Community psychologists are interested in creating contexts that promote both respect for diversity and sense of community. However, recent theoretical and empirical work has uncovered a community-diversity dialectic wherein the contextual conditions that foster respect for diversity run in opposition to those that foster sense of community. More specifically, within neighborhoods, residential integration provides opportunities for intergroup contact that are necessary to promote respect for diversity but may prevent the formation of dense interpersonal networks that are necessary to promote sense of community.



Using agent-based modeling to simulate neighborhoods and neighborhood social network formation, we explore whether the community-diversity dialectic emerges from two principle of relationship formation: homophily and proximity. The model suggests that when people form relationships with similar and nearby others, the contexts that offer opportunities to develop a respect for diversity are different from the contexts that foster a sense of community. Based on these results, we conclude with a discussion of whether it is possible to create neighborhoods that simultaneously foster respect for diversity and sense of community.

Roissy points out more scholastic support for the hypothesis that Diversity + Proximity = WAR Multiculturalism isn't merely a failure, it is, like the War on Drugs and the War on Poverty, a leftist program that is delivering precisely the opposite of what it purported to deliver. Instead of racial peace, it has created racial hate. Instead of an end to nationalism, it is delivering intranational ethnic strife.The Croats don't fight the Vietnamese, they fight the Serbs. The North Koreans don't threaten the Ibo, they threaten the South Koreans. And mass inter-ethnic migration has only ensured that the 21st century wars will be even more savage and less limited than those of the 20th century.

Labels: Vibrancy is our strength, war