Discriminations: Diversity And Distrust II

Not long ago, in Diversity And Distrust, I wrote, with a HatTip to Steve Sailer, of new research by Harvard’s Robert Putnam (of Bowling Alone fame) showing that “the more diverse a community is, the less likely its inhabitants are to trust anyone....”

Now reader Alex Bensky points out that Sailer has written a fascinating, and depressing, long article expanding on those points, and others. It is not a pretty picture.

If we’re going to set aside the formerly fundamental principle barring discrimination against any person based on race in order to bask in the benefits provided by “diversity,” shouldn’t we at least begin seeing, sooner or later, some research demonstrating just what those benefits are?

I am reminded, as I often am (see here and here), of George Orwell’s famous response to Stalinists who attempted to justify the unjustifiable by asserting that “you can’t make an omlet without breaking eggs.”

“Yes,” he retorted, “but where is the omlet?”

UPDATE

In writing the above I had not seen the somewhat odd article (or at least it struck me as somewhat odd) by David Harris, vice provost for the social sciences at Cornell, calling for evaluation of college “diversity” programs. Harris has been involved with a major study of racial and ethnic disparities in college grades and graduation rates.

Harris noted, as though this were news, that

[m]ost colleges provide the public with very little information about racial and ethnic differences in students’ grades and graduation rates. Nor do they provide much information about the effectiveness of their diversity programs

That is an understatement, since prying this sort of information out of most universities, especially private ones, is more difficult than getting information about, say, faculty and administrative salaries.

Harris also reports that “[u]nfortunately, the answer is that race and ethnicity are important predictors of college performance,” although he does not directly link this fact with the reluctance of colleges to release the data.

I confess to doubts about what, or how much, would be learned by evaluating the effectiveness of college “diversity” programs, and I also suspect that many program managers share those doubts, along with a fear of revealing how little they actually accomplish.

Consider, for example, the unintended implication of what Harris writes in praising a program at Colgate:

At Colgate University, Breaking Bread requires members of disparate student groups to plan, prepare, and eat a meal together. By the end of the meal, the groups must have identified a collaborative campus event. Last year, the College Republicans and the Rainbow Alliance combined to bring Andrew Sullivan, a conservative gay-rights advocate, to campus. A strength of Breaking Bread is that it uses everyday activities — preparing and eating a meal, as an opportunity to build bridges between groups that tend to have very little to do with one another.

I’m not sure how much Colgate lowers its standards to admit members of “disparate” groups in an effort to promote “diversity,” but if students in groups “that tend to have very little to do with one another” must be forced to have a meal together, it would seem that Colgate doesn’t receive very much “diversity” in return.

Say What?

Remember Gurin's work!

Her husband believed diversity increased certain types of inter-group tension.

Tension ... distrust?

Posted by: Chetly Zarko | January 8, 2007 2:57 AM

Of course, Michigan's admissions "diversity" is coupled with post-admissions segregation, so opportunities to "eat together," etc., are rare, when you encourage separate group events like graduation ceremonies, multi-cultural lounges, etc.

Sure, some tension is necessary to break down barriers, as Gurin says when she has to backtrack here, and I believe that putting people in uncomfortable situations is not a bad thing, but Michigan shelters the races once they get on campus, thereby destroying whatever benefits they could get in their own academic theory.

Posted by: Chetly Zarko | January 8, 2007 3:02 AM

Chetley Zarko,

Why would students who worked hard to be (legitimately ) admitted to a first tier univeristy and who are (full) paying tuition want to be put in uncomfortable situations for the sake of social engineering?

If students drop out of universities or transfer due to uncomfortable situations then such learning experiences are a complete failure.

It reminds me of how many students end up hating the situations they experienced in the freshmen dorm and want to move away from the campus as fast as possible. Would you consider that a bad thing?

Posted by: superdestroyer | January 8, 2007 9:04 AM

Chetly Zarko has remarked that "...putting people in uncomfortable situations is not a bad thing." Surely, some qualifying remarks are needed. Do you, Chetly Zarko, seek out uncomfortable situations and place yourself in them due to the anticipated benefits for yourself?

Posted by: dchamil | January 8, 2007 11:49 AM

Superdestroyer and dchamil,

I suppose you could project that view onto the history of the Civil Rights movement in America. There were certainly plenty of "uncomfortable situations", weren't there?

--Cobra

Posted by: Cobra | January 8, 2007 9:00 PM

Cobra,

I was just thinking about my undergraduate experience where the dorm managers and other non-academic administrators believed that everythng should be an educational experience.

They additional did things like assign people roommates so that they were not with compatible people.

Such a social engineering point of view caused people to transfer, to drop out, and to hate the college experience. If you want to perform social engineering, I do not believe that the subjects should be paying for the experience. College is hard enough without do gooders making it more difficult.

Posted by: superdestroyer | January 8, 2007 10:00 PM

Actually, DCHAMIL, I do occasionally seek out "uncomfortable situations" for their anticipated benefit - witness my tenure for MCRI fighting BAMN, or a number of other things I've done in my life. Actually, its not as much seeking them out, but not avoiding them when they arise.

Regardless, a university certainly has within its scope of purview putting students in uncomfortable (intellectual) situations, so long as it does not violate the Constitution or other natural rights of individuals. I believe race and gender preferences are such violations.

Superd,
Of course students should not be put in uncomfortable situations for the sake of social engineering. That is a different level at which preferences a fundamentally immoral act. Dropping out is just one level at which that immorality is most clear. On the other hand, students are not "pure consumers" and are not entitled to get everything they "want" just because of their consumer status (you pay for the right to compete and meet a set of standards, and the institution preserves the credibility and value of its degree through standards, so it must flunk, no doubt against the wishes of individual consumers, some of its consumers -- of course, race preferences violates this principle too).

But my point above was that universities claim that uncomfortable situations have educational benefit, yet once minorities are admitted, they do everything they can to make it exceedingly comfortable for minorities (separate graduation ceremonies, segregated lounges, and the normal extra services). That's a contradiction, and it was my main point.

I never said I "bought" Gurin's bogus theories. Yet to every wrong theory, some elements are true. I'm just trying to point out yet another reason her theory is inconsistent.

Posted by: Chetly Zarko | January 14, 2007 12:17 AM

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