The Education of Robert Putnam

I was kind of just reading along, seemed very reasonable and then...

"But the mere presence of the race issue made social politics far more one-sided than it had ever been before. Because the political mood of the 1960s was liberal, and because blacks were claiming rights they had long been denied, the assumption became that all minority disadvantages were in some way due to white injustice. The earlier civic politics had assumed reciprocity — disagreements in politics often occurred, but they could be civil because both sides respected the other's right to be heard. Once race erupted as a national issue, only blacks and their advocates could be heard"

From there it seems only tangentially related to Putnam and makes a strong if unacknowledged detour into reactionary right wing politics. I only noticed it was from National Affairs at that point, having clicked through rather blindly.

Seems like a really good thinker. I'll adjust this if I get time to update it later... :-)