ABSTRACT
The hierarchy is new only insofar as the old whitenonwhite dichotomy may be replaced by a nonblack-black one, but it is hardly new for blacks are likely to remain at the bottom once again. Nevertheless, black and white the immigrants started to arrive after the end of World War II and the political, cultural, and racial changes that took place in the wake of their arrival have further invalidated many old racial divisions and labels. Indeed, in just about every society in which blacks first arrived as slaves, they are still at the bottom, and the political, socioeconomic, and cultural mechanisms to keep them there remain in place. Since parts of the United States were also a plantation society in which the slaves were black, the leftovers of the racial stratification pattern will likely continue here as well.
