Via Ruchira Paul and 3QD, an article in the Boston Globe about the work of Robert Putnam, a Harvard University political scientist. The Globe summarizes the gist of the article as follows:
It has become increasingly popular to speak of racial and ethnic diversity as a civic strength. From multicultural festivals to pronouncements from political leaders, the message is the same: our differences make us stronger.
But a massive new study, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across America, has concluded just the opposite. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam — famous for “Bowling Alone,” his 2000 book on declining civic engagement — has found that the greater the diversity in a community, the fewer people vote and the less they volunteer, the less they give to charity and work on community projects. In the most diverse communities, neighbors trust one another about half as much as they do in the most homogenous settings. The study, the largest ever on civic engagement in America, found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings.
“The extent of the effect is shocking,” says Scott Page, a University of Michigan political scientist.
The study comes at a time when the future of the American melting pot is the focus of intense political debate, from immigration to race-based admissions to schools, and it poses challenges to advocates on all sides of the issues. The study is already being cited by some conservatives as proof of the harm large-scale immigration causes to the nation’s social fabric. But with demographic trends already pushing the nation inexorably toward greater diversity, the real question may yet lie ahead: how to handle the unsettling social changes that Putnam’s research predicts. (link)
What makes this all more interesting is the fact that Robert Putnam is not himself a conservative, but a progressive-minded scholar who supports diversity. He didn’t expect these findings when he started this project, and has worked hard to make sure they are understood correctly — though anti-immigrant conservatives have definitely been eating this up. I want to speculate a little on how South Asian immigrants might fit into the ‘diversity problem’ Putnam’s study raises, but before that it seems important to get into a little more detail about just what Putnam is saying. Please forgive the long quote:
The results of his new study come from a survey Putnam directed among residents in 41 US communities, including Boston. Residents were sorted into the four principal categories used by the US Census: black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were asked how much they trusted their neighbors and those of each racial category, and questioned about a long list of civic attitudes and practices, including their views on local government, their involvement in community projects, and their friendships. What emerged in more diverse communities was a bleak picture of civic desolation, affecting everything from political engagement to the state of social ties.
Putnam knew he had provocative findings on his hands. He worried about coming under some of the same liberal attacks that greeted Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s landmark 1965 report on the social costs associated with the breakdown of the black family. There is always the risk of being pilloried as the bearer of “an inconvenient truth,” says Putnam.
After releasing the initial results in 2001, Putnam says he spent time “kicking the tires really hard” to be sure the study had it right. Putnam realized, for instance, that more diverse communities tended to be larger, have greater income ranges, higher crime rates, and more mobility among their residents — all factors that could depress social capital independent of any impact ethnic diversity might have.
“People would say, ‘I bet you forgot about X,'” Putnam says of the string of suggestions from colleagues. “There were 20 or 30 X’s.”
But even after statistically taking them all into account, the connection remained strong: Higher diversity meant lower social capital. In his findings, Putnam writes that those in more diverse communities tend to “distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, 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.” (link)
Wow — that’s a long list of problems associated with living in diverse communities! Personally, I’ve never felt the difference Putnam’s study finds, but for the most part I’ve mainly lived in relatively diverse places. I’ve lived in glum diverse places (Malden, MA; Bethlehem, PA) — where no one would give me the time of day or even stop and say ‘hi’ — and somewhat happier diverse places (Potomac, MD; Parsippany, NJ; New Haven, CT; Durham, NC; and my current town of Conshohocken, PA). Most places I’ve lived, though, I’ve felt that most people do “hunker down” and spend their evenings in front of the TV. I’ve never lived in the vibrant downtown of a big city (sigh), nor have I ever lived in a place that was really ethnically homogeneous — so perhaps I’ve only seen one side of this.
People interested in seeing more detail — and hearing it directly from Putnam, might want to check out the article in question here. For the most part it should be readable for non-academics (it helps if you know what he means by “social capital”), though Putnam does get into some statistical analysis that goes over my head.
