t trust the local paper, they don’t trust other people and they don’t trust institutions," writes Putnam. In the presence of such ethnic diversity, Putnam maintains that
[W]e hunker down. We act like turtles. 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.
Ethnologist Frank Salter writes:
Relatively homogeneous societies invest more in public goods, indicating a higher level of public altruism. For example, the degree of ethnic homogeneity correlates with the government's share of gross domestic product as well as the average wealth of citizens. Case studies of the United States, Africa and South-East Asia find that multi-ethnic societies are less charitable and less able to cooperate to develop public infrastructure. Moscow beggars receive more gifts from fellow ethnics than from other ethnies [sic]. A recent multi-city study of municipal spending on public goods in the United States found that ethnically or racially diverse cities spend a smaller portion of their budgets and less per capita on public services than do the more homogeneous cities.
- "Diverse peoples worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other—that is, when they are not killing each other. A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent."
A number of conservative historians used the religion of the Mexica, better known as the Aztecs as an example of what they see as the flaws of multiculturalism. The Australian historian Keith Windschuttle cited the accounts of his fellow Australian historian Inga Clendinnen of the festival of Ochpaniztli where to honor the Maize Lord a young woman was sacrificed by ripping out heart her so the crops might grow:
"Then, still in darkness, silence, and urgent haste, her body was flayed, and a naked priest, a 'very strong man, very powerful, very tall', struggled into the wet skin, with its slack breasts and pouched genitalia: a double nakedness of layered, ambiguous sexuality. The skin of one thigh was reserved to be fashioned into a face-mask for the man impersonating Centeotl, Young Lord Maize Cob, the son of Toci".
Windschuttle argued that the gruesome religion of the Aztecs that required that dozens of young people be sacrificed and eaten every day so that the sun might rise the next day and hundreds of people sacrificed for major holidays as proving that multiculturalism is a facile doctrine that requires Westerners to respect Aztec religion as equal to any other religion. Along the same lines, the American classist Victor Davis Hanson denounced Aztec culture as fundamentally barbarous and irrational, which he compared unfavorably with the "rationalism" of the Spanish who conquered Mexico in 1519–21. Hanson argued that Hernán Cortés conquered Mexico because he was a product of the rational culture of the West, unlike Moctezuma II who Hanson noted dismissively at first believed the Spanish were gods and who consulted "sorcerers and necromancers" instead using his reason. Hanson used the differences between Moctezuma and Cortés to argue that Western culture was superior to every culture in the entire world, which thus led him to reject multiculturalism as a false doctrine that placed all cultures on an equal footing.
In New Zealand (Aotearoa), which is officially bi-cultural, multiculturalism has been seen as a threat to the Maori, and possibly an attempt by the New Zealand Government to undermine Maori demands for self determination.
- Bowling Alone (book)
- Charles Murray (political scientist)
- Cultural assimilation
- Cultural competence
- Cultural diversity
- Ethnic Penalty
- Ethnocultural empathy
- Global Centre for Pluralism (Canada)
- Global justice
- Intercultural competence
- List of countries ranked by ethnic and cultural diversity level
- Multiculturalism without Culture (book)
- Multicultural art
- Multicultural education
- Multinational state
- Parallel society
- Rainbow Nation
- Racial integration
- Robert D. Putnam
- Multi-Ethnic Lit