OVERLAPPING PROTECTED CLASSES. The point of raising peoples' multicultural consciousness ostensibly was to prepare everyone to get along well when a polity no longer had an ethnic or religious majority, or when, in an alternative formulation, it became "majority-minority." That was the idea, but Betsy's Page points to a London Times article with a distressing lead.

THE vast majority of people in Britain are officially oppressed, according to a report that claims we have become a “nation of victims”.

The study calculates that 73 per cent of Britons are members of officially recognised “victim groups”, including the disabled, women, ethnic minorities and homosexuals. Each group is given government support, including protective legislation.

The boffins in question might have prior beliefs they seek to strengthen.

The report, We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now, by the socially conservative think- tank Civitas, gives warning that the rise of a “victimocracy” undermines democracy because people are no longer considered equal under law.

Perhaps the notion of equal protection under the law is a bit too retrograde for some people, but H.M. Government's reaction to the existence of multiple protected classes suggests complications in attempting to fine-tune different treatment for people in different circumstances.

In October next year the Government is setting up the Commission for Equality and Human Rights, which merges the disability, race and equal opportunities commissions.

The notion of "multiple oppressions" is a lot easier to invoke in a cultural-studies seminar than it is to implement as a matter of public policy.

Many people, such as black women, are victims of so-called multiple discrimination. The report uses official figures to strip out the overlapping groups to calculate that nearly three quarters of people belong to one category or other. The biggest oppressed group is women, who constitute 51 per cent of the population and are protected by a range of legislation covering discrimination, equal pay and domestic violence. Ethnic minority men amount to 4 per cent; white disabled men 11 per cent; white male pensioners 5 per cent; and white, gay, able-bodied men, 2 per cent.

The study, perhaps unsurprisingly, concludes that claiming benefits as a consequence of one's victimhood does not raise the self-esteem of the person who holds protected status.

However, the report gives warning that seeking victim status can harm the victims, denying them personal responsibility by always blaming others and undermining their self-respect.

Those are the expected social-conservative talking points. There is, however, corroborating evidence from an unexpected quarter.

One of the great benefits touted by diversiphiles -- those who love diversity and promote it everywhere they can -- is that having a diverse student body, for example, would teach each group to respect and understand the others. But in a new study Robert Putnam finds that "in the presence of diversity, we 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.

Is there such a thing as "cultural convergence"? Interestingly, four years ago Putnam was saying something different. I am not sure why we find this surprising; even in his relatively famous "Bowling Alone", Putnam found that a high degree of homogeneity is needed to form "social capital"...

Professor Putnam goes on to note that he's not providing aid and comfort to xenophobes.

Prof Putnam stressed, however, that immigration materially benefited both the "importing" and "exporting" societies, and that trends "have been socially constructed, and can be socially reconstructed".

In an oblique criticism of Jack Straw, leader of the House of Commons, who revealed last week he prefers Muslim women not to wear a full veil, Prof Putnam said: "What we shouldn't do is to say that they [immigrants] should be more like us. We should construct a new us."

Economist's reminder: "socially constructed" is a somewhat infelicitous phrase that raises the possibility of a vanguard managing that reconstruction, or, in a term popular with the Diversity Boondoggle, a "transformation." It's more accurate to contemplate institutions evolving so as to reduce transaction costs (equal treatment under the law likely to be administratively less cumbersome than evaluating the magnitude and direction of each vector of oppression) and cultural customs selecting and adapting the most useful among the newcomers. Consider Germans bringing Sunday picnics and bratwurst and giving up the Lederhosen and learning English. The Moslem day of worship is Friday, and I can see a three-day weekend becoming the norm, even without immigration by Moslems. The veil is likely to be an old-country custom that won't make the change.

There ought to be limits to the "affirmation" of "difference." The Twin Cities appear to be a good place for Moslem immigrants to make a better living driving taxis, but more than a few of them are reluctant to transport passengers who are carrying adult beverages.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is concerned that its taxi service is deteriorating. Citing their religious beliefs, some Muslim taxi drivers from Somalia are refusing to transport customers carrying or suspected of carrying alcohol. It started with one driver a few years ago, but the average number of fare refusals has grown to about three a day, says airport spokesman Patrick Hogan. "Travelers often feel surprised and insulted," he says. "Sometimes, several drivers in a row refuse carriage."

Taxi drivers and officials from the airport, taxi companies and the Muslim American Society are discussing how to address the issue. Partly out of concern that taxi drivers might be citing religion to avoid short-distance fares, the airport is now forcing drivers who refuse a fare to go to the end of the line for waiting taxis. It is not a popular decision among drivers, Hogan says.

The drivers do not want to pay the price for exercising their beliefs and the regulatory commission proposes two colors of designator lights, one for drivers who will not transport liquor or drive to liquor stores and another for those who will not. Daniel Pipes sees disquieting trends at work.

But on a societal level, the proposed solution has massive and worrisome implications. Namely, the two-light plan intrudes the Shari‘a, or Islamic law, with state sanction, into a mundane commercial transaction in Minnesota. A government authority thus sanctions a signal as to who does or does not follow Islamic law.

What of taxi drivers beyond those at MSP? Other Muslims in Minneapolis-St. Paul and across the country could well demand the same privilege. Bus conductors might follow suit. The whole transport system could be divided between those Islamically observant and those not so.

Why stop with alcohol? Muslim taxi drivers in several countries already balk at allowing seeing-eye dogs in their cars. Future demands could include not transporting women with exposed arms or hair, homosexuals, and unmarried couples. For that matter, they could ban men wearing kippas, as well as Hindus, atheists, bartenders, croupiers, astrologers, bankers, and quarterbacks.

Hit and Run's Tim Cavanaugh suggests we're seeing multiculturalism run amok.

The tempting answer is Yes, pious fools should be allowed to turn down all those fares, and presumably go home emptyhanded at the end of their shifts. (Ironically, refusing to take drinkers in your cab also deprives you of the teetotaller's only pleasure: doing a slow burn of superiority and disdain at the drunken slobs whose lives are in your hands.) But all solutions become impossible once a regulatory agency is involved. The airport commission sets standards for correct and non-discriminatory service, which makes the reasonable response outlined above technically impossible. The only way the [Metropolitan Airport Commission] has found this compromise solution is by carving out a fake exception to its own mandate. As Pipes indicates, once you've carved out one of those, new and more absurd exceptions can be expected to follow.

Milton Friedman once argued that many of the "public accommodation" sections of the civil-rights were misguided, because business owners who wished to indulge their own prejudices could pay the price in lost business. That didn't wash when the prejudice being indulged was a reluctance to serve dinner to a "colored" person. It doesn't wash, at least in Illinois, when the prejudice being indulged is a reluctance to be party to an induced abortion. Mr Cavanaugh is correct to note that the Commission has faked an exception to its own procedures. I'm not familiar enough with Minnesota taxi regulation to claim that the exception is contrary to the "undue preference or prejudice" language of common-carrier regulation.

The abolition of special taxi licenses might be another solution. Whether drivers choose to advertise their services as Shari'a compliant or as drinking-friendly or as anything else might better be left to the open market. Readers: does a Twin Cities taxi medallion trade, in the New York fashion, for the capitalized present value of future monopoly rents?