Ethnic assimilation granted whiteness privileges regardless of class

Evidence

To be sure, cultural assimilation did not eliminate class hierarchy. Nor did each ethnic group experience White Protestant normativity in the same way. But the option of ethnic assimilation granted the privileges of Whiteness irrespective of class while denying those same privileges to more educated or wealthier Blacks, Asians, and other non-White groups. Hence ethnicity allowed a group to define itself in terms of what it was not: Colored. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 413

Categorization

• DEFINE: Articulates the precise boundary between ‘ethnicity’ and ‘race’ in American social hierarchy: ethnicity is an opt-out path to Whiteness, race is not.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 413
• XREF: connects to: Sit-ins finally made class privilege fail to shield white elites from civil rights costs — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of…, 461