Could you imagine if we all looked the same talked the same and grew up in the same culture? One thing for sure is thar the United States and for that matter North America would not be recognized as the “melting pot of the world”. While the U.S. became a country in 1776, diversity has been in North America for 14,000 years (Hurtigruten Expeditions, 2023). It is common knowledge that Indigenous people were here first and with that they had different ways of gathering food, creating shelter and celebrating events. Then came the Vikings and finally the European settlers. We know that there must have been diversity at this time as different cultures were being seen with the Spanish, Portuguese, French and English claiming different parts of North America (Hurtigruten Expeditions, 2023). What good could all these different people do for this vast land especially when the United States was formed?
Minus the many years of wars, when it was all settled diversity, which the many immigrants are part of that settled here could very well be considered a cornerstone for the success of the United States. When we consider what has been brought over here from different cultures such as food, dance, music, religion language and innovation. Today we are able to live the way we do because of diversity and immigrants. In fact, immigrants are largely responsible for building the first railroads, cities and allowing us to have technology such as cell phones (Furman and Gray 2012). Immigrants are engineers, mathematicians, computer, and physical scientist. You may be surprised to know that a group of immigrants started companies like, Yahoo, Google and eBay. “Business started and owned by immigrants employed over 4.7 million people in 2007” (Furman and Gray 2012). The economy gets a boost when more people immigrate to the U.S. because of the demand for consumer goods. The bottom line is immigrants which bring diversity to the nation are good for this country. Still there are many with their heads buried in the sand and can’t see this. If we do a study of our family tree most of us will see that our earliest relatives were in fact immigrants
I recently watched Titanic at the movie theater and the movie screamed diversity. If you have never seen the movie, it follows the timeline of the sinking of the RMS Titanic Ship. From the beginning you notice the differences. Irishmen built the ship, it sailed from England and the passengers were from different countries and social classes. Can you guess where the ship was headed? Of course, it was coming to America the aforementioned melting pot of the world. While we have discussed that diversity can be good, there is also a dark side to it when others put themselves above everyone else. Referencing the Titanic, there were several scenes where one class was put above the other specifically in comparisons to the higher class and lower-class passengers. We see this in the situation where lower-class people are checked for health, pets are brought down to the lower deck to relieve themselves, lifeboats are loaded with upper class and the vial comment made “are the boats going to be seated by class”. There is a clear low power distance as the higher class does not accept the inequalities of the lower class (Gruman et, al. 2016). While this was on a ship, we see the same problems here in the United States in the form of racism. Defined racism is a bias against an individual or a group of individuals based on their race/ethnicity (Gruman et, al. 2016). Where I live, I can’t say that I have seen or heard much racism, however I am positive that it does go on. My reasoning is because of what I feel is a form of segregation. There are several areas that are predominantly one race in the surrounding cities and towns around me. Sometimes I think we have gone back in time because of this. It increases the chances of children in these areas not being able to accept others that are different from them as they are not all going to live in their community forever. Recently a white guy was convicted and sentenced for the senseless killing of 10 black people at a supermarket in Buffalo. He drove over 200 miles to do this in the name of hate which is associated with racism (Bowman et, al. 2022). Perhaps if he had some diversity training and was brought up in a different manner this would not have happened.
Is diversity a good thing or a bad thing? It really depends on if it is accepted or not. In the United States it has brought much good and allowed immigrants to thrive. Diversity also has had a way of suppressing people and forming racist views because not everyone accepts those that are different. This really goes back to our home training in my opinion. Are we being brought up to accept or hate? It has been said that sociological theories can change over time; in the case I hope that we can learn to accept everyone for the greater good of society and the United States of America.
Reference
Bowman et, al. (2022). “What we know so far about the Buffalo mass shooting”. NPR. Retrieved February 15, 2023 from: https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099028397/buffalo-shooting-what-we-know.
Furman, J. and Gray, D. (2012). “Ten Ways Immigrants Help Build and Strengthen Our Economy”. The White House. Retrieved February 15, 2023 from: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2012/07/12/ten-ways-immigrants-help-build-and-strengthen-our-economy#:~:text=As%20a%20nation%20of%20immigrants,from%20Google%20to%20the%20iPhone.
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). “Applied Social Psychology : Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems”. Pp. 490-491, 502. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Hurtigruten Expeditions. 2023. “A History of Settlers in North America”. Retrieved February 15, 2023 from: https://global.hurtigruten.com/destinations/north-america/inspiration/History-of-Settlers-in-North-America/#:~:text=North%20America%20has%20been%20a,land%20approximately%2014%2C000%20years%20ago.