From Outsiders to On-Paper Equals to Cultural Curiosities? The Trajectory of Diversity in the USA

Abstract

This paper examines the genesis and trajectory of diversity in the USA. It argues that unfortunately diversity was more a product of market interests and differential processes in the recruitment of workers at different times and for different purposes than a smooth process of incorporation of immigrant groups from different cultures and continents. At the end, diversity assumed a highly hierarchical form with blacks at the bottom and whites at the top within a framework of manifest destiny and inequality. Confronting an unequal status, non-whites engaged in group-based struggles that transformed them into political communities and the process into a social struggle. The paper concludes with a call for European countries to learn from this experience and try to preempt it by moving to incorporate newcomers in such a way that they become fully contributing members of the societies they enter within a mutually transforming processDiversity, Race Relations, Racial Politics, Immigrants, Identity Formation