The other big questions are 1) why could this be happening, 2) what can be done about it, and 3) is it a permanent problem, or merely a temporary phenomenon associated with recent immigration, which will dissipate over time?
One can easily speculate that the answer to (1) has to do with the natural mistrust produced when people have different ethnic and racial backgrounds, different cultural values, speak different languages, and so on. The answers to (2) and (3) are harder.
Again, thinking speculatively here, I’m not sure that anything can be actively done about (2), but I do feel quite confident on (3) that the mistrust and the lower “social capital” Putnam sees in more diverse communities is likely to dissipate over time — as immigrants acculturate and/or assimilate. Here, one’s experience as a second-gen desi comes into play. And the high levels of interracial dating and marrying out of one’s ethnic group seen among second and third generation Asian immigrants suggests that blending is already well under way. Another positive sign — which we dwell on a lot at Sepia Mutiny — is the growing involvement of immigrants and their children in civic and political life. Upper-middle class Desis aren’t just becoming doctors and engineers anymore; they’re becoming actors, and yes, even politicians.
Putnam himself agrees with that prognosis, and in his article, quotes Barack Obama to that effect. Obama has called for:
. . . an America where race is understood in the same way that the ethnic diversity of the white population is understood. People take pride in being Irish-American and Italian-American. They have a particular culture that infuses the (whole) culture and makes it richer and more interesting. But it’s not something that determines people’s life chances and there is no sense of superiority or inferiority. . . . [I]f we can expand that attitude to embrace African-Americans and Latino-Americans and Asian-Americans, then . . . all our kids can feel comfortable with the worlds they are coming out of, knowing they are part of something larger. (link)
Obama is in effect calling for “race” to start acting more like immigrant “ethnicity” — for it to be porous rather than a “hard” dividing line. Are South Asians a “race” or an “ethnicity”? Though I’m proud of my Indian heritage and proud of being both an Indian American and a practicing Sikh, I tend to agree with Obama on the value of thinking of oneself as part of “something larger,” and of not allowing one’s ethnic background to determine one’s “life chances.”
Camille, that helped me at least — I too missed out on Stats 101, and have been regretting it ever since.
heaps actually. I find it easier to understand, however, the motivation to protect oneself in the world of academia, from the inevitable blowback that results from openly criticizing such a luminary as Putnam, or anyone with sufficient clout/leverage to derail your own career.
I think this is why i tucked my postcolonial tail between my legs and scurried over to the private sector, leaving my dreams of one-upping Ashish Nandy in the dust.
I’m glad I could help 🙂 And just to clarify, if any of those 5 things is “missing” or “wrong,” then basically your entire “model” (i.e. statistical equation/question) falls down. I think this is where sigh!’s comment about stats being a good description, but not necessarily good proof, comes in 🙂
Yeah, I don’t think I could do academia, although sometimes watching professors duke it out through papers is like watching some kind of nerd-driven, crazy Academia DeathMatch! I’d rather be a spectator 🙂
Moreover, the model that was chosen has a R-sq of only 0.26. That is, only 26% of the variability in trust in neighbors was explained by this model. My thought is that it is a weak model that tells you that there are several more explanatory variables that can and should be entered into the model.
i have been told that r-sq of 0.26 isn’t bad in a social science, where of course there are multiple variables.
razib, maybe this varies by convention? An R-square below .50 is (effectively) worthless in policy analysis, and is only marginally acceptable at .33 for economics. I have no idea what the conventions are in sociology, stats, etc.
