Abstract
While opinions differ widely on our contemporary emphases on a diverse and multicultural American society, there is widespread agreement that it was with the 1965 Immigration Act that the nation’s demographics, community, and identity began to change dramatically in those ways. Yet the Chinese Exclusion Act can help connect us to longstanding American histories and communities that reveal the opposite: that our nation has been hugely diverse and multicultural from its origin points; and that the shift toward a less diverse society was produced by limiting and discriminatory laws such as the Exclusion Act and the 1920s Quota Acts. That somewhat less diverse America was the change and aberration, and our contemporary diversity represents a return to a founding American identity.
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Notes
As illustrated by the prominent May 2012 news stories about “minority” births out-numbering “white” ones for the first time.
References
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© 2013 Ben Railton
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Railton, B. (2013). What the Act Can Teach Us about Diversity. In: The Chinese Exclusion Act: What It Can Teach Us about America. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339096_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137339096_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46427-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-33909-6
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