Jonathan W Warren & France Winddance Twine. Journal of Black Studies. Volume 28, Issue 2, November 1997.
White Americans may be the new minority, but there are ever-expanding boundaries for Whiteness. Some argue that in the post-civil-rights US, rules of binary racial politics of the modernist era do not apply. Racial politics based on Black-White dualism are still the prevalent way of seeing things in the US. Blacks represent the racialized other against which Whiteness is defined.
We Hispanics are, finally, like other immigrant groups…. Yes, the Hispanics are going to become more like the majority. Their families will be smaller, better educated, more traveled. Roots will be lost. Language will be lost. Food will be the last to go. We will be eating tacos and tortillas for a long time to come. — Cesar Chavez, cited in Morgan, 1985, pp. 79-80
The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro. — James Baldwin, cited in Leeming, 1994
Introduction
One of the most significant policy changes to emerge out of the civil rights movement was the 1965 Immigration Act. For the first time in U.S. history, immigration policy no longer privileged European immigrants. Subsequently, immigration from Asia and Latin America has far outpaced European immigration. For instance, between 1820 and 1951, 84% of the immigrants to the United States were from Europe, whereas by the 1980s, 85% were from Asia and the Americas (excluding Canada) (U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1993). This radical reconfiguration of the immigrant population has prompted many to predict, some with extreme trepidation, others with great anticipation, that Whites will become a numerical minority in the next century.
It is not uncommon to read news stories like the one run by The Christian Science Monitor (1990, p. 6) about a southern California city, where Asian and Latin American immigrants have become the majority. This demographic phenomenon was defined as “minorities becoming a majority” and proclaimed a “reflection of what is to come for America.” Television programs, such as Phil Donahue’s (1992) show titled The Next Minority: White Americans? have been devoted specifically to this topic. Talk radio hosts instruct their listeners that “in 50 to 60 years, Americans of color will be the majority” (Barsamian, 1995). Even politicians are referring to this demographic shift. For example, during the Senate confirmation hearings of Judge Clarence Thomas, one of the representatives of the Black Congressional Caucus warned the senators that they needed to come to terms with the reality of Whites becoming a minority.
But are Whites really becoming a minority? Does the escalation of non-European immigrants mean that minorities are becoming a majority? The logic of the argument appears sound enough:
Immigration from Asia and Latin America is increasing, and because these people are non-Whites, then eventually non-Whites will be in the numerical majority. Yet, this argument hinges on an unexamined premise—the essentialist premise that Whiteness is a fixed racial category. In other words, one can only draw the conclusion that Whites are becoming a minority if one assumes that racial categories are static across time and place. However, as the following experience of Amy Pagnozzi suggests, such an assumption is dubious at best.
A few years back, on vacation in New Zealand, my husband and I noticed a couple of things: a) there were so many sheep; and b) there were so many white people. The people were very white. Not New York white (i.e., ethnic, blended, beige), but naked, pasty, underdone: white, white.
It didn’t surprise me when a local we’d befriended asked what it was like for blacks in New York City. As a journalist, I was flattered, styling myself a mini-expert on race relations. I trotted out theories on assimilation, disenfranchisement, the growing African-American middle class—then her eyes glazed over.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I want to know what it’s like for you being black.”
I have to tell you, this woman was crushed when she found that in New York City I am perceived as white. She demanded my ethnic breakdown. When I told her Italian, Syrian, French, Swiss and English, she brightened considerably on “Syrian.”
“Well, you wouldn’t be white here,” she said grinning. (Pagnozzi, 1991, p. 130)
In this article, we will argue that in the United States the “White” racial category has expanded across time to include groups previously considered “non-White.” The Irish will be used as an example of how groups, at one time considered to be neither White nor Black, have been racially repositioned as White. We will then explore the importance of the role of Blacks in the expansion of the White category. Finally, we will return to the question of whether White Americans are actually in danger of becoming a numerical minority, given the sharp increase in Latin American and Asian immigration, and suggest an alternative racial future to the one so often forecasted.
The Irish as “People of Color”
The Irish, one might argue, are not a good example of non-Whites becoming White because they are White. For instance, who would seriously suggest that former President Ronald Reagan, Mayor Richard Daly, or Senator Edward Kennedy, all men of Irish descent, are not White?
The fact that today Irish Americans are seen as unequivocal Whites