D’oh. Discipline. Varies by discipline.
re: stats. they are a good guide and map which start you off on a deeper exploration of a topic. a bunch of regressions can be, i think, like scouts. they don’t determine the outcome of the battle, but they allow you plan your moves. in any case, i do think that some of the skepticism for this result is a little much. plenty of people i’ve met through SM express the attitude that they are more comfortable around their own kind, people who could understand their values naturally because they were of the same ethnicity. e.g., the experience of being the “brown kid” in an all-white school. the basic human impulse to group and feel anomie seems obvious. how one organizes and perceives the world is of course relatively fluid. 100 years ago WASPs were terrified of irish catholics in the northeast, but today they are probably relatively comfortable with white ethnics (and even elected one to the presidency in 1960). so things change. in modern american society there is a promotion of diversity and its benefits, but a lot of the time it reminds me of theists who talk about how great god is. you know the answer before you start asking questions, so of course you will be skeptical or confirmatory in your biases depending on where you stand a priori. the same obviously goes for anti-immigration conservatives; they love putnam’s conclusions, but they’re less interested in comparing the scientific creativity of the united states and japan for obvious reasons.
D’oh. Discipline. Varies by discipline.
yes. i knew a physics student who took an ecological statistics class once. his first lab report was a war & peace sized analysis of error and variance in the data. didn’t realize that that was just normal.
btw, i betcha diversity is a “robust” predictor.
Please forgive an outsider for listening in, but this is the most serious and thoughtful of the dozens of blog discussions of my paper that I’ve read so far. One or two comments from the author:
(1) It is entirely fair game to ask tough methodological questions of my paper (like anyone’s paper)–individual-level vs. aggregate-level analysis, magnitude of Rsq, statistical controls, causal direction, endogeneity, and so forth. The last thing I would do (and if one or two of you know me, I think you’ll confirm this) is “retaliate” against someone who found an error, because I really believe that science is a dialectical procress in which we catch and correct one another’s errors. The only thing that I ask is that you actually read my paper carefully before offering methodological judgments of it. For example, someone asked if I cherry-picked the one significant result of out 20; if you read the paper, you’ll see that I carefully report all the outcome variables–those that fit my summary conclusion and the exceptions. Please don’t just guess what errors I might have made, but tell us ones that I actually did make.
(2) In the very interesting discussion about whether my findings are right or not, and if so, why, I slightly fear that the most important question got somewhat overlooked–how should those of us who see the net long-run benefits of diversity act (publicly and privately) so as to minimize the downside and maximize the upside, as someone above comments. The main point I wanted to make in my lecture was not about an “inevitable condition,” but about a “potentially solvable problem.” Comments on that issue will be gratefully accepted. Meanwhile, thanks for the thoughtful discussion.
Bob Putnam
Can’t add anything intelligent about stats because I can’t add- period. Camille is right on about non-profits in Cali. I deal with a number of them as an artist and curator- and some are very open to looking at race and the dialog about race that is implicit in Socal while some are more into humming happily together. I have this conversation with my students periodically and my 2 cents is basically this: I think the unease among various groups is temporary. What I tell my (ESL) students is that they basically see most of us as acting “American” in public, but in private, many of us are a mix of various things. The problem is what is “American” and I think that is shifting- the white mainstream is finding that it can no longer dictate or expect a specific, rather limited definition of, and that the flattening of identity that was common when I am younger is no longer being tolerated or even aspire to in larger, more diverse cities.
if it is ye, Mr. Putnam, please forgive the unfortunate insinuation I made–it was not really directed at you in particular, but rather at the less-than-considerate atmosphere at universities I attended, which tended to stifle the dialectical process you thankfully recognize as characterizing your discipline.
My glib response seems to be “make a diverse group of friends; develop genuine personal relationships with people of various backgrounds and include them in your social network.”
The structural (e.g. “diversity training” in offices) will just be words and empty policy. IMHO it has to develop from genuine, personal connections.
Tricky to do, if we’re being truly diverse. Because, as was mentioned somewhere earlier along the thread, even groups which include people of a variety of nationalities often finds itself segregated by economic strata or level of education.
