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

John J. Betancur

No 12109, Knowledge, Technology, Human Capital Working Papers from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM)

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 process

Keywords: Labor; and; Human; Capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25
Date: 2006
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:feemkt:12109

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.12109

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