Thread by @muradhem

1 So there are a bunch of issues with this @jackmintz piece in the @financialpost that should lead you to question it's conclusions. It's built around a 2003 study on “fragmentation” and its effects on GDP growth and governance quality
business.financialpost.com/opinion/jack-m…

1.5 I will accept for the purpose of this thread that the way to measure “strength” in the stupid battle over whether diversity is Canada's is purely economically, in terms of contribution to GDP, because us immigrants are only desirable if we're hard workers, or whatever

2 Let's start with "fragmentation." Mintz provides two definitions. One is in the context of the data he presents in this table. (Also, raw GDP over GDP per capita, which he uses elsewhere? Ew). It’s “measured according to shares of ethnic and linguistic groups in a country"

3 Actually, the study itself defines it as “the probability that two randomly selected individuals from a population belonged to different groups.” So basically the presence of more groups, or a large number of people from group two onwards, means fractionalization

4 Mintz's in-text definition is “when citizens identify more strongly with a social group rather than the nation as a whole.” Guessing he meant this as a paraphrase. BUT it assumes that people who are from group two+ (you might call us "immigrants") ID more with group than nation

5 And in the case of Canada at least, that's not true! The opposite in fact. Polling from Frank Graves and EKOS in this piece: Over the last 20 yrs, amidst a big increase in non-European immigrants, national identity is constant. Ethnic attachment is down
macleans.ca/politics/ottaw…

5.5 This reflects the raw total of people immigrating, not in relation to the population, of which first-year residents have been a higher share in previous years. Also reflects an increasing share of immigrants being non-European since some racist policies were lifted

6 To restate: Canadians have not been identifying "more strongly with a social group rather than the nation as a whole" even as "the probability that two randomly selected individuals from a population belonged to different groups" increased. Defns of "fragmentation" contradict

7 This matters, Mintz says, because at the ballot box people act for the good of everyone if they associate more with the country as a whole than their own identity group. Implicitly that leads to worse economic policy and governance—I guess; he doesn't quite complete the thought

8 Also, Mintz says, if our "ethnic fragmentation" was as low as the U.S., we'd add 0.4 points to GDP growth! This seems to be his extrapolation from the data and formulas, because I can't find that specific calculation in the study

8.5 The study is here, by the way: scholar.harvard.edu/files/alesina/…

9 Also, the data that he cites in the piece to show that Canada is "ethnically fragmented"—we're a 0.7124—is from a 2003 study. That's 15 years ago! You know what's happened in that time? Lots, including most of the active period of the trends Graves identified, cited above

10 Okay, Murad, get to the point already. Mintz's prescription is that politicians should propose ideas for "reinforcing our national identity" to avoid "all the risks that fragmentation can bring." As I've shown above, he hasn't actually proved that these risks apply to Canada!

11 Also, what "national identity" would that be? Think about Canadian-ness. People can have different definitions—is attending bhangra night, regardless of your race, included in yours? What matters is that people identify with Canadian-ness, not what it is. Which they do!

11.5 This, by the way, is only in terms of the logic of this piece. I have some serious definitional and historical problems with the concept of a "national identity" inherently, a Canadian one more so

12 If the only way to make diversity our "strength" is economic, shouldn't Mintz be calling on politicians to help immigrants get credentials recognized or lift barriers to employment from distrust of foreign work experience or even, maybe, racism? That would contribute to GDP

13 But you see, that would require Mintz to be doing something more than what is essentially throw some misused numbers into an article-length version of the "banal bromides and Twitter tirades" he wants to see less of

14 It's almost like discussions of whether or not "diversity is our strength" rarely yield anything useful because it's never raised in good faith, and confirmation bias abounds