The racial floodgates were opened at Ellis Island, New York circa 1892, when immigrants came pouring into America. But before that, America wasn’t very diverse. Derbyshire does us a disservice when he says “These United States were diverse from the start. We’ve always had to deal with racial diversity as best we can.” For the record, America was founded by 118 White men [1]. Indians? Numerically speaking, there weren’t very many of them. Ditto negro slaves, and they weren’t free until 1863 and even then they were not considered to be equal to Whites.
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[1] 118 White men created the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the U.S. Constitution.