An internal hierarchy of Europeans was invented by US social science circa 1900

Evidence

Government officials relied on the work of sociologists such as Edward A. Ross, who in 1901 wrote the seminal article, “The Causes of Race Superiority,” to draw distinctions between superior Europeans, those of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic descent, and inferior Europeans, those of Slavic, Latin, Iberian, and Jewish descent. A taxonomy of European races mixed eugenics with biblical reasoning wherein a person’s geographic origin, skin tone, and religion were attributed levels of intelligence, physical health, and moral and political characteristics. Although legally White, Hebrews, Iberians, Levantines, Alpines, and Slavs could be socially White on condition that they assimilate into Northern European Protestant culture. Ultimately, race became a means to rationalize the exclusion of certain groups from obtaining rights, economic opportunity, and legal as well as social equality. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 236

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the distinction between legal Whiteness and social Whiteness as a conditional status requiring assimilation.
• XREF: The legal-vs-social Whiteness distinction echoes material on race as a social construct conditioned on assimilation, paralleling later treatment of American Muslims.