San Francisco: A Liberal, Multi-Ethnic Paradise?

San Francisco seems to represent the very epitome of a Liberal Utopia. Famously the destination of flower-bedecked druggies, it has long been one of the most liberally-governed places on earth. And then there is the City itself. It is without question the most beautifully situated in the USA – and one of the most beautiful anywhere. The view from the Golden Gate Bridge which spans the narrows at the entrance to the great Bay from the Pacific, is stunning.  When the fog has lifted, Skyscrapers shimmer in the heat in a mirage of modernity across the sparkling, brilliant blue of the Bay dotted with ferries, pleasure craft and larger vessels with the grim prison island of Alcatraz over to the left.

The famous hills of the  City rise from its waterfront where people stand at the lobster stalls of Fisherman Wharf or enjoy themselves in one of the many sea-food restaurants or in the riotously vulgar fun-palace Pier with its restaurants, shops, amusements and scores of honking sealions.  The multiethnic nature of the crowds – whites, hispanics, east asians, blacks - lends an air of ‘vibrant diversity’ as one of our own naïve metropolitan cosmopolitans might say.  Through the business district and up the hills, perhaps by one of the city’s photogenic cable cars, are areas of charming Victorian mansions and villas.  Here  the ‘Flower Children’ of the 60s made the Haight Ashbury district their own, setting a seal on the city’s reputation as one of the most liberal places in the USA – or anywhere.

Only on the Surface

A Liberals’ multiethnic paradise then, proof that that multiculturalism and multiracialism work and work well? On the surface, yes.  San Francisco does function, at least on a business or working level. But scratch that surface just a little and a different story is revealed..  San Francisco occupies a special place in social research.  It lies at one end of a spectrum of diversity explored in the classic study by the Harvard Professor of Social Policy Robert D Putnam who won the 2006 Johan Skytte Prize, the Social Science equivalent of the Nobel Prize for his work. Putnam’s study was of 41 communities across the USA varying in ethnic diversity, from the ethnically homogenous communities of the American  Mid West to the most highly ethnically diverse areas, Los Angeles and San Francisco. San Francisco is one of the most ethnically diverse areas in the world. It has a white population of 30%-40%, ie what London will have in a few years time.

The Distrust and Hostility at the Heart of San Francisco

Putnam found that in  San Francisco  roughly 30% of the inhabitants say that they trust their neighbours ‘a lot’ whereas in the ethnically homogenous communities of North and South Dakota, 70% -80% of the inhabitants say the same.  Social  trust, he found, varies  inversely with ethnic diversity, ie the more ethnically diverse a community is, the less people trust their neighbours, even those of their own ethnicity. Social Capital, ie clubs, social groups and the like, dwindles or never takes off.  People in ethnically diverse settings appear to ‘hunker down’ – that is, to pull in like a turtle. They even withdraw from their nearest friends. The effects of this lack of trust reach far beyond inter and intra – ethnic relationships.  As Wikepedia puts it:-

The Deep- rooted Effects of Lack of Trust

Low trust with high diversity not only affects ethnic groups, but is also associated with:

• Lower confidence in local government, local leaders and the local news media.
• Lower political efficacy – that is, confidence in one's own influence.
• Lower frequency of registering to vote, but more interest and knowledge about politics and more participation in protest marches and social reform groups.
• Less expectation that others will cooperate to solve dilemmas of collective action (e.g., voluntary conservation to ease a water or energy shortage).
• Less likelihood of working on a community project.
• Less likelihood of giving to charity or volunteering.
• Fewer close friends and confidants.
• Less happiness and lower perceived quality of life.
• More time spent watching television and more agreement that "television is my most important form of entertainment"

British Report Favourable to Immigration Contradicted.

Putnam’s finding flatly contradicts  the, doctored May 2000 Government report on British attitudes to immigration whose original  contents were unearthed by Sir  Andrew Green of MigrationWatch.  That report stated in typically patronising fashion that:-

‘Education and people's personal exposure to migrants make them less likely to be anti-migrant. 'The most negative attitudes are found among those who have relatively little direct contact with migrants, but see them as a threat.'

This view of anti-immigrant attitudes is a function  of the fatuously optimistic Liberal ‘Contact’ theory about attitudes to ethic diversity mentioned above  - that more contact and better understanding of immigrants will make people like them more.  But although only a single study and limited to American data, there is no good reason why the Putnam Study, which is vast, should not be considered as seriously undermining both contact theory and conflict theory. According to the latter distrust between the ethnic groups will rise with diversity, but not within a group. in inter-ethnic relations everywhere.

The Lack of Common Sense and Realism of Liberalism

Optimistic Liberal theory does not apparently cater for the common –sense  possibility that as people get  more acquainted with ‘the Other’  they may not like them any better or might even like them less. This might have occurred to the writer of this Government Report prior to the current wave of mass immigration if he or she had reflected that no communities know each other each other better than the Catholics and Protestants of Northern Ireland, divided for centuries and that in the same way, ethnically divided communites across the world often know ‘the Other’ intimately.

It is in fact those British  communities, including the ‘community’ of the metropolitan commentariat which are farthest removed from mass immigrant areas, or do not have to live cheek by jowl with them indefintely, which have always  tended to be the least concerned about immigration  in Britain while it is those which have had the most contact which tend to be the most hostile to it.  No one knows mass immigrant communities better than the Native British denizens of Barking and Dagenham or Stoke or Burnley,

The True Effects of Ethnic Diversity - E Pluribus Plures

High  ethnic diversity without the other factors which undoubtedly exist, such as simple preference for one’s own racial group for instinctive, genetic reasons, is enough on its own to create, not communities, but the reverse:  crowds of distrustful strangers living in the same areas and wanting to have as little to do with each other as possible.  Whilst Putnam does not spell it out, it doesn’t take much imagination to see that these are areas from which people long to escape, to be more at ease among people of their own ethnic kind. Ethnic diversity on its own  is a powerful  motivation behind  ‘white flight’ and ghettoisation.’ Around 90 percent of San Francisco’s 55,000 kindergartners through 12th-graders are now  non white.

This study shows that that the idea that anyone who doesn’t like living in these areas is a narrow –minded bigot and a nazi, whose views can be safely ignored and traduced is itself the result of liberal bigotry and is utterly false: a lie and the excuse for oppression and tyranny.

It also shows that it is also a lie that the BNP, by calling attention to the misery caused by enforced ‘diversity’ necessarily causes problems. These exist through the mere fact of ethnic diversity and the BNP does the British public a service by drawing attention to them when other parties betray the electorate by refusing to do so. Why is it ‘racist’ and by implication evil to point out these things and to want to take the only real action which can avoid them and do right by the original possessors of their country? Is it not on the contrary an evil betrayal of trust to inflict these things on the British people or to ignore them?

San Francisco is an examplar of the failure of  multiculturalism and multiracialism. There is some inter-ethnic socialising in San Francisco, but not much.  It is not a Society or a Community but a deeply divided, fearful place where different communities exist side by side as in parallel universes. Putnam called his study, the Johann Skytte Prize Lecture, ‘E Pluribus Unum’ ‘Out of Many, One,’ quoting the motto of the United States. But as Pat Buchanan the Presidential advisor and one-time Presidential candidate remarked, ‘We have the Pluribus, but where’s the Unum?’

Next Stop: Los Angeles