of the corrosive effects of ethnic diversity has been revealed in research by Harvard University's Robert Putnam, one of the world's most influential political scientists.

His research shows that the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone – from their next-door neighbour to the mayor.

This is a contentious finding in the current climate of concern about the benefits of immigration. Professor Putnam told the Financial Times he had delayed publishing his research until he could develop proposals to compensate for the negative effects of diversity, saying it "would have been irresponsible to publish without that".

The core message of the research was that, "in the presence of diversity, we hunker down", he said. "We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us."

Prof Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, "the most diverse human habitation in human history", but his findings also held for rural South Dakota, where "diversity means inviting Swedes to a Norwegians' picnic".

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. "They don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions," said Prof Putnam. "The only thing there's more of is protest marches and TV watching."

British Home Office research has pointed in the same direction and Prof Putnam, now working with social scientists at Manchester University, said other European countries would be likely to have similar trends.

His 2000 book, Bowling Alone, on the increasing atomisation of contemporary society, made him an academic celebrity. Though some scholars questioned how well its findings applied outside the US, policymakers were impressed and he was invited to speak at Camp David, Downing Street and Buckingham Palace.

Prof Putnam stressed, however, that immigration materially benefited both the "importing" and "exporting" societies, and that trends "have been socially constructed, and can be socially reconstructed".

In an oblique criticism of Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, who revealed last week he prefers Muslim women not to wear a full veil, Prof Putnam said: "What we shouldn't do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us."

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kris
« Reply #1 on Today at 7:46pm »

Toronto, Ontario Canada is testament to what this professor is implying.

Walk down the streets of Downtown Toronto on any given day and you see all sorts of ethnics on the streets.

Although Los Angeles is mentioned as the largest ethnic city, I believe the ethnical make-up of that city to be limited mainly to Afro-American, and Hispanic.

In Toronto Canada, although the population is not as large as Los Angeles, our ethnical make-up consists of Chinese, Jamaicans, Afro-Canadians, East/West Indians, Pakistani's, and Somalians.

Each year, 250,000 more immigrants come into this country, most of which come from shitty 3rd World piss-holes. Of those, 65-70% will settle in Toronto.

The variety of ethnicities are so grand that each one of these cultures has it's own ethinic "enclave" set up within the Downtown core. Most span a radius of at least 10 city blocks, the largest being the Chinese population which is just HUGE!!!!!

Such enclaves have allowed immigrants to move into Canada and not have to assimilate with the rest of the citizenry. It's been documented that in some cases, there are people who've been living in these enclaves since they came to this country over 20 years ago and still don't speak a lick of english!!!!!

Over the past 15 years, the politicians have noticed a phenomenon that's been dubbed "WHITE-FLIGHT". There's been a huge outflux of white people from the city's core moving out to the suburbs. The influx is more ethnicities to the city from crappy countries ::) The result is a devaluation of property prices in some areas of the city as the neighbourhoods are no longer desirable due to increased reports of gun-crime, prostitution, and drug dealing.

Some of the Government set-up social programs started taking notice that there are no more white people left living in the city. On one television program, one of these groups decided to venture out of the city and canvas one of the neighbouring suburbs located about 60km north of the city of Toronto. The purpose of the trip was to knock on the doors of homes in various areas of this particular suburb and try and get the inhabitants to come out to the local highy-school and take part in an "ethnic" food-fare and meet people of different cultures. The group was SHOCKED (to put it mildly), from some of the responses they received when they approached some of the owners of these homes. Most of the neighbours wanted nothing to do with multiculturalism. They were quoted as sayin they were "Generally fed-up with having multiculturalism shoved down their throats every day, and that they escaped the city to get away from multiculturalism all together"!!! Some people went so far as to say they would do whatever they could to discourage what was happening in Toronto, to start happening in their quiet little town.

It's also true about people of the same culture not trusting each other. Most who've come here had a tough time adjusting to Canada so when a new-comer from their own culture enters the community, the older generation tends to screw over the newcomer's. The mentality is "I came here 10 years ago, got screwed over and had to adjust, so why should YOU be any different!"

The kind of support you'd thought would exist by living in your own cultures enclave does not infact exist. It's quite the opposite.

At my company, I work in a department that is dividend into 10 smaller groups of anywhere between 7-9 employees. In my group there are 8 people. In my group there are 2 white people (including myself), 2 orientals, 2 Somali's, and 2 East Indians. I get along and socialize with my ethnic co-workers, however, in no way would I go out and socialize with them outside of the workplace. One of the Somali employees who's generally not happy with her job has gone as far as to tell me that the reason she isn't going anywhere in this company is because of her skin colour! I've had other enthnicities at this company say stuff like this to me in private in varying degrees. I always wondered why they'd say this to a "white" boy such as myself. I've discovered that for the most part, they say it because they can as they know that as I am white, that any contridiction I would have to what they were saying would be viewed as being racist or bigotted, so they have free-range to say all sorts of disparaging bullshit to me in subtle ways as I can't give them a fair response or else I could risk offending one of these piss-ants and get fired!

One time, one of these fuckers took it too far. This one ex-employee who worked in my group a couple years back was having a conversation with an oriental female co-worker who sat next to me at the time. He was a Paki-Muslim. He was telling her about a History course about Adolf Hitler that he took in University. This chick came from Hong Kong and only studied a couple years in Canada, so she really didn't have much historical knowledge about WW2. She asked him what was Hitlers main goal in WW2. He gave her a brief run-down and mentioned that Hitler was exterminating Jews. She then asked why he was killing the Jews. He responded that Hilter didn't trust Jews and that he was trying to create a pure Arian race. When she asked what "Arian" was, his response was "A race of white people with the characteristics of blonde hair, and blue eyes" Then he just totally blew me away when he then turned and pointed at me and told the oriental girl "People that look like Kris"!!!!!!!!

Since that time, I can give a flying fuck about multiculturalism. What ever feelings of indifference I had before that point, was replaced with shear utter disgust. The fact that my supervisor was within ear-shot of this conversation and said nothing spoke volumes about what my "rights" were.

Fuck these people! They have no sympathy from me.