There’s a pervasive view that, far from a consequence of extreme diversity, consensus is in fact a feature of homogeneous societies. For example, the popular view in Scandinavia is that the traditional high-trust society is under assault by immigrants who do not share the same social values as the native-born. Robert Putnam goes further and shows that diversity is associated with less trust and social capital, which made many racists joyful that here, there was a scientific basis for hate. The conclusion they as well as many ordinary members of the elite draw is that immigrants are a problem for society to deal with.
Before presenting an alternative view, let me point out that in fact, some of the world’s most famous consensus societies are also the most diverse. The Netherlands had a sharp division between Catholics, Protestants, and secular socialists for a century; Dutch consensus democracy is based in part on the need for those communities to coexist. Belgium is practically two separate countries – one Flemish, one Walloon. Switzerland, too, is diverse, though the German-speaking community has a majority. Those societies are all deeply suspicious of immigrants, but their attitude to the diversity they have built natively is positive, and, in the Netherlands, one attempt at integration involved creating a separate pillar for Muslims.
The diversity in those countries is discounted today by Americans and even Europeans who have grown to seeing the West as a single coherent civilization in opposition to others, but back when they developed their model of inter-ethnic consensus, Protestant vs. Catholic and other internal European divisions were critical. By analogy, it would have been senseless to talk about Jews, Irish, and Italians in New York in 1900 as one undifferentiated white mass.
The negative attitudes toward immigrants in the most diverse European countries, as seen in the rise of the SVP and Geert Wilders’ PVV and in the success of their nativist programs, suggests the reason for the xenophobia is not fear of diversity, but fear of change. Consensus government works slowly – and, at any rate, the mainstreaming of democratic consensus has gotten to a point that there’s a strong elite consensus for not dealing with incendiary issues. Rapid entry of new people into an area causes NIMBYism everywhere; when those people are distinguished by skin color or religion, the result is racism.
It is not my intention to excoriate racism here, much less European racism – it is pointless. However, let me suggest ways for social and political leaders to avoid the above problems – to build a consensus in favor of more social integration and acceptance. This is especially important in diverse cities, where immigrants tend to cluster, and where there’s preexisting diversity making it feasible to avoid majority-minority politics.
First, immigrants are not a problem. Neither is immigration. The problem is racism. This is the mistake of the elites in every European country: they whitewash the existence of discrimination and make little attempt to fix it. A good reference is Why the French Don’t Like Headscarves, portraying French governments as knowing exactly how many Muslims there are in their communities when it comes to discussing gender-segregated swimming pools but not knowing or discussing discrimination. Alternatively, read these two New York Times articles published in the wake of the French riots.
Second, in the long run, diverse communities become stronger, and the trend of hunkering down dissipates. It’s a long process, and the goal should be to make it shorter, and avoid the risk of long-term divisions as occurred between blacks and whites in the US over the centuries. Putnam himself notes it in his study; his three examples include black-white integration in the army following desegregation, Catholic/Protestant intermarriage from the postwar period to the 1980s, and the turning of ethnic whites from disparate nationalities into Americans in the first half of the 20th century.
Third, it’s imperative to make integration a matter of local consensus rather than a political play by one party, either a liberal party looking for patronage voters or a conservative party looking for strikebreakers. In other words, immigrants are a group of people, not a solution or a problem.
A good example of a mayor who seems to abide by the first two principles but not the third, viewing immigrants as a solution, is Schenectady’s Al Jurczynski. After hearing that the Guyanese don’t accept welfare, Jurczynski began a concerted campaign of luring them in from New York and giving them free housing that would otherwise have to be demolished. Many of Jurczynski’s actions, such as going to Guyanese areas of Queens and going on a Guyanese radio show, are a good example of what political leaders must do to make immigrants feel like part of the city; however, the consensus he created exists purely among the business class, and therefore has drawn animosity from other groups within the city, including existing minorities, who feel slighted by the implication. It was a political play, much like Nixon and Pat Buchanan’s strategy of appealing to Catholics.
It’s not hard to redefine Americanness (or Britishness, or Dutchness) along more inclusive lines – it’s been done before in the face of new waves of immigration, often in order to maintain a majority of those defined as white Americans but using methods that could be generalized to decrease rather than increase animosity.
A mayor who wants to promote integration rather than create an ethnic group captive to his political needs will not engage in such divisive politics. He will walk in the ethnic enclaves of his own city first, making people already in the city feel welcome. He will make a positive effort to hire qualified minorities and listen to communities on the issues relevant to them, including, for example, making an effort to integrate the police force in order to reduce racist brutality.