Goldberg on Obama's "Audacity of Hype"

Really interesting analysis. Jonah points out that Obama is doing best with whites in less diverse populations. Excerpt:

One possible explanation for this might be found in the work of Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam. In 2006, the scholar of civil society and author of "Bowling Alone" released some controversial findings: The more diverse a community, the less trusting it becomes.

"In the presence of diversity, we hunker down," he told the Financial Times. "The effect of diversity is worse than had been imagined. And it's not just that we don't trust people who are not like us. In diverse communities, we don't trust people who do look like us." Social trust was at its absolute lowest in Los Angeles, America's most diverse city, Putnam found.

The hard interpretation would be that diversity does in fact breed racism and ethnic resentment. But a softer, and I think slightly more plausible, reading would be that increased diversity breeds not so much resentment as realism -- at least among the rank-and-file voters.

It's easy for upscale liberals to talk about the glories of diversity because they live at Olympian heights, above the reality of multicultural America. For Obama's wealthy, white, liberal supporters, diversity is knowing a rich black lawyer, a wealthy Latino accountant and lots of well-to-do gay folks.