The end of diversity?

Carlos Alberto Montaner

It has become politically profitable to take a hard line against illegal immigrants, especially Hispanics. That attitude produces votes. All candidates know it. It is happening today, right now, in the U.S. elections, where Mitt Romney is moving to the foreground of the Republican Party by promising a strong hand against undocumented immigrants. It is possible that from that vantage point he will shoot Rudy Giuliani off his horse. In any case, it is not an American phenomenon but a universal rule. Things are no different in Europe. Nobody wants foreigners. Nobody welcomes them. In Spain, France and England, the greatest rejection is aimed at the Arabs. Throughout Europe, people talk disdainfully about "the Romanian invasion," the flood of Gypsies and the mythical "Polish plumber" who allegedly will put the natives out of work.

In general, it is not a rational judgment but an atavistic, animal, perhaps instinctive reaction to anyone who shows signs of having a different identity. Most of the reliable studies show that immigrants are a magnificent source for the creation of wealth -- from the humble tomato picker to the neurosurgeon -- but there is growing rejection of people who speak another language, gesticulate a certain way, or pray to other deities. It is as if the discourse in favor of diversity, which had so many followers in the second half of the 20th Century, is drying up.

Moreover, a theoretical movement against diversity is being created that has sociologist Robert Putnam, one of the most renowned U.S. researchers, as its (perhaps unwitting) apostle. His long essay “Bowling Alone,” published over a decade ago but with an increasing number of readers, alludes to the growing amputation of the ties of spontaneous cooperation that bind Americans to the society in which they live.

It was Putnam, along with other researchers, who several decades ago developed the notion of “social capital” as the skein of trust in others, and the voluntary interrelations that strengthen the fabric of civilian society and improve the quality of coexistence. The more social capital, the better democracy, the better institutions and the more commercial transactions.

Today, the landscape is different. The levels of trust in other people have declined tremendously. The prestige of government and politicians has never been lower. Philanthropy and voluntary labor are a shadow of what they once were. The idea of social responsibility has been diluted. Legal conflicts and lawsuits have multiplied. Religious militancy decreases. People don't gather and share as in the past. To a degree, the United States is becoming a crowd of solitary individuals who increasingly devote their time to television or electronic games, rather than to interaction with other creatures.

It's as if the instinct of gregariousness had weakened. The voluntary association that dazzled Alexis de Tocqueville in the first half of the 19th Century, when he observed the enthusiasm with which individuals gathered freely to solve their collective problems, is giving way to a generalized indifference.

What does this have to do with foreigners? Something, perhaps, according to Putnam and his followers. The theory is that the altruistic impulse is weakened when the surroundings are inhabited by strange people. And that coincides with the utopian vision that once upon a time there was a country much better than today's, because it was much more uniform in the racial and cultural sense. In other words, it was better precisely because it was uniform. A person loves and fights for what he considers his near and dear, but is inhibited by foreigners who live by foreign codes.

I don't know. Maybe the people who think that way are putting the cart before the horse. There is an undeniable and substantial reduction of the social capital in the United States and the rest of the world, but I suspect that the origin of that phenomenon has little to do with the massive presence of legal or illegal foreigners. Quite simply, societies change, customs are modified, and values change in priority with the passing of time and scientific advances. In any case, for the purposes of political campaigns, it doesn't much matter whether the theory is true or false. The politicians have realized that it is profitable. They can smell the votes.

August 29, 2007

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