Postwar redefinition of Whiteness shifted European differences from racial to ethnic

Evidence

It was not until after World War II, when Whiteness was socially redefined to include all groups of European ethnic origin and American identity expanded to a Judeo-Christian one, that Catholics, Mormons, and Jews were granted an opportunity to become first-class citizens. The differences between Eastern and Southern European immigrants and Anglo-Saxon Americans became ethnic rather than racial. Because ethnicity was a difference based in culture, not biology, Americans of Italian, Irish, and Eastern European ancestry had individual agency to assimilate into mainstream Anglo-American society—a choice unavailable to persons of non-European origin or outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition. — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 387

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the racial-to-ethnic shift as the mechanism that made assimilation an individual choice for some groups.
• XREF: connects to: Racial difference had to be manufactured before Europeans seemed alien; US non-white populations remained concentrated in the working class until after WWII — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 322; Southern and eastern European immigrants were racialized before entering whiteness after WWII — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 227 (+1 more)