In my adult life (an oxymoron, huh ?), I have lived in parts of the U.S. that might be considered on the far ends of the diversity continuum. When people imagine a lack of diversity, it is easy to think of the northern suburbs of Dallas, TX or Plano, TX or Texas A&M. When people imagine a diverse community, it is easy to think of the San Francisco area or of New York.
I must say that I've learned & unlearned a lot about diversity over the last 30 years. As a white male, diversity is not a theoretical issue or even something to be sensitive to. It is the air I breathe, that I inhale, it is the seats at MY table that I spread across. Building & maintaining an echo chamber of people like me takes planning & hard work - it is vigilant work to foster homophily, the mortal enemy of diversity. But the truth that I found on both ends of the continuum is captured in this simple statement from Global Voices Online founder Ethan Zuckerman:
Homophily makes you stupid.
The truth of that axiom we learned as kids - “birds of a feather flock together” - is that this flocking makes it hard for people from around the world to relate constructively, to even understand what some one else's life might be like.
Much of what I understand about diversity makes no real sense, but nothing more than this a-ha (or actually o shit):
The more diverse America becomes, the more homogeneous it becomes.
image from melissss
That line is the opening to a wonderful review in yesterday's WSJ on a new book I just started reading from an Austin writer Bill Bishop called The Big Sort. For a taste of this wonderful book, here is a preso Bishop did recently:
Working with data from sociologist Bob Cushing, The Big Sort is fundamentally about migration—about the choices people make about where to live—and how these choices change the makeup of states and communities. Americans have always been a mobile society, but mobility patterns are not random. Certain groups in our population are more likely to move and, when they move, they tend to concentrate in certain places. Hence the Big Sort.
In the review by Governing Magazine's Alan Ehrenhalt, there are so many insights shared from this remarkable book detailing the multidimensional sorting of the American population and the increasing importance of geography and location for every facet of our lives. The central premise of the book is captured here:
In Mr. Bishop's view, resorting is what happens when individuals in a society become more affluent, better educated and freer to make their own personal and political choices. But he also believes that the Big Sort has been a form of escape. As the country attracts more and more immigrants, and as large metropolitan areas become multiracial and multilingual, people feel a strong desire to retreat to the safety of smaller communities where they can live among those who look, think and behave like themselves.
"Americans," Mr. Bishop writes, "lost their sense of a nation by accident in the sweeping economic and cultural shifts that took place after the mid-1960s. And by instinct they have sought out modern-day recreations of the 19th-century 'island communities' in where and how they live." Not red and blue states, he is quick to insist; he calls that cliché an illusion. The reality is red and blue wards and precincts, suburbs and counties.
This past Friday evening, we had a groups of folks over to our home for a potluck, that staple of gathering and eating. We laughed a bunch, shared some stories, even found ideas & people we could meet in and plenty other ideas that did not overlap.
For me, the evening's conversation & plotting were drenched in hope & love. One piece of our discussion has eaten at me - maybe it was Gentiles' wonderful gumbo. We discussed the reality that there are red churches & blue churches, red issues & blue issues, even red ways to follow Jesus and blue ways. Bishop's insights helped me to understand a bit more of how this has happened, how our drive for affluence & comfort have created echo chambers. We ended our potluck by plotting some conversations after an upcoming event, time to reach for social bridge building, even mess up the ordered sorts we rule our lives with.
I am so thankful for the work that Bishop & Cushing have done. I am also thankful for the work that is bridge building. I am eager to stretch for this, to read more of The Big Sort, to listen more closely to stories of ways to stop the numbing path we find ourselves on as we "retreat to the safety of smaller communities where (we) can live among those who look, think and behave like (ourselves)".
homophily make u stupid?
Posted by: nuter | Monday, March 29, 2010 at 10:15 AM