White Americans have many ethnic identity options while African-Americans have essentially one

Evidence

These categories are, in turn, socially and politically defined and have varying degrees of advantage or stigma attached to them (Nagel, 1994). Moreover, the range of choices available to particular individuals and groups varies widely. A white American may have a wide range of ethnic options from which to choose, both hyphenated and/or hybrid. An African-American, in contrast, is confronted with essentially one ethnic choice - black; irrespective of any preferred ethnic (or other) alternatives they might wish to employ. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 941

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes Mary Waters’ ‘Ethnic Options’ work on optional vs. imposed ethnicity, and connects to the reader’s interest in identity as constraint. — connects to: Minority groups differ in whether they equate American identity with whiteness — Neda Maghbouleh, The Limits of Whiteness: Iranian…, 1496
• CANDY: A crisp, tweetable asymmetry: whites choose hyphenated identities, black Americans are fixed as ‘black’.