Military service in WWII cemented European immigrants’ American whiteness

Evidence

The politics of World War II offered the children and grandchildren of Eastern and Southern European immigrants an opportunity to prove their loyalty to the United States. Fighting in the armed forces against Nazism and Fascism in Europe, these secondand third-generation Americans became the “us” fighting “them” in Germany and Italy. Many of them spoke only English, gave their children anglicized names, relinquished a communal lifestyle, and no longer had ties to their country of origin. Increased intermarriage further dissolved their ethnic differences, making it easier to blend into the dominant Anglo-Protestant culture. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 396 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Postwar IQ testing data grouped immigrant whites into inferior racial ranks — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 1664; Southern and eastern European immigrants were racialized before entering whiteness after WWII — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 227; WWII service let European descendants claim Americanness — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim: When Racism Quashes…, 396 (+13 more)

Broader Connections

• WWII service let European descendants claim Americanness #corroborates (0.92) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 396