Psychology of Diversity - Essay Example

It focused on a small, closely-knit South Asian community in Muncie, Indiana. The people in this town are mostly Asians who are part of the diaspora. She recalls that when she left Muncie in 1981 to go to college, her mother gave her some advice – to remember her Indian heritage. At first, she was really puzzled, for how could she know her heritage when she grew up in Muncie? She has lived in a country which regard non-white and non-European as “outsider” and “other”. Up to now this setting is still experienced by Asians and Latinos in America.

But she says that she’s just a young adult woman of Indian ancestry living in a small American city, trying to understand what her heritage was. She focuses her paper to that time of history up to today when American has not yet awaken to the realization that she survived with diaspora and immigration. Gupta-Carlson said that when Henry Ford pioneered the assembly line and built the automotive plants that would power America’s consumer economy to fame, he had no other recourse but to bring in the immigrant workers and had them work.

He then relied heavily on immigrant labor, but he tried to forcibly Americanize his workers. This occurred during the 1920s and 1930s. He enforced the restrictive laws on immigration that made a backlash against Chinese, Japanese, Indian, and other Asian settlers in agricultural and logging communities. Ford wanted to erase the “foreign-ness” in his workers. The worst discrimination happened then. There are many other incidents and inhuman conditions mentioned in the paper of Gupta-Carlson, and the experiences proved not very uncommon.

Today, more than ever, we still see and witness these occurrences – immigration laws against immigrants, working conditions still inhuman and really oppressive measures enforced not only on Asian male but also on women. Not only are these inhuman conditions present in the working place but also