"5 Greatest Myths" #5 Diversity makes us stronger (posted for discussion)

[audtatious]

****Again, the following is simply up for discussion. It's from some blog that was pointed out to me thus who the author is probably does not matter when discussing the writings.***** - audtatious

"Social values in general are incrementally variable: neither safety, diversity, rational articulation, nor morality is categorically a good thing to have more of, without limits. All are subject to diminishing returns, and ultimately negative returns.”- Thomas Sowell

The truth behind this Myth should be perfectly obvious. "Diversity makes us stronger" is a statement of opinion, not a factual conclusion. It does not follow as a logical deduction that dissimilarities between peoples could possibly make a society stronger as a whole. It doesn't take a sociologist to at least suspect that it might be a more rational assumption if the opposite were true. Look around the natural world at animals that hunt in packs or those that travel in herds, or schools of fish, or flocks of birds. It is obvious that it is their similarities and indeed, their homogeny that makes them stronger and we know that these creatures evolved that way as a survival strategy for their species. Even for humans, diversity didn't evolve naturally. The Caucasian race, the Negroid race, the Mongolian race all evolved separately and in their own distinct locations. Natural Selection precisely chose each race because of their similarities, not for their diversity.

The only thing that diversity makes us is diverse. And like so many other liberal philosophies, the word "diversity" has been politicized as something beneficial and so treated by the politically correct propaganda machine that to question diversity is to be called racist. This is the same propaganda that keeps the public from knowing the truth about global warming or the high price of gasoline. Anaximenes has exposed the truth behind those subjects in the April 14, 2007 posting Global Warming (AIAYFF) and in the May 27, 2006 posting Petrol Propaganda, so now it's time to debunk another PC lie and expose the fifth biggest Myth.

Diversity, in fact, does not make us stronger. That is a big, fat ****ing lie. Diversity, in fact, makes us weaker.

"That which has always been accepted by everyone, everywhere, is almost certain to be false." -Paul Valery

Here's the truth: there is very strong recent sociological evidence to support the fact that diversity does precisely the opposite of making us stronger.

A massive study and the largest of its kind, based on detailed interviews of nearly 30,000 people across 41 communities in America, has concluded this popular liberal Myth is just that - a Myth. And it came from a most unlikely liberal source: Harvard University.

Political scientist, Robert Putnam who compiled and interpreted the data, 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.

Putnam claims the U.S. has experienced a pronounced decline in "social capital," which refers to the social networks -- whether friendships or religious congregations or neighborhood associations -- that he says are key indicators of civic well-being. When social capital is high, says Putnam, communities are better places to live. Neighborhoods are safer; people are healthier; and more citizens vote. The greater the diversity, the lower the social capital.

Putnam wrote in his study that those in more diverse communities tend to:

"...distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television."

In short, the study released in 2007 found that virtually all measures of civic health are lower in more diverse settings. And the higher the diversity, the lower the measures of civic health.

For this to have been discovered and reported by what is arguably one of the most liberal universities in America makes it all the more believable. And it actually pained the good professor to have reported conclusions that contradicted the very Myth he was trying to prove. It actually took Putnam seven years to publish his findings because he wasn't happy with what his study uncovered. He spent years testing other possible explanations for his findings, but to no avail. The conclusions of his data were irrefutable, and when he finally published a detailed scholarly analysis, he faced criticism from his peers for straying from data into advocacy. His paper argued strongly that the negative effects of diversity can be remedied. Having aligned himself with the liberal central planners intent on social engineering, and unhappy that his findings disproved the Myth that he and his Harvard colleagues - and indeed, liberals as a whole so believed in - Putnam's approach was to conclude his own facts with a pep talk about how it can be overcome.

It should also be no shock to the reader that this study received scant little attention on the part of the national MSM when it was released in 2007 in much the same way that scientific evidence debunking Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth has never been given a headline, or the fact that most people don't know that an oil refinery has not been built in this country since Jimmy Carter assumed the office of President.

In spite of his findings and conclusions, and abetted by MSM's willingness to suppress and subvert the truth, the Myth of diversity goes on. Liberals and their advocates go on poisoning minds to believe that moving from the great "melting pot" of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the "salad bowl mosaic" of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries is a good thing, all the while, our social fabric slowly begins to unravel.

