You can see from my banner that I personally like
diversity. I live in San Francisco and my top reason for doing so is
the diversity. Diversity of ethnicities, diversity of geographic
origins and diversity of weirdness....eclectic and original. On
diversity of opinion, intelligence and insight San Francisco is
desperately wanting.
The issue of diversity has finally gotten the attention of a good mind. A superb mind for that matter: Robert Putnam a Harvard sociologist.
Putnam did a brilliant experiment. He looked at the diversity of thousands of American communities, as measured in the 2000 Census, and asked whether an increase in diversity had consequences in any measures of social cohesion and social participation.
Sadly for Putnam and happily
for us, Putnam found a negative relationship. The more diverse a
community the less cohesion and community participation. Putnam didn't
like that result, so fortunately for us, he spent two years rechecking
his data and testing every other possible explanation for the data
results. The finding still stands.
Putnam's
findings are in an obscure journal (Scandanavian Political Studies) and
the article is extra long; but it is thorough, reliable and fascinating.
The findings don't bother me, nor am I surprised. The results coincide with my forty years experience as a community organizer. The benefit of commerce is that it provides the platform for diversity to thrive and for diverse people to associate together. They don't have to like each other and they don't have to have common political values.
Diverse people sell to each other, a great variety of ethnic restaurants is an example and so is the wide range of ethnic retail stores. Business environments are where diversity of ethnic peoples work together comfortably. Diversity provides market breadth in every dimension, financially, technologically, esthetically and nearly every other way.
Three cheers for Putnam for giving us the straight facts and four cheers for commerce for thriving on diversity and keeping more of it coming.