Clark T (2009) Mixed Blessing. The Guardian, 1.4.2009, (date accessed 7.12.09)
Top of Form
Search:
Bottom of Form
- News
- Sport
- Comment
- Culture
- Business
- Money
- Life & style
- Travel
- Environment
- Blogs
- Video
- Jobs
- A-Z
- News
- Society
- Communities
Mixed blessing
As America's first black president makes a historic visit to the UK, Tom Clark looks at what effect increasing ethnic diversity has on social harmony this side of the Atlantic
Comments (…)
A street mural at Dalston Junction celebrating the ethnic mix in Hackney, east London. Photograph: Barry Lewis/Alamy
About the most certain prediction we can make of any developed country is that it will be more ethnically diverse in a few decades' time than it is today. The magnetic pull of the rich world is such that slamming the gates is probably not possible, but even if it could be done, immigrants already in the west are set to have enough children to represent a growing population share for a time to come.
This week, Barack Obama is visiting the UK. The first black president of the US is an apparent symbol of American comfort with diversity, and a prompt for wondering whether the UK is similarly at ease. For the last few months, I have been writing a book with a team of researchers - led by Harvard professor Robert Putnam - who have been trying to find out. Despite the undoubted economic and cultural gains from diversity, it transpires that it does put certain strains on community life, on both sides of the Atlantic - especially when politicians exploit the unease.
With electric blue eyes and a prophet's beard, Putnam stands out as a man drawn to big ideas, at a time when university life is ever more specialised. He made headlines around the world in 2000 with his book, Bowling Alone, which looked at everything from bridge clubs to PTAs to reach its conclusion that community life in the US was withering on the vine.
Despite that grim verdict, he brims with the conviction that societies can turn themselves around, and his work has won the attention of politicians ranging from Obama to Muammar Gaddafi. He has now teamed up with ManchesterUniversity for a £5m five-year project to examine the vast forces that are reshaping society in the UK and the US. Studies on the feminisation of working life and the gulf between pious America and secular Europe will follow on from the work on immigration.
Remarkable transformation
Diversity has run much further in America than Britain; there, as many as one in three citizens belong to one ethnic minority or another. In the UK, the figure is around 10%, or slightly more if groups such as the Irish are included. But even this figure is a remarkable transformation when it is recalled that the non-white population was vanishingly small until the Empire Windrush docked in Tilbury in 1948, bringing the first large group of West Indian immigrants to the UK a mere two generations ago. More pertinently, the proportion has been growing fast. The credit crunch has temporarily depressed the inflow of arrivals, but before long it will probably pick up again.
A flick through a children's history book is enough to inspire speculation about differences in the way America and Britain will handle the transformation. The Statue of Liberty is the symbol of an immigrant nation, whereas fusty myths of British tradition concern an island people fending off all comers since 1066. Indeed, it turns out that, in many respects, American immigrants fare better - finding work more easily and enjoying better health than new arrivals in the UK.
With race, the story is different, thanks to the poisonous legacy of American slavery. The African-American population is more ghettoised and suffers worse health than almost any section of US society. Despite warnings by Trevor Phillips, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, about Britain sleepwalking into segregation, the census reveals that there are few true British ghettos.
The most keenly anticipated findings concern the effect of racial diversity on community life. Two years have passed since Putnam - a staunch progressive who still believes immigration is, in general, a force for good - sparked controversy with research that showed diversity tended to weaken trust and active citizenship. Surprised by the result, he adjusted the analysis to take account of every feasible alternative explanation, including inequality, poverty and neighbourhood turnover. But whatever else was factored in, the diversity effect remained.
"It was not," he says, "that diverse neighbourhoods were beset with racial tension. Rather, it seemed people responded to living in a mixed area by 'hunkering down', withdrawing from the social world as a whole - including from interaction with people of their own colour - like shy turtles retreating into their shells."
Is the same thing happening in Britain? Ed Fieldhouse, professor of social and political science at ManchesterUniversity, has led the research at the British end, applying a similar methodology in both countries at once. He found the adverse link between diversity and community-mindedness applied in the UK too, but was much less powerful. In America, diversity proved almost as corrosive as poverty, while in the UK the impact was more modest, akin to the effect of an increase in turnover among the local population.
The transatlantic contrast may reflect different dividing lines in the two societies. Racial identity has historically loomed large in American thinking, whereas in the UK the class cleavage traditionally counts more. That could conceivably result in Americans hunkering down more in the face of racial diversity, although this remains somewhat speculative, and Putnam stresses that more work is needed on this point.
But even if modest, the adverse reaction to diversity was still there in Britain, and Fieldhouse wanted to understand its nature. To do so, he focused on the minority ethnic population itself, to see whether it reacted in the same way as the white majority. He discovered it does not: for non-white individuals, being exposed to diversity has little impact on attitudes such as trust. "At first, we weren't sure whether this was because minorities faced less prejudice in mixed areas, or whether instead it was because diverse neighbourhoods more often provided the chance to live alongside others from their own particular ethnic group," says Fieldhouse.
