What if the coastal Salish peoples who lived on this land for millennia had been treated with dignity and respect by Euro-American settlers, and had followed a prosperous trajectory alongside the new settlers?

What if the earliest waves of Japanese, Chinese, Sikh, Filipino, Mexican, Black, and other immigrants had also been treated with dignity and respect by Euro-American settlers, and had followed a similar trajectory?

If Bellingham had not been shaped by decades of racial discrimination, it would be a microcosm of humanity today, with a population as diverse as that of our closest neighboring cities in British Columbia.

Early Euro-American settlers attracted waves of other Euro-American settlers. The same would undoubtedly have occurred with early Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, Sikh-Americans, Filipino-Americans, African-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and others — if they had been welcomed here in the first century of this city’s establishment.

If that had happened, Bellingham would have become a more prosperous city for all its residents. Numerous studies have demonstrated that diversity spurs collective prosperity and homogeneity slows it down.*

The reasons are not hard to grasp. Diverse talents, experiences, and perspectives are rich resources for creativity, innovation, and productivity. In other words, diversity is one of the most valuable assets a community can have.

Fortunately, its not too late to start fostering such diversity in Bellingham. But it will take an understanding of where we’ve come from as we learn our way forward.

 

* Below are examples of the many studies demonstrating diversity spurs collective prosperity:

Cultural Diversity, Geographical Isolation, and the Origin of the Wealth Of Nations, a study by Quamrul Ashraf & Oded Galor, Working Paper 17640, National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue.

The ‘Paradox of Diversity’: Economic Evidence from US Cities 1980–2010, by Nazmun Ratna & Quentin Grafton, 17 January 2017, Wiley Online Library open access publication.

The Economic Value of Cultural Diversity: Evidence From US Cities, by Gianmarco Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri, Journal of Economic Geography, Volume 6, Issue 1, 1 January 2006.

The Importance of Diversity to the Economic and Social Prosperity of Toronto, by Karen King, Brian Hracs, Mark Denstedt & Kevin Stolarick, The Martin Prosperity Institute, August 2010.