Science/Research thread by @knrd_z

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Diversity, hallowed be thy name. Fine, if this is your faith, but let’s not jump down throats that voice what even the Cathedral holds to be true.

Almost all conflict scholars—liberal, conservative, Marxist, postmodern—agree on one point: ethnic diversity causes conflict.

ExiledInfoHaz@ExiledInfoHaz

@dpovey1 All multiracial societies have problems because race-war is a Schelling Point. See, for example, prison gangs which naturally form along racial lines.

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Donald Horowitz’ classic book Ethnic Groups in Conflict begins with the impossibility of ignoring ethnicity’s connection to conflict. No one could deny its force, independent of “religion,” “class,” “tribe” any longer.

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And why was it no longer deniable? Even social scientists, as much as they resist, must ultimately come to terms with seeing with one’s own eyes. Dreams of interethnic unity were shattered, unambiguously, by reality.

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Are you bored? Do you really want a list of the 300+ studies that find a robust relationship between ethnic diversity and conflict? Here’s a recent review article: read the references to your heart’s content.

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Notice the opening sentence. It’s the most common opening sentence in conflict research, more common than “since 9/11” or “insert irrelevant question nobody ever asked.” Conflict is not my primary field, yet once a month I get asked to review an article with this opening

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You’re smart, perhaps you took international relations in college and think, “ah, Fearon and Laitin!” True, one influential study says that not ethnicity, but mountains, causes conflict. You read that right, mountains cause war. (They call it, “conditions that favor insurgency”)

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While mountains are now treated as a standard cause of conflict, this study was torn apart and followed by dozens more that found, yes, diversity relates to conflict.

Here’s one: ethnic “fractionalization” causes conflict, ethnic “polarization” increases conflict intensity.

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Notice, this is the standard question: not _whether_ ethnic diversity leads to conflict, but _how_? What measure causes what kind of conflict, and to what degree? We are in the stage of “normal science,” refining empirical knowledge about a relationship almost nobody contests.

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It's easy to miss when you’re outside the language. “Horizontal inequalities” are considered a major cause of conflict. What is this? It means inequalities among ethnic groups leads to conflict, due to intergroup resentments. Dozens of studies confirm this relationship.

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Here’s the catch: is it possible to make income distributions among ethnic groups equal? If not, ethnic conflict follows from more ethnic groups. Good luck if, say, your country decides to create or import a new ethnic economic underclass.

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Wait a moment. Perhaps you saying, “but ethnicity isn’t real!” And here’s the interesting thing, all the authors of these studies agree. They are social constructivists who realize that ethnicity is malleable, shapeable. Why does that not seem to matter?

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What ethnicity is ontologically is irrelevant to its causal power.

Socially constructed ethnicity is still a Schelling point. All that’s needed is a “critical mass” of people who converge around an identity.

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It doesn’t even matter whether most group members act _because_ of their identity.

Some opportunists use ethnicity to wage conflict, a “critical mass” follows, and the underclass follows suit for personal benefit, not “identity.” Ethnic war follows w/o majority true believers.

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I loathe “literature reviews,” I have barely scratched the surface of the small library which finds ethnicity and conflict hand-in-hand.

And it’s not only conflict, diversity lower societal trust and cohesion, makes genocide and terrorism, makes conflict spill across borders.

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Let’s extend this one step further, to the local level: when white neighborhoods are diversified, their homicide victimization rate goes up.

Who says so? American Sociological Review, leading journal of the most leftist social science. 2019 paper

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Academic research points in a clear direction: ethnic diversity increases probability of war, conflict, strife, decreases cohesion. Social scientists know this. 

Diversity is our strength—can you be faulted for disagreeing, based on what the sloganeers themselves have found?

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(Up next: why diversification smells like TNT. A big surprise for everyone, I'm sure).

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An unexpected followup: diversification means increased suicide. Consistent with the above when we view suicide as internalized aggression.

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Diversity, hallowed be thy name. Fine, if this is your faith, but...

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