As it turned out, the second explanation was correct. Once the greater scope for, say, Pakistanis to live alongside other Pakistanis in diverse areas is discounted, they hunker down in the face of diversity in much the same way as white people.
So it seems that it is the desire to live with one's kith and kin that explains why diversity strains social solidarity. The difference in the British and American results, however, demonstrates that this desire is more a matter of conditioning than immovable instinct.
Putnam points out that when he was a teenager of Methodist stock in the 1950s, Jewish and Catholic girls were not seen as feasible dates. "Religion was an important dividing line back then," he says. "But by the 1980s,when my own kids were at high school, it was seen as so incidental that they were no more concerned with their classmates' faith than whether they were left- or right-handed."
Social division
If religion has ceased to be a source of social division, Putnam says, there is no reason in principle why ethnicity should not in time cease to divide as well. "In fact," he adds, "evidence uncovered in our research shows that on both sides of the Atlantic younger generations are growing steadily more comfortable with racial diversity than their elders."
The election of an African-American president, unthinkable a generation ago, only confirms that the process is well under way. (With one white parent, it might be argued that Obama is not "truly black". The fact that he is almost always described as such, and identifies himself that way, is another reminder of the reality that racial categories are socially constructed, rather than god-given).
But if shifting political winds can snuff out discomfort, they can also greatly inflame it. One chapter in Putnam's new book, to be published later this year, will be dedicated to exploring what happens when political debates turn against immigrants. The Conservatives' 2005 election campaign is a case in point. They plastered two slogans on one poster - "It's not racist to talk about immigration" and "Are you thinking what we're thinking?" - that together pulled off the brazen trick of linking race and migration in the electorate's mind, while insisting that they were separate.
The effect? The proportion of the electorate ranking immigration or asylum as their top concern increased by two-thirds during the campaign. There is little need for the usual caveats about unpicking cause and effect; this finding was established by asking the same people the same question immediately before and immediately after the campaign. American analysis confirms that anxiety about immigration is shaped more by media coverage than objective demographics.
The political mood music also determines which particular immigrants bear the brunt of resentment. In 1980s Britain, news reports often linked West Indians with crime and disorder, partly due to the Brixton riots. And back then, living in African-Caribbean neighbourhoods, though not South Asian ones, fuelled anxiety about immigration. Twenty years on, the media's treatment of Muslims after 9/11 has turned the heat on to them instead.
Long view
So the message of Putnam's research comes in two parts: first, diversity currently imposes strains on society; but, second, there is no inevitable reason why it should. Taking the long view, he reflects on the big social changes of the past, such as the industrial revolution - which was cradled in Manchester.
"Initially, life expectancy fell and the quality of life declined," Putnam explains. "But people did not go back to the villages. They stayed in the cities, devised new arrangements for public sanitation and so on, and ended up much better off than before. Greater diversity is one of the revolutions of our own time. It will no more be reversed than industrialisation. The challenge is to find ways to make a success of it."
The choice of a black man with an immigrant father to lead the rich world is a sign that the necessary changes are already under way.
- The Age of Obama: The Changing Place of Minorities in British and American Society, by Tom Clark, Robert Putnam and Edward Fieldhouse
- Printable version
- Send to a friend
- Share
- Clip
- Contact us
- larger | smaller
Close
Top of Form
Recipient's email address
Your first name
Your surname
Add a note (optional)
Your IP address will be logged
Bottom of Form
Share
Close
- Digg
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! My Web
- del.icio.us
- StumbleUpon
- Newsvine
- livejournal
- BlinkList
Contact us
Close
- Contact the Society editor
- Report errors or inaccuracies:
- Letters for publication should be sent to:
- If you need help using the site:
- Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
+44 (0)20 3353 2000 - Advertising guide
- License/buy our content
Society
- Communities
World news
- Barack Obama
More features
Related
25 Mar 2009
Tom Clark: The prospects of a British Obama are affected by geography of race
21 Jan 2009
Chinese media censors communism reference in Obama inauguration speech
6 Jan 2009
Gordon Brown meets the people on tour of recession Britain
5 Nov 2008
John McCain's concession speech in full
- Printable version
- Send to a friend
- Share
- Clip
- Contact us
- Article history
Close
Top of Form
Recipient's email address
Your first name
Your surname
Add a note (optional)
Your IP address will be logged
Bottom of Form
Share
Close
- Digg
- Google Bookmarks
- Yahoo! My Web
- del.icio.us
- StumbleUpon
- Newsvine
- livejournal
- BlinkList
Contact us
Close
- Contact the Society editor
- Report errors or inaccuracies:
- Letters for publication should be sent to:
- If you need help using the site:
- Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
+44 (0)20 3353 2000 - Advertising guide
- License/buy our content
About this article
Close
Tom Clark looks at what effect ethnic diversity has on social harmony
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk at 00.01 BST on Wednesday 1 April 2009. It appeared in the Guardian on Wednesday 1 April 2009 on p1 of the Society news & features section. It was last updated at 00.25 BST on Wednesday 1 April 2009.
- UK
- USA