STEVE SAILER on Robert Putnam, “the liberal Charles Murray”:

In a comic 2006 episode, Putnam admitted to Financial Times columnist John Lloyd that he had socked away for a half decade the results of his huge survey of American communities while he tried to figure out how to spin its finding that ethnic diversity was disastrous. Putnam memorably confessed to Lloyd:

The core message of the research was that, “in the presence of diversity, we hunker down,” he said. “We act like turtles. The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it’s not just that we don’t trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don’t trust people who do look like us.” Prof. Putnam found trust was lowest in Los Angeles, “the most diverse human habitation in human history” … the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. “They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” said Prof. Putnam. “The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV watching.” . . .

Putnam complained to the Harvard Crimson that “it’s almost criminal” that the Financial Times hadn’t sufficiently emphasized the spin he had finally come up with: that the community-sapping downsides of diversity “have been socially constructed, and can be socially reconstructed. … We should construct a new us.”

Sailer also has some interesting remarks about Putnam’s latest book.

Earlier: Diversity or Community: Choose One.