*eyeroll*

[conuly]

In the comments to an article on the immigrant experience and cultural bereavement, I found one particularly annoying person saying something about how some people in places with a lot more homogenity are used to taking to their neighbors and leaving their doors unlocked, and are worried that more immigration may change that and therefore we should all be nicer to those people.

Now, I happen to know for a positive fact that there are at least four different languages spoken in the home on my little block (English, Egyptian Arabic, Spanish, and some South Asian language but I don't know which one - and actually, come to think of it, it's entirely possible my Belgian neighbors speak either French or Flemish at home... we actually have a surprising number of native French speakers on this block, or we did before two of them died, but then, Belgian Americans are everywhere) and if I go just a teensy bit further around the corner there are at least one or two more, depending on how many countries the newer East Asian neighbors come from. And there are definitely more than four or six countries represented!

I could ask them all what languages they speak, because I talk to my neighbors, and occasionally about things other than the neighbors none of us like.

As for unlocked doors, half my neighbors seem to live on their porches when they're home, and judging from the way the kids run in and out, I'm not sure all their doors even lock at all.

Diversity isn't the issue. Distrust is, and it's so uncalled for.

God, what a thoroughly obnoxious comment.

Comments

[glaurung]

Toronto is an extremely diverse city, and yet it is quite common for people to leave their doors unlocked there. Locking the door when you leave the house: sure. Locking it when you are at home? Unheard of. Something those paranoid Americans do.

[varidog]

I read about this exact phenomena. As an experiment, I stopped locking my car door. It took almost ten years before anybody stole anything, and in great irony, happened in a very well-to-do part of town.

Women, more than anyone, lead the locking of doors. They must do everything to keep themselves safe, because if they don't, then their failure is to blame for someone else's crime.

[lauradi7dw]

There was a spate of car stereos being stolen in Massachusetts in the 1980s, to the point that the advice was to leave the car unlocked on the theory that replacing only the stereo was easier than replacing the stereo *and* the window the thieves had to break to get into the car.

The owner's manual for my 1970s Volvo said to leave the car unlocked while driving, to make things easier for rescuers in case of an emergency. Very different from modern cars that lock themselves as soon as one starts driving.

[varidog]

I remember much the same things. Fortunately, rampant stereo theft is no longer a thing. Now, it's catalytic converters.

I'm adding you to my friends list. I'll enjoy getting to know you.

[conuly]

The crime rate in the 1980s was much higher than it is today, though.

[varidog]

Urban designers have commented on this issue. According to the folks who I read, the very nature of modern suburban design works against communication, and therefore, generates more distrust. We have few to no "third places" left in our developments, so we have little to no casual interaction with our neighbors.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

It's easier for a homogenous group to develop trust, but it's certainly possible in a mixed group too.

What matters the most is accountability, and that requires stability. If you've known people for decades, and you are all going to be in the same place for decades more, then there is strong incentive for everyone to get along. That used to be the norm. But then society got a lot more mobile. If you and/or your neighbors will be somewhere else a year later, there is much less accountability, much less motivation to get along, and thus usually less trust.

If someone from a homogenous, high-trust area goes traveling and sees a lot of mixed, low-trust areas then they are likely to concluded 1) that mixing causes low trust and 2) they don't want that to happen to their home -- without necessarily comprehending the underlying mechanics of trust, accountability, or group composition.

Then there's the aspect of social skills. A homogenous group requires rather less, because you only have to learn one set, or maybe a few related variations like masculine/feminine. The more mixed the group gets, the more people need not only to know multiple sets of cultural interactions, but also they need much higher tolerance and teamwork skills in general to compensate for the differences. You get much better problem-solving results from a mixed group, because different perspectives enable more solutions, but you do have to work harder than the easy agreement of an echo chamber. If people don't have those skills, or know that they need them, or want to learn them, then it is going to turn into a clusterfuck and that is a pretty common result of mixing people who don't, actually, want to be around each other at all.

I don't think the "mixing is bad" perspective is correct, but there are enough bad examples of it that people can easily develop that perspective if they aren't taught the sociodynamics. And most people aren't. I certainly didn't learn most of what I know in school. I learned it from hippies, freaks, friends at a genius high school, and the kind of history books I got kicked out of class for quoting.

America's "attempts" to desegregate have largely involved the use of force, and have not worked well. It's better than institutionalized segregation, but not actually effective because the moment you stop applying force, people who don't want to be together tend to spring apart like oil and water. Today's heavily segregated neighborhoods are about half the fault of institutions still redlining while pretending not to, and half people who damn well don't like each other.

I have seen one utterly brilliant method of merging groups into a mixed but well-meshed whole. One of the Scandinavian countries hit on the idea of offering cheap housing to A) immigrants and B) young locals, together. Said housing included generous public space (lounges, game rooms, a common kitchen and dining hall, etc.) to support socialization; and there were classes on cross-cultural skills so people had the tools they needed to mingle happily. And it worked.

This is the kind of thing we need more of. Give people a highly valued resource that requires them to mix, fill it with people who want to be there, and make sure they have the skills to enjoy it.

[cimorene]

I live in a very small town and there are both Syrian and Ukrainian refugees on my block, as well as both the country's native languages. We don't lock our door. Those guys are just racists.

[lilysea]

I live in a suburb that is almost entirely white:
80% or more at the last census were
Australian born white people,
British born white people,
and Scottish born white people.

Almost everyone locks their doors when we are home, because there have been too many scary incidents of people barging in when someone is home and threatening or doing violence.

(According to waste-water analysis, my city has the highest per-person problem with Ice/Methamphetamine in the country)

All that to say, you can have an incredibly homogenous suburb and have issues,

the letter writer is just racist. :(

[sabotabby]

What horseshit. My neighbours in the immediate block or two hail from at least five different countries that aren't Canada and we all look out for each other. We don't leave our doors unlocked because there are a high volume of people around in general—we live in a city!—but when I lived in an almost exclusively white suburb, we didn't leave our doors unlocked either. But we text each other to hide packages if someone gets a delivery and isn't home, or if there's a weird dude following women in the neighbourhood, or if my stalker shows up. And we hang out together on porches or bar patios or, more recently, in someone's house if we all test first. The kids all play in the street together. I've never lived in such a friendly place.

[adafrog]

Word.

[silveradept]

Sounds like the commenter has bought into the conservative talking point that immigrants of certain skin colors and origins are crimers looking to crime everywhere, and that safety can be achieved through homogeneity.

(Clearly has never experienced the kind of place where nobody gets away with nothing because there's always an auntie somewhere who knows your parents and is keeping an eye on you from the porch. Or where you meet your neighbors at a community grilling and talk to them, or exchange pleasantries while taking a break from yard maintenance, or, or, or.)