Even after entering social Whiteness, Catholics still faced suspicion about national loyalties.

Evidence

Nonetheless, Kennedy felt compelled during his campaign to publicly state, “Whatever one’s religion in private life may be, for the office holder, nothing takes precedence over his oath to uphold the Constitution and all its parts—including the First Amendment and the strict separation of Church and State,” revealing persistent suspicions of Catholics’ national loyalties. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 459

Categorization

• SHARE: Kennedy’s campaign oath statement is a neat, quotable datum for anyone interested in religion-and-national-loyalty debates.
• XREF: connects to: German partition made Catholics a larger share of West Germany’s population — Mark Blyth, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous…, 904; Southern Catholics were nearly nonexistent, so the Catholic vote mobilized only outside the South — Ilyana Kuziemko and Ebonya Washington, Why Did the Democrats Lose the South?…, 821