Out of many, one.
There are few sentiments quite so American as E pluribus unum. Originally intended to refer to the 13 colonies forming the Union, the phrase has become associated with the concept of America as a melting pot of people from nations all over the world.
There are also few political sentiments as controversial in the modern United States.
Alhough its meaning is disputed, the idea of E pluribus unum constitutes an important part of who we are as a country. In many ways, the United States has always struggled with embracing diversity while maintaining a certain degree of unity.
And perhaps we have never struggled with reconciling diversity and unity more than we will need to in the future. The United States is becoming more ethnically and racially diverse, and the Census Bureau predicts that by 2044, no ethnic or racial group will constitute more than 50 percent of the population.
Today, more than ever, there is a need to critically examine how this increased diversity may affect the social fabric of the United States.
This is a topic that many acknowledge to be important, but are afraid to discuss. Even academics shy away from investigating the consequences of increased diversity in the United States, because they fear their empirical findings will be abused by ideologues on the right and the left. As a result, important issues go unexamined, and a culture of fear pervades our public discourse on some of the most important issues in our society.
That is what makes Harvard Professor Robert Putnam’s 2007 essay “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the Twenty-First Century” so groundbreaking. In the empirical study spanning the United States and including 30,000 respondents, Putnam finds that communities that are more diverse have less social capital, which he defines as “social networks and the associated norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness.”
In his research, Putnam discovers that residents of diverse neighborhoods are less likely than people living in more homogeneous communities to be registered to vote, to participate in civically-minded groups and-—most importantly—to trust their neighbors.
“In ethnically diverse neighborhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’,” writes Putnam. “Trust (even of one’s own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer.” This last point about trust is the most important. Putnam finds that people are not only less trusting of people they perceive racially or ethnically different than them, but of everyone in general.
This fact discredits the idea that increased diversity necessarily leads to increased inter-ethnic hostility. “In more diverse settings,” Putnam writes, “Americans distrust not only people who do not look like them, but people who do.”
While conducting the research, Putnam was disturbed by the pattern that emerged. He tried to look for another variable that could explain the mistrust he observed—age differences, geography, urban-rural gaps—but after controlling for all of them utilizing multivariate statistics, the level of diversity in a community remained the primary determinant of the level of social capital.
Perhaps some of his discomfort while conducting the study arose because he feared his results could be misconstrued to denounce diversity in general. Putnam’s findings were in fact used by some conservative pundits to propagate the same “nativist” immigrants-are-the-problem sentiment that has lingered in American political discourse since the 19th century. Pat Buchanan, in writing for the conservative blog VDARE.com, wrote a commentary on Putnam’s article titled “Robert Putnam: Diversity is our Destruction.”
Clearly, Buchanan didn’t read the whole essay or simply wasn’t faithful to its findings, because Putnam actually argues that increased diversity ultimately provides a net benefit to society. He discovers that diverse communities have higher rates of economic growth and greater levels of technological innovation. Even if people don’t trust one another, they form a more dynamic, creative society.
Yet, Putnam remains optimistic that we will trust each other in the long run. He asserts that people from groups we consider distinct today will grow to trust one another by expanding the boundaries of those groups and including people who are currently seen as different, but won’t be in the future.
Recalling his childhood in a small town in Ohio, he mentions that religion was once the most important characteristic that separated people from one another. Protestants, Catholics and Jews didn’t intermarry, or even socialize together much. Yet, today, the religious lines that once divided people are freely crossed.
But one must wonder if there is a limit to the extent to which identity groups can become more inclusive. Even though interreligious marriage is now more common, inter-racial marriage between blacks and whites remains rare. Race has divided Americans for a long time, and despite the Civil War and Civil Rights Movement, it continues to do so.
If the categories that separate people today aren’t redefined to be more inclusive in the future, it may mean that we will never be able to live in diverse communities where people trust one another to the extent that Putnam finds people do in homogeneous communities today.
So, what does this mean for Duke, now and in the future?
Yousef AbuGharbieh is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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