Right away from the beginning of reading this article’s introductory paragraph it was shocking to see its negative view of diversity. I can honestly say I have never seen a published article express negativity toward diversity like this before, and I actually thought people wouldn’t want to do something like this if they don’t want to appear nationalist or racist. This is an absolutely unique point of view because it seems that in NYC diversity is constantly encouraged.
The trust question was interesting: the article cited evidence that the more different types of people interact with each other, the more okay they are with the idea of racial integration, and yet then it says that the more people are around those different from them, the more they stick to their own and trust the others less. What is really amazing is that the anti-diversity statement is cited from a really large number of researches, this makes it look very convincing. I did notice that most of them are not recent though: only one is from the past decade.
It is difficult for me to understand this concept. If people are more okay with other ethnic groups the more they interact with them, why would those interactions coincide with a lower trust, group cohesion, and satisfaction?
It also didn’t make sense to me that people trust other races more if they are never around them. I’m referring to this quote: “Inter-racial trust is relatively high in homogeneous South Dakota and relatively low in heterogeneous San Francisco or Los Angeles.” I was wondering why would a person decide that they trust somebody until they even meet them? I feel like this is a slightly racist generalization. It seems strange to assume that one trusts an entire race of people because of their race.
Also, a bit later the article pretty much concluded that people who live in diverse communities don’t trust anyone. I never really encountered that point of view while living in NYC and I actually feel that a lack of trust was more prevalent in my completely homogenous hometown (meaning lack of trust toward strangers though, not people one is familiar with). The reasons for a lack of trust there were very solid: after the collapse of the Soviet Union crime skyrocketed and a lot of people were actually looking to trick others out of their money. In NYC, I never felt like people have a lack of trust toward those around them. My hometown also fits other dissatisfactions described, such as the lack of trust in the government and one’s political power, but that is also very logical because everyone knows the government is awful and the politics are corrupt. This is making me think that maybe its not the ethnic diversity that has to do with such sentiments, but the actual government people have there.