First, thanks to Robert Putnam for responding/posting. About statistical issues, I might have a little more to add to what camille pointed out above later if I have time (briefly, there are two sets of assumptions that need to be justified, one has to do with the statistical model which should actually closely follow a theoretical model, which in the social sciences does not happen much. I might give you Gauss’s original example tomorrow to show how it should ideally be done). But more fundamentally (and conceptually), my bigger point is that if you asked a bunch of WASP New Yorkers similar questions in the 1920s, you would probably have come up with similar answers. Therefore the definitions of what constitutes “diversity” is subject to change (as some commentators including sst, have argued above). So I don’t understand why we should be concerned about all this now (more than we already normally are). But I’m very sleepy now…
Hmm. From your lips to Bob’s ears.
Putnam’s main new finding is that “diversity” doesn’t just lead to inter-group conflict (that’s old news) but also leads to intra-group mistrust (i.e. social anomie). Diversity leads to people hating everyone, not just the out-group.
Setting aside methodological issues, some thoughts:
1) I think some clarification of how “diversity” changes would help. Putnam’s paper mentions how group definitions change over time (how the Irish became white, etc), but diversity can also change in an instant, once you add a new member to the nieghbourhood. For example, sometimes I find a (completely hypothetical) group made up of Punjabis, Gujuratis, and Tamils to be uncomfortably fractious and diverse. But throw a white guy in the mix and we’re all on the same team. An all desi neighbourhood (from different parts of the various desh-es) is more diverse than a half-desi half-white neighbourhood. The statistical modell should (try) to account for that.
2) Putnam dismisses self-selection pretty quickly. He doesn’t think that socially-isolated people would deliberately choose racially diverse neighbourhoods. But I pretty much hate community activities, and if given a choice between an all Desi neighbourhood, and a diverse one, I’d choose the latter so that i wouldn’t have to meet all those freakin’ aunties and uncles everyday. It’s possible that misanthropist curmudgeons seek out diversity in order to avoid social contact. Putnam needs to do the statistical work before dismissing self-selection (this is also the Steven Derlauf critique published on isteve.com yesterday)
3) I’m also curious about what the “net long term benefits to diversity” are. I can see short term benefits (gains to a society from ethnic occupational specialization). But over the long term, if the American melting pot really works, diversity vanishes without continued immigration (excepting, always, African Americans). So if in the long-term we are all homogenous, what is the long term benefit of diversity?
4) How soon before this work is replicated in Canada, Britain, and Australia, all of whom have the same majority community but very different minority communities. Is ethnic diversity correlated with social anmie in those countries?
All that said, Putnam’s essay, especially the last third, is a great discussion of the issues. I think everyone should “read the whole thing” before commenting. (yeah, fat chance!).
I read two really great articles yesterday, this one about Putnam’s work being one of them. The other one was a book review of Gregory Clark’s theories suggesting natural selection is part of what led to the Industrial Revolution. I know this might sound silly but if you read this article and then the one I just linked you get a glimpse of some grand unifying theory linking the two. Vinod has blogged about Clark before.
Professor Putnam,
Your five-year survey is a useful antidote to years and years of sentimental, happy-faced flapdoodle. But still, I take issue with the tone and knee-jerkishness of your essay. Some friendly words of advice:
(1) Don’t turn this issue into a mano-a-mano showdown between holier-than-thou liberals, on the one hand, and nativist yokels on the other. ‘Progressive’ is a name appropriated by those in power to describe themselves, and to portray dissenters as in some way unhinged or eccentric. It has no objective meaning. The current categories described as ‘liberals’, ‘progressives,’ ‘neoconservatives’ and ‘reformers’ all appear to me to be similar varieties of the same Fabian consensus.
(2) You’re a political scientist, not an economist. So stop rattling on about the supposed ‘benefits’ of mass, unfettered and especially illegal immigration. The consensus among the biggest names in the field – such as Thomas Sowell, Paul Krugman, Paul Samuelson, Gary Becker and George Borjas – reflected in the National Research Council’s ‘The New Americans’ back in 1997, is that low-to-semi-skilled migration does little for a $12 trillion economy. Please visit the Borjas blog and scan its archives, or alternatively, read Borjas’ academic papers and essays.
(3) And finally: Mexico is not going to ‘enrich’ us culturally. Their mores and manners, like mine, are too low-brow! As much as I enjoy the music of Jennifer Lopez and the tomfoolery of Bumble-bee Man (the Simpsons), it is not wise to manufacture more inequality within the Untied States for the sake of a few cheap thrills. As Charles Murray pointed out in his compendium extravaganza ‘Human Accomplishment,’ civilisational progress has depended on a few individuals of magnanimous ability. So a selective immigration policy is probably best.
Thank you for all the hard work.
MA Jones
Abhi, did you buy the argument? I liked the visual graphics the NYT provided to try to explain what he was getting at. I don’t know that I buy the “shift in values” argument, though. 🙂
Michael Jones,
I can only hope your last comment: “And finally: Mexico is not going to ‘enrich’ us culturally. Their mores and manners, like mine, are too low-brow!” was meant as a joke. If not, you may want to avoid places like California for the rest of your life because you might find a) the demographics, b) the “low brow” culture and c) the hybridity that’s developing to be highly disturbing. Mexico has already enriched the US, if not you, in a number of ways from language to architecture to food to visual arts. Some of the most dynamic independent art is coming out of Tijuana (Nortec, Bulbo Collective). California architecture owes a great deal to Mexican tradition- without it – the arts and crafts style in Cali would have never come to its full expression. This country may indeed need some kind of overhaul of the immigration system but the type of selectivity you suggest, is a culture worthy of being allowed to immigrate is disgusting. Under that logic system, the Irish, for example, would have never been allowed in since the English considered them uncouth, uncivilized and speaking a bastard tongue.
Thanks for the link, Amardeep.
Having lived in very homogenous (as in white, in the US) and very mixed (both in the US and in New Delhi, India) neighborhoods, I still am not able to put my finger on what actually contributes to higher or lower levels of civic engagement.
There are probably a lot of things involved apart from changing demographics based on race alone. Not just in the US but also in India.
When I was young, most woman stayed home and sometimes they formed the bulwark of neighborhood watch groups and kept an eye on the upkeep of civic amenities. There was more social contact with one’s neighbors. I have heard the same from my American friends who grew up in the 1950s and 60s about the state of affairs in the US. My own generation (and the younger ones) in India and the US is much more busy, with both spouses employed outside the home in many cases. I have noticed that more and more, socialization and activism both involve professional relations and concerns, moving away from neighborhood issues. Notably, this trend is more prevalent in Indian middle class neighborhoods (at least in Delhi, for which I can speak) than in the US. It is also noticeable, coincidentally or not, that the state of residential roads, drains and garbage pick-up in New Delhi, in the same neighborhood where I grew up, is a shambles. Any connection between socialization among neighbors and the civic amenities? I don’t know. The ethnic mix of the area on the other hand, has not changed since my parents’ days.
I will copy here something I wrote in the comments section of my own post to which Amardeep has linked, regarding my observations in the US:
You can slice this baloney any which way you like and make a compelling (if somewhat superficial) case for all scenarios. I live in a hugely diverse city. I also hear the words “third world culture” being thrown around a lot in regards to the way the city functions – often by those who themselves came from third world countries. The suspicion is that every population group is focused on its own narrow ethnic / cultural interests and there is no sense of ownership for the community at large. The suspicion is not entirely unfounded. But what is interesting is that the indifference to community duties or the lack of civic strength cannot be explained away entirely due to this “Tower of Babel” or the aggressive “salad bowl” culture of the city.
Many working class neighborhoods in Houston are ethnically segregated. We have distinctly African American, Vietnames and Latino neighborhoods, as also some low income white areas. But most affluent neighborhoods are very diverse. Guess where the civic amenities function well? It always comes down to how much is at stake for the citizens and what community they are invested in.
I think that the impetus to engage in civic activities is not rooted only in the expected outcome of our efforts. It is also connected to a “feel good” attitude – we want our friends to “appreciate” our commitment. It appears that there are several tangibles and intangibles as to why people will or will not do their civic duty like voting. The most important of course is how high the political stakes are. During acute financial, national or cultural upheavals voters turn out in large numbers despite severe obstacles of weather, mobility and time constraints. When not much is at stake on the political / national scene, the visible reason for voter lethargy is inconvenience – time away from work, driving, standing in line, bureaucratic calisthenics etc. But there are some other less obvious reasons why we participate in the political /civic process – we want to be SEEN by our neighbors and friends as conscientious citizens. A good deed done in anonymity is like a tree falling in the forest. So our tendency to withdraw when we do not know our neighbors is not just the suspicion of the “other” but also our own ” lethargy and indifference” when we we consider ourselves invisible among strangers or away from the eyes of our friends.
An interesting example of this was when a Swiss canton (racially homogenous) tried to make it easier for its citizens and arranged for voting by phone from home. Percentage of votes cast actually went down! When voting from home via telephone took away the “look at me” incentive, many did not bother to vote.
OK, first of all, who gets to say what is low-brow? You? If you think that J-Lo (who is PUERTO RICAN) and Bumblebee Man (an American cartoon’s joke about Mexican culture) are what Mexican culture has to offer, you have absolutely nothing to say.
Second, you’re quoting the authority of Charles Murray, the renowned theorist of the racist right? His credibility disappeared entirely with The Bell Curve. Read Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man before you trust anything Murray has to say.
Camille, thanks for laying it out there for the stats-challenged among us.
And Bob Putnam, thanks for coming by to talk about this– I agree with your emphasis on “minimizing the downside and maximizing the upside” and hope that you will be successful in counteracting the spin and oversimplifications that the right will no doubt impose on your results.
Zazou,
(1) ‘Mexico has already enriched the US, if not you, in a number of ways from language to architecture to food to visual arts.’
‘Enriched’ is a positive, feel-good adjective. But Mexico’s contribution to cultural life in the United States has either been neutral or negative. California’s main creative industries – Hollywood and Silicon Valley – employ few Latinos above the technician level. And although Mexicans are by far the biggest immigrant group, they don’t even rank among the top 20 immigrant groups in the U.S. in terms of patents awarded.
But even on the plus side, you get things muddled-up. Mexico’s main strength isn’t its visual arts or architecture. (Most architects reject populist Latin American styles for a Euro-minimalist look.) Rather, it’s literature – novelists such as Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa. But then again, La Raza’s literary talent is unlikely to ‘enrich’ the US: 65% of Mexican-born newcomers don’t finish high school.
(2) ‘California architecture owes a great deal to Mexican tradition- without it – the arts and crafts style in Cali would have never come to its full expression.’
That’s a lousy mea culpa for mass immigration. Mexico’s most valued contribution to California is Rey Mysterio – let’s face it! Asian-Americans have adapted well to middle-class American life because of their nerdy-knack for IT and business. Hispanics in America, in contrast, are 2.9 times more likely to end up in jail than white Americans and 13 times that of Asians. The only ‘enrichment’ coming out of la Raza is a snazzier selection of semi-automatic weaponry.
(4) ‘Under that logic system, the Irish, for example, would have never been allowed in since the English considered them uncouth, uncivilized and speaking a bastard tongue.’
So what are you suggesting? That we invite the laziest, most untrustworthy, least productive and crime-prone people on the planet to settle here just to prove how ‘enlightened’ we all are?
You would think, would you not, that the aim of letting in more people would be to benefit the already-existing population – not to make happy-clappy liberals feel better about themselves.
Troll alert!
Michael A. Jones, please take your racist commentary to another site. Your anti-Latino vitriol is not welcome here.
Dr. Putnam,
Thank you for patiently responding here. I feel uncomfortable about my semi-anonymity (as opposed to your open identity), but please be assured that had I been present at your lecture or talk I would have brought up exactly the same (above) questions/concerns during ‘Q&A’ and you would have been happy to answer me because you would understand that a few others may have had the same questions. You would have considered it an opportunity to put their minds to rest (or work further, as the case maybe).
I am a researcher myself, so I instinctively understand that no one knows the data as well as the person who has been looking at it for the past several months/years. In fact, no single person knows it as well as the grad student who lived/dreamed/bathed/breathed it 24/7.
Have you tested to see if the contribution of all ethnicity/homegenity variables is significant? In SAS you would do this by introducing a test command after the model statement. It would read ‘test_ethnicity: test black, Latino, Asian, Index of Homogeneity, Spanish speaker;’ A significant F-test would mean that the collective contribution of one or more of these variables is significant. Another way to think of this, is that there is a significant difference between a model with black, Latino, Asian variables as compared to a model without them, i.e., there is a signifcant difference between the ‘full’ model and the ‘reduced’ model.
If you have already done this and reported it in your paper, I apologize for missing it during my reading yesterday. The narrative structure/style of the paper is something I am not used to. But I respected you enough to try and read the paper once, putting aside my own work. Which is more than can be said for at least one of your own colleagues, apparently.
It may be a discipline-specific thing, but with a model that has a R-sq of 0.26 I (as an epidemiologist who also uses observational data from the real-world) would write a paper and get it published but would rarely be allowed (by my seniors) to let the results escape the halls of academia. Perhaps, that is my main, or only, concern. I respect the role even descriptive/exploratory analyses play in knowledge development/translation; I just worry about how they will be used prematuredly by those who don’t recognize the (admittedly fluid) boundaries between descriptive and analytical approaches.
Thank you, once again, for your patience.
Malathi, I think you are better off treating the results as descriptive rather than inferential (so ignore significance etc.). The model is not really a controlled experiment where assumptions about errors can be made more reliably (and statistical models basically simulate controlled experiments); the statistical model has essentially been “bootstrapped” from the data with all the attendant BLUE assumptions (again I should mention that to be fair to Prof. Putnam, this is not only a criticism of his paper and applies to all such social science papers). But treating the data as descriptive would not necessarily detract from Putnam’s verbal argument about causality (just that that statistics cannot carry the causal weight).
Malathi, I think this is one of the most fundamental differences between statistical research in science/medicine/epidemiology and statistical research in the social sciences. What is more interesting to me, for example, is how variables were defined and qualified, how these were factored into the analysis, and which assumptions were made to ensure these “held up.” I haven’t had a chance to read the paper, yet, and so I’ll refrain from any further speculation/commentary re: the model and its interpretation until I’ve gotten a chance to read it carefully 🙂
I should clarify that I am using the word “bootstrapping” in its more general sense rather than as the particular statistical procedure (i.e. no-parametric form of estimation). It is closer to “inductive inference” in the sense I am using it here.
Finally finished the post. Took me long enough. *__^
Putnam is correct. Humans just are not equal in aptitudes and attitudes and human ethnic groups will not magically be proportionately represented in all spheres of life. In a pluralistic society this becomes very obvious and hard to ignore. After all, how many jewish carpenters and black physicists do you know ? Any attempt by governments ( a la affirmative action) to equalize groups will provoke resentment. The best thing to do is enforce equal opportunity laws and abandon affirmative action. Let the chips fall where they may. Hey, if no desis can make it into the NBA and no blacks can make it into MIT, let’s just accept it as our destiny (after all, genes trump government policy) and move on. As long as all groups are held to the same admittance standards.
Wow. Have you ever considered the possibility that history and people’s material reality have something to do with the professions they choose? I mean, just maybe the fact that the US school system warehouses African Americans into crowded and underfunded schools and doesn’t provide scholarships for college has something to do with it? Or that Jews were historically excluded from professions like carpentry and therefore developed alternative traditional occupations (which resulted in what is now a stereotype about Jewish bankers)?
I mean… you’re basically saying that black people are genetically inferior. Which is the basest sort of racism.
Remember, genes may be the cards we’re dealt, but we don’t get to choose the circumstances in which we play our hand.
and I don’t think Putnam is saying that AT ALL.
Sarah:
no one is saying any group is “inferior.” In fact blacks are quite superior in many athletic spheres and some intellectual skills such as high speed verbal abilities
Right, it’s not at ALL racist to say that black people are good at sports but can’t do physics. Give me a freaking break.
anand, when you say “Blacks aren’t inferior; they’re good at sports!” is still a completely racist argument. Relying on “genetics” also completely ignores how social phenomena fuel and further inequality. It is not a government vs. genes argument, and further, your analysis is NOT what Putnam argues. Get it together.
Sorry Anand, I’m with Sarah and Camille on this one. Genetics is only one tiny fraction of one side of the coin. Socialization, economic opportunities, socially coded messages play a much greater role in ability and success than you might think. The proliferation of African Americans in sports and entertainment has its roots in teh allowance for spectacle. The Irish were in large part the entertainers of the US- not expected to amount to much, relegated to bars and boxing rings until emancipation. the Minstrel shows are the precursors of certain forms of today’s entertainment, African Americans and Puerto Ricans the Irish boxers of today. When I was at MIT, I saw a number of African American students, when I went back to Wellesley 2 years ago, I was thrilled to see an increase in students of color, especially African Americans. There may be no Black physicists (although I doubt it) but there are plenty of talented African American scientists and PhD. candidates out there. Can I imagine that? You bet. In spite of TV and the general wasteland of American film in which people of color are under-represented as just plain people- yes I can because I have seen it. To detour slightly, one of the lectures I give beginning film students, especially students of color is don;t let the invisible color bar determine what you can and cannot make as a product. America forms its social opinions in part from what is portrayed in popular media. And, in a sense, Anad is right- if you do not see the Black doctor on TV and only the gang member or the gunshot victim and you live in a mostly non-diverse area- on what basis do you form your general opinion of X group? Fanon said something along the lines of “if you cannot see me, how can I see myself?” Hence the need for groups to talk about how they are portrayed and to actively seek to balance that protrayal, especially if you may be working inside the industry. One of my favorite billboards of all times is the following:
“Amigos don’t let amigos watch Friends.”
Guys/Girls,
doesn’t anand sound just a teeny weeny bit like Dinesh D’Souza in “The End to Racism” ????
i.e., “see, those natives thinking that by building planes out of bamboo, they will bring upon themselves a modern infrastructure, market economy and shiny, pretty baubles? That’s just the way they are–it wouldn’t matter a whit if they had undergone all the major historical shifts that have occurred in developed, industrial societies?”
Ah, MM, don’t insult Anand that way…:)
zazou,
I’ll make a wild guess and say that he wouldn’t see it that way–more of a unequivocal plaudit.
Ah, well, there’s no accounting for taste. Am not a big fan of D’Souza by any stretch of the imagination.
I agree completely with the broad thrust of what you say in your comment, but just wanted to point out that actually, there are many black physicists, including some at MIT. But more broadly, in academia, there are depressingly few outside of the historically black colleges and universities. The National Association of Black Physicists is an organization dedicated to the professional well-being of black physicists. Professor Sylvester Gates, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, is perhaps one of the most well-known, he is a major figure in superstring theory.
My comment at #91 had excerpted from and was responding to zazou’s comment at #86.
the issue is not that there are NO black physicists, it is just that there is not proportional representation; and my point is that we should be comfortable with asymmetric disproportional representation otherwise we will foster a sense of entitlement among non-succcessful groups that somehow proportional representation in NBA, MIT, Harvard etc is some sort of ideal that must be met
Chachaji,
I rather thought so, but not having met any, didn;t want to make a claim for something I couldn’t back up.
And Anand- just exactly what is a “non-successful group?”
by non-successful i mean whatever group is under-represented in a given sphere of activity. In athletics, it would be desis, asians, maybe even WASPs. In academics it would be blacks and maybe latrinos.
I’m so glad you asked! We have much to discuss: you’ve missed quite a bit.
Well, all good things must come to an end. But I was so proud of you kids while it lasted. I guess, no succesful group lasts forever.