This paper explores the link between human capital development, globalization, and the disappearance of minority cultures.  Education establishes the distribution of labor earnings.  If education returns are lower for cultural minorities then educated minority members are more likely to switch ethnic identity –or help their children do so.  Education programs targeted at disadvantaged minorities are therefore a double-edged sword: while effective in reducing poverty they contribute to the disappearance of cultures they intend to help.  Because “globalization”  increases world trade, communications, and contact between cultures and is intensive in human capital it will accelerate the disappearance of minority cultures.