Diversity is a cultural myth that emphasizes our differences and discourages assimilation. Our society becomes tolerant of and even protects people that steadfastly cling to their former way of life to the detriment of society as a whole. This is no more apparent than in the refusal of the majority of immigrants to learn our native language, which is ****ing English.

There are today 21.3 million people in this country (that we can census) who do not speak English "very well." Thanks to the politics of diversity and the widespread Myth that it makes us stronger, and instead of working to teach immigrants English, our government continues to turn itself inside out by increasing its multilingual services. While this divisive catering to non-English speakers comes at a heavy price economically to our nation, it takes an even greater toll on the immigrants themselves.

Economically, the growing communications barrier has turned many newcomers into unwitting victims of a linguistic welfare system, and is rapidly marginalizing immigrants to the sidelines of American life. Without good English skills, immigrants fail economically, academically and socially.

Following are but a few recent snapshots that occur regularly in communities around the U.S. Situations like these can be averted if immigrants would learn English and more importantly, if our country would stop pandering to the notion of diversity that tolerates immigrant's refusal to learn the common language of our society.

- Communication problems between doctors and patients who speak different languages occur nationwide. Many hospitals and clinics hire interpreters, but because of their workloads, physicians often resort to having family members or hospital workers translate, instead of waiting the 30 or 40 minutes it may take for an official interpreter to arrive. A recent study in the Journal of Pediatrics says that translation errors are common and can be dangerous. Based on their study, the official interpreters made 231 errors; 53 percent of them were judged to have the potential to cause clinical problems. The ad hoc interpreters made 165 errors, and 77 percent of them were potentially dangerous. Some errors included telling a parent to put a steroid cream on an infant's entire body (instead of just the face), telling a mother to give an antibiotic for two days instead of 10, and telling a mother to put an oral antibiotic into her child's ears (instead of his mouth) for a middle-ear infection.

- Interpreter errors can also put hospitals and physicians in legal jeopardy. In 1984, a 22-year-old man won a $71 million settlement after he asserted that a group of paramedics, doctors and emergency room workers at a South Florida hospital had misdiagnosed a brain clot. The patients' relatives used the Spanish word "intoxicado" to describe his ailment. They meant that he was nauseated, but the medical staff interpreted the word to mean intoxicated, a valid meaning in some cultures, and treated him for a drug overdose.

- Language has become a big problem in Philadelphia, with about 65,810 Philadelphians, or 4.6 percent of the city's population, being isolated by language barriers. Elderly Russian-speaking residents were "clueless" after being thrown out of their adult day care center because they didn't understand eligibility changes that had been sent to them in the mail and were written in English.

- For the last six months, eight robberies or attempted robberies were reported in the Ashley subdivision of Baton Rogue, LA, home to many of the 2,600 Vietnamese that reside in this city. Many Vietnamese have been attacked brutally in front of their own homes, robbed of their money, cars and personal possessions. Gun-wielding robbers have kicked open front doors and awakened sleeping residents from their beds, demanding anything of value. Even so, these frightened Vietnamese immigrants have suffered in silence. The language barrier between Baton Rogue police and Vietnamese victims compounds the problem, with many immigrants saying they don't know enough English to speak with a 911 operator.

- In Sherman, TX recently, nineteen people were killed when a bus' tire blew out causing the bus to topple over a bridge onto a freeway below. Rescue workers were severely hampered in trying to provide medical care and getting the more seriously injured triaged for life flights to nearby hospitals because the passengers on the bus were parish members of a Houston Vietnamese church and spoke no English.

- According to an article in the Washington Post, many immigrants are participating in short, civil matrimony ceremonies and don't understand most of what is being said. County clerks (who often perform marriage ceremonies) are finding themselves facing wide-eyed immigrants wanting to marry who speak everything from Hindi to Swedish, but do not understand much of what they had just pledged.

- An accident on a state highway in New Hampshire was caused when an English speaking passenger said, "You're going to take a left at exit 5," while trying to teach a Spanish speaking driver how to operate a motor vehicle. The driver proceeded to make a sharp left and collided with a tree. The car was totaled and the driver killed.

- An Illinois manufacturer was fined nearly $300,000 after a language barrier related incident caused a punch-press operator to lose three fingers from his left hand. OSHA cited the Sloan Valve Company for seven citations, including not having conducted safety training in a language the employee could understand.

- In Passaic, NJ a Hispanic mother gave her infant child 11 teaspoons of cough medication because she read the word "ounce" as "once," the Spanish word for eleven. The child lived, but the mistake was near fatal.

