Necessary Roughness

First Lawrence Summers suggested that men and women might be cognitively diverse; now Robert Putnam has published findings that the more diverse a group of people, the more likely the people are not to trust each other.

When the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, they showed that the more people of different races lived in the same community, the greater the loss of trust. “They don’t trust the local mayor, they don’t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions,” said Prof Putnam. “The only thing there’s more of is protest marches and TV-watching.”

I hope Professor Putnam doesn’t get run off like Summers did.

It comes down to information science, really. Absent important data like behavior history and work accomplishments, people then seek people they feel they know more about. They assume people of similar physical characteristics will also have similar behavioral habits and expectations. If you want to overcome this, you bust your tail and provide objective results that people with any set of physical characteristics can appreciate. You provide information to them that is contrary to their set stereotypes. What you don’t do is provide forced advantage (i.e. Affirmative Action) to a certain group of people, because you will enforce the stereotype that a certain group is weaker and must be “elevated”.