An Inconvenient Truth from the UK

The UK's Home Office does a study and find the absolutely unthinkable - that people are less happy in a diverse, multicultural society than they would be in a ethnically/culturally homogeneous one.

It is an uncomfortable conclusion from happiness research data perhaps - but multicultural communities tend to be less trusting and less happy.

People feel happier if they're with people who are like themselves. But the question is: what does "like themselves" mean?
Trevor Phillips

Research by the Home Office suggests that the more ethnically diverse an area is, the less people are likely to trust each other.

The Commission for Racial Equality has also done work looking at the effect of diversity on well-being.

Interviewed on The Happiness Formula, the chair of the Commission for Racial Equality, Trevor Phillips accepts that people are happier if they are with people like themselves.

"We've done work here which shows that people, frankly, when there aren't other pressures, like to live within a comfort zone which is defined by racial sameness.

"People feel happier if they're with people who are like themselves. But the question is: what does "like themselves" mean?"

Of course, this isn't news to anyone with an ounce of common sense, or who has done a modicum of reading in evolutionary psychology. Humans are innately conditioned to trust those who look and act most like them. During humanity's long evolution, humans who looked and acted similarly were more likely to be closely related than not. So it was in a person's genetic interest to trust those who appeared most closely related to him, since they were more likely to be family members who would defend him, thus forging instinctual bonds. Since pre-modern humans couldn't check birth records or perform and on-the-spot DNA test, appearance and behavior were the best measure of judging close relationships. Not always infallible, but accurate enough to work. Thus, today people still feel an affinity to those who they subconsciously judge as closely related to them (people who look and act similarly to themselves) and feel either disinterest or suspicion toward those who look or act differently. This can be partially overcome through socialization and conditioning, but it's difficult. As Steve Sailer has pointed out repeatedly, this is why gangs and other criminal enterprises tend to racially homogeneous or family run: people trust their relatives, or those who they consider more closely related to them. Trust is a necessary condition for cooperation, especially when the stakes are high and enemies are at the door.

Of course, the worst part of multiculturalism, aside from its real intent (the destruction of Western culture), is that is just doesn't deliver the promised goods. It doesn't unite people; it doesn't make society safer, more stable or happier. Partly because the idea is intrinically flawed - real multiculturalism destroys cultural unity, fragmenting a society into rival groups - but also because unity was never the point of multiculturalism; granting special favors to certain groups always was the point. And nothing promotes racial antagonism than special favors for different racial groups.