Less Than Half of Public Believe Diversity is a Strength
Less than half of the British public think diversity is strength, a survey by the National Centre for Social Research has found. The Telegraph has more.
The National Centre for Social Research found 49% of the British public feel that diversity strengthens society, compared to 64% of Americans.
People in the UK are also more likely to have tougher attitudes on immigration, according to the research based on a survey of 2,000 people.
The findings show that a common narrative about Britain being more socially liberal than America does not ring true across all issues.
The National Centre for Social Research also found Reform UK voters were more likely to say immigrants living in their country without permission should not be allowed to stay than supporters of Donald Trump in the US.
While seven in 10 supporters of Mr Trump felt this way, the figure was almost eight in 10 (79%) among Reform followers.
The researchers said they wanted to “better understand how public attitudes in the UK compare with those in the US, and the extent of polarisation in the two countries”.
Their survey found 42% of people in the UK think there should be legal efforts to deport immigrants living here without permission, compared with just a third (33%) in the US.
When it came to how open their country is to people from around the world, 63% in the US felt this is essential to national identity but only 49% of people in the UK were like-minded.
Alex Scholes, research director at NatCen, said: “The idea that Britain is more socially liberal than America doesn’t hold up across all issues.
“While the UK is clearly more liberal on questions to do with family, sexuality and religion, attitudes to immigration and diversity show the opposite pattern.
“People in the UK are less likely than those in the US to see diversity as a strength, or to think that openness to people from other countries is essential to who we are as a nation. Our findings suggest that polarisation in the two countries looks very different.”
Worth reading in full.
This survey still doesn’t seem quite right. Just 42% think we should try to remove illegal immigrants? More than one in five (21%) Reform supporters don’t believe in deporting illegals? So I suspect it suffers from the usual biases of surveys. But that only makes the fact that pro-diversity comes out as a minority view more remarkable.
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And one must consider what proportion of the responses in favour of “diversity being a strength” are actually honest, or whether the respondents felt pressured into agreeing with it. I would suggest that the true figure is significantly lower.
It is still disappointingly too many.
And that’s after decades of brainwashing and aggressive demonisation of any divergent view..
Imagine what it would be if people were actually left to make their own minds up and could express themselves freely.
I suggest that many of the 49% were thinking about ethnic restaurants.
Because the political elites and the media do not understand the difference between stock and flow they confuse continued annual inward migration with continued availability of meals in those restaurants. BTW, why do ethnic restautrants employ only immigrants from the relevant country or district and is that legal – can’t a Brit cook curry; my son can and does, and my wife and a frioend did so Saturday evening for us.
Funny how in Scotland where I live there is restaurants of every nationality you can think of, but I never once come across a Scottish Restaurant. One that has “Neeps and Tatties” , “Haggis” or even “Fried mars bar” on the menu.
What was the context of the question about diversity? Had it just followed questions about class or sex or sexuality or culture or cuisine?
Indeed. Diversity of what? If anyone opens their trap about “diversity” ask them what they mean.
Does “neuro-diversity” (currently a popular buzz-word) count?
It’s such bullshit. There are an infinite number of “diversities”. Picking some that have to be focused on just means you have a political agenda – to favour some group or other, or disfavour another.
Diversity means different, apart. How can that in of itself mean strength?
It is de facto racism as it is declaring that black and brown skinned people have qualities that White people cannot have, therefore including them in the mix produces better result.
This takes no account of individual characteristics, but assigns them according to skin colour. Racism.
The same goes for more women in the board room, or engineering (never working the bin lorries – odd to report) as they too must have characteristics lacking in men that automatically improve outcomes, and all women have these.
The original population of the British Colonies in America were not “diverse” being almost entirely, White, English.
”Diversity” was introduced by the slave trade. So. Diversity good. Slave trade good – by the same logic.
What is a “Strength” is STRENGTH, whether it has diversity or not. ——The Chinese and Japanese provide clear evidence of this.
If the Left really believed that “diversity is a strength” they wouldn’t support it. The madleft only says “diversity is a strength” in order to weaken our society with a view to replacing the native peoples of our islands.
I do surveys for Yougov and I had one the other day that had an optional additional feature of an AI chat to explore why I thought Reform were the best option. I was wondering how long it would go on for and hope it is not a tool to weed out those not onboard with the Far Left approved narrative.
One of the most common ways of forcing an answer from you is to not give you a ‘don’t know’ or ‘none of these’ option. I raise this in comments at the end to say that basically my answers were false because my true option was not there.
Some wet liberal idiot on Peter Cardwell show just now thinks in the 1950s “everyone looked and sounded exactly the same”. I rermember the 1950s (as he doesn’t) and I can assure him they didn’t.
He also said “Diversity is our greatest strength,” but didn’t explain how.
Diversity is a sacred cow.
Below are photos of the Russian, Chinese and Indian space teams and they all seem to be terribly diverse. What happened to the UK Space programme? It was scrapped by the Civil Service in the 1950s having developed and launched a home grown rocket and satellite successfully that to this day was the cheapest rocket development ever.
America is a new country where almost all the population are immigrants or recent descendants of immigrants so it would be odd if they weren’t more in favour of diversity. This country until very recently was a largely homogenous population with 1000+ years of Northern European ancestry. A more relevant comparison would be to ask the original Native American population their opinion of diversity and immigration.