- In trying to determine why Minnesota construction fatalities increased from six to eight to 13 over a three-year span, investigations found that the majority of accidents could be traced to new employees with limited understanding of English.

- A construction worker in Georgia fell more than four stories to his death after failing to secure his safety harness on the job. OSHA found that the language barrier played a significant role in the man's death, finding that the many Spanish-speaking employees on the job understood neither the training nor the safety rules provided them.

- A woman holding a crude map of a tree next to a highway and wandering around a landfill aroused the suspicions of Minnesota police, who later determined she was looking for the buried suitcase of money featured in the movie "Fargo." Though officials attempted to explain to the woman, who spoke only Japanese, that neither the movie nor the treasure was real, attempts to overcome the language barrier were nearly insurmountable. Six days after being placed on her way home, her body was found 60 miles east of Fargo. She had frozen to death presumably still looking for the money.

- One Orange County worker died from a fall into a 175-degree vat of chemicals at an Anaheim metal-plating shop. Though the company's instruction manual clearly forbids walking on the 5-inch rail between tanks, it was printed in English, not a language that the worker understood. A subsequent inquiry into the accident found that many of the recent hires were neither trained to handle hazardous materials nor proficient in English.

- Research at the University of Buffalo found that Mexican-Americans who live in the United States and speak primarily Spanish are much less physically active than those whose main language is English. While the adjustment to a new environment correlated with increased smoking and consumption of unhealthy foods, researchers found that Mexican-Americans who were more acclimated to U.S. culture participated in the same amount of exercise as non-Hispanic white Americans. According to lead author Carlos Crespo, the lack of exercise is due to the language barrier and understanding of public health messages among Latinos.

- In Colorado, four people were killed in a drunken boating accident on the John Martin Reservoir. Efforts to save the men and comfort the families were made impossible by the fact that neither the victims nor victims' families spoke English.

- Hundreds of batches of infant formula were recalled when it was found that the preparation instructions in Spanish were incorrect. As written, the Spanish instructions created a product that could lead to seizures, irregular heartbeat, renal failure or death in infants.

- An immigrant woman gave her 85-year-old mother a dangerously high dose of blood pressure medicine because she couldn't understand the label's English-language instructions. The Food and Drug Administration estimates that $20 billion a year is spent hospitalizing people who, because of the language barrier, take the wrong dose of medication, take the wrong medication entirely or mix drugs in dangerous combinations. Health experts say millions of immigrants risk injury or death because warnings on medicine bottles only come in English.

I stopped at a Wells Fargo ATM last week to get some cash. I was at first surprised, and then offended that my first duty was to indicate to the machine whether I wanted my instructions in English or Spanish. I had to make a choice. And then, I had to confirm my choice. How ****ing insulting! I live in America, Goddammit. I should not have to make a choice in what language I want some ****ing machine to communicate. I have a right to bloody-well expect English will be used by default.

When I call the Walgreen's prescription refill telephone ordering system, I am greeted immediately in English. A brief line is then delivered in Spanish, "Por las instrucciones en español, prensa el número nueve." Without intervention, the instructions continue in English as they bloody-well should. I have no problem with this minor annoyance because, unlike the Wells Fargo ATM, I need not do anything to have an American system serving an American customer speak the language of Americans.

E. Raymond Hall, professor of biology at the University of Kansas, is the author of the definitive work on American wildlife, Mammals of North America. He states as a biological law that, "two subspecies of the same species do not occur in the same geographic area." Human races are biological subspecies, and Prof. Hall writes specifically that this law applies to humans just as it does to other mammals: "To imagine one subspecies of man living together on equal terms for long with another subspecies is but wishful thinking and leads only to disaster and oblivion for one or the other."

Surely, having to choose in what language with which I want to be communicated is the first small step in that long path toward disaster and oblivion.

[96Qowner]

Heheh, can't argue with this one, either.

Without assimilating diversity into the culture, yeah, more problems than advantages. But after the diverse have been assimilated, I would argue that the society is stronger.

[audtatious]

Forced assimilation?

[ishkabibble]

I agree wholeheartedly with this article. Imagine how great of a place America would be if it were still populated entirely by American Indians.

[peetar]

They were not the first on this continent either and warred with one another on a constant basis. So no, I don't see how it would be better.

[ishkabibble]

<--- The joke

O Your head

[peetar]

Your sarcasm escaped me LOL.