There’s nothing worse to a cosmopolitan liberal than the idea that there are still towns in America that are vastly lacking in ethnic diversity.
Well, hold on, because that’s not quite right. We’re sure the journalistic mavens who sit in their New York Times ivory tower are not the least bit concerned about cities that are 90% black or 85% Hispanic. No, that kind of cultural homogeny is A-OK. They’re only horrified by towns where all you see is an ocean of white people. As we’ve seen from their snide coverage of Trump rallies, nothing disgusts these libs more than a crowd of whites.
So we shouldn’t have been too surprised by a recent New York Times story about Congolese refugees who are hoping to bring their relatives to America through the refugee resettlement program. This is the program, of course, that President Trump has made it his mission to cripple since taking office. No fan of chain migration (or taking in refugees by the boatload), Trump has lowered the cap on refugee resettlement considerably from the days of Obama.
But this is a mistake, according to the Times:
To supporters like Mr. Engen, the Congolese are filling a void of cultural diversity in a town that is nearly 90 percent white. In the 1980s, Hmong refugees from Laos settled in Missoula. The children of immigrant families are usually the few students of color in city classrooms, while their parents work long hours at businesses eager for the help.
Not all that hidden in the subtext: It is a problem to have towns that are 90 percent white in America, circa 2019. We need to do everything possible to fill these “voids of cultural diversity” with refugees, illegal immigrants, displaced Muslims, and anyone else we can think of who isn’t white. Because being white, straight, cisgendered, and Christian in today’s America is just so, so passé.
It has become a matter of unexamined faith in leftist circles to proclaim cultural diversity as the key to America’s strength as a nation. So much so that to even question that tenet is akin to declaring yourself a bigot of the highest order.
But if the Times would take a look through their own archives, they might come across this piece from Aug. 2007, where they covered a then-new study that cast serious doubts about the false god of diversity:
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.
So maybe it isn’t the “void of cultural diversity” that is the problem, after all. Maybe that’s just a (thin) mask for metropolitan liberals to don so that they can justify their hatred of towns with traditional values, shared culture, and little appetite for increased government. Who knows? Maybe they’ve been wearing that mask for so long, they’ve forgotten that they ever put it on.
Or maybe they’re just lying.
