Anti-black animus taught European Catholic immigrants that they could be white

Evidence

While white evangelicals were providing Christian legitimization of the Confederate Lost Cause, white mainline Protestants in the pews were protecting their long-claimed title to the throne of white Anglo-Saxon Protestant dominance. For their part, Catholics seized the moment to transform the terms of the conflict. Amid the turmoil, they ceased to perceive the fight as one between Irish and black or Italian and black ethnic groups. Rather, the flight out of their old parishes in the wake of black encroachment was the critical moment when the Irish and Italian and other European Catholics—who each had long thought of themselves as an immigrant group with a distinct ethnic heritage from a specific country of origin—discovered that they could be white. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 208

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: The moment immigrants ‘discovered they could be white’ through the black-encroachment flight speaks to the historical construction of whiteness at the base of the author’s whole project.
• SEED: Angle for an essay: parish abandonment as the baptism into American whiteness—how geography, not doctrine, converted European immigrant Catholics into a white racial bloc.
• XREF: connects to: European immigrants proved Whiteness by joining anti-Black subordination — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 388; European immigrants earned whiteness by adopting anti-nonwhite antagonism; European immigrants held an intermediate racial status and were induced to become white — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 40 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• European immigrants proved Whiteness by joining anti-Black subordination #corroborates (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 388
• European immigrants earned whiteness by adopting anti-nonwhite antagonism #corroborates (0.95)
• Claiming Whiteness required complicity in Black subordination for Jews and Catholics #corroborates (0.95) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 390
• European immigrants held an intermediate racial status and were induced to become white #corroborates (0.90) — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 40
• Catholics and Jews gained Whiteness only by adopting Anglo-Protestant norms #complicates (0.80) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 361
• European immigrants became white by projecting surrendered preindustrial freedoms onto blacks. #complicates (0.80) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1283
• Irish immigrants learned anti-Black hatred upon landing in America, not at home #responds-to (0.80) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 6
• Catholics and Jews were historically racialized as non-White through their religious beliefs. #qualifies (0.75)