DIVERSITY ... IS NOT GOOD

Are you into the multicultural agenda? Is the drive to diversity a big deal with you? Perhaps not. Maybe you're one of those people who actually like to judge people based on their individual personality and integrity.

A Harvard political scientist, Robert Putnam, did a little study that might interest you. His topic ... immigration and ethnic diversity. The results are shocking, not at all what he expected. In fact, the study results that this liberal, academia bed-wetter wanted to wait until after the immigration debate to publish it. Why? Because it is damaging to the pro-illegal immigration debate. Not only that, but he was scrambling to find ways to compensate for the negative effects of diversity. Are you getting this? He was afraid what right-wingers would do with the news. He had something that went against his liberal, academia beliefs and withheld the study until he could figure out a way to spin the results so as not to offend his and his liberal colleague's tender sensibilities.

OK ... gotcha. Now you're curious. You want to know what the study said, right? Putnam's study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. He uses the analogy of a turtle, saying that people who live in ethnically diverse setting "hunker down." They don't assimilate. They don't embrace each other and share tortilla dinners together. They sit in front of the television and waste away .. they pull into their shells.

Putnam found that the more diverse the neighborhood, the less residents trust neighbors. In ethnically diverse cities like LA and San Francisco, 30% of people say that they trust their neighbors. In ethnically homogeneous cities, the figure is as high as 80%. Putnam says that people in diverse communities tend "to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." Sounds like a neighborhood you we would all really love to live in, doesn't it? This magic ethnically diverse community that we've been hearing so much about doesn't sound like a community that is going to be all that active in government. Perhaps they don't even care about who is representing them and what issues are facing the communities in which they live.

And it doesn't matter whether they are poor communities or safe communities ... the findings are all the same. In general, Putnam found that the more people are brought into contact with another race or culture, the more they stick to their own, and the less they trust others.

This is the America that our Senate have just promoted with their amnesty bill. We're not speaking racism here. We're speaking culturalism. People tend to gravitate toward a culture they understand and are comfortable with.

There are two ideas when talking about diversity.

One is diversity within a culture, which is good. That is what the “melting pot” is all about. Americans are the most natural at this kind of diversity. Like the Borg from Star Trek, when we encounter a new culture, we absorb the parts that are good and reject the parts we already excel in. For example, keeping regular schedules (like the Brits and Germans) while eating a wide variety of foods (like most Italians and southern French).

The second kind of diversity, and the one the liberal media and academic world has been push for 40 years, is diversity of cultures. They try to turn the “melting pot” into the stew, where everyone keeps their own identity. That is a failure and has become known as “Balkanization”. It will never work because as long as you identify with a group that is outside the main culture, you will always be (Surprise!) an outsider.

In a country where a man named Schneider goes to a Thai restuarant and is served food cooked by a Mexican immigrant by a girl whose last name is McAllen, you can't tell me that we aren't diverse enough.

“I have no problem with Spanish people, notice they try to categorize them as “brown” people to further polarize us. I just want this to be America. Perserve OUR borders, language, and culture. If you want to be an American, and you want to assimilate, come here legally, and I’ll fight for your right to do so.”

As a youth, I spent many summers on a ranch in Central Mexico.

I learned to love the Mexican culture and people, and I still do.

That said, I am vehemently opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens, and it makes me want to scream when some SOB insinuates that I am racist or bigoted because I oppose it.

I don’t care if the illegals are 5’9’’ Blonde Swedes, amnesty is a BAD IDEA.

It rewards the breaking of laws in a nation whose society is based on the rule of law.

We may speak the same language, but to a degree, you can get an instant idea of what the person’s background is the minute they open their mouth. The dialect they use, the inflection with their accent, the words they use, can all tell you where a person is.

A native Southerner, I admittedly am able to more quickly discern various Southern accents more than I am other. I can almost get an idea, immediately when someone when a Southern accent speaks, roughly where they are from, what class they were born in to, I can tell if there have been any influences from what their childhood base probably was. I can do this even as some of the old accents, particularly the old “Scarlet O’Hara” accent that almost every Southern upper class person seemed to have, have died away.

But even with more standardized accent patterns, one clear difference is class. The stereotypical Southern accent you hear in the current day movies is an accent that you usually find among rural poor whites in inland areas, with regional variations of course, but typically, that’s who has that accent. And there actually are cultural differences. If I say, start waving a rebel flag in Pennsylvania, I’m going to get a cool reception. If people came to my home, and saw that we have a giant battle flag in our bedroom, they might look negatively on us. Down here, they’d ask us why we only have one of them. But even then class differences and neighborhood difference prevail.

And we actually do not have the same customs. Down here, you are expected to address everyone as sir or ma’am, and if you don’t, there are problems. When I am outside of the region on business trips, and I say sir or ma’am, I’m asked why I just said this. In general, outside the region, telling your child to go into the yard and “pick your switch” is seen as an excessive form of punishment, down here, we actually see that as a light form of punishment. And I’d honestly say there are different attitudes down here. In general, our workers are greatful for the jobs that they have, elsewhere in the country, they always are agitating about something or other.

If you don’t believe there are fifferences even within individual states, important differences, google the term “Alabama Presidential primary” and add the phrase early voting, and see what our new presidential primary law is. A law that exists entirely because my county and our neighbor to the east have a cultural difference with the rest of the state, that necessitated that law. That accomadation had to be made entirely out of the same “cultural considerations” that you seem to dismiss.

Or to put in another way, in general, when I leave the region, if I want to find say, collard greens, seafood gumbo, black eye peas, etc, I’m usually going to have to go into a black neighborhood and find a soul food resturaunt. By the same token, if you come down here and ask someone for a hoagie, they are not going to know what in the hell you are talking about. You know, there is a reason they call Chicago style pizza, Chicago style pizza. Cause it’s a kind of food associated with well, Chicago. And actually, among midwestern accents, I can actually tell when someone is from Chicago and who is not, take that for what you will

American is a concept that the rest of the world developed, and I am going to disagree with you that the book is false. What we basically share is a national government, and a few broad national ideas. Once you start getting into the nitty gritty, our differences become clear.

The illegal are ethnic diversity?...hardly ... that one of the biggest problem... a truly ethnic diversity group would be forced by to assimilated in the common culture of the new nation.....

We have a monolithic block of one ethnic group and culture connect via a contiguous border to the core of that culture ... that are simply expanding the area that culture dominates and controls...the drive all ethnic diversity out

They are not immigrating and assimilating to the US they are moving the Mexican culture border deeper and deeper in to what was the US and either purging or assimilating all other ethnic groups...

The joke that is true in So Cal is that any other immigrate groups that come here.. they learn Spanish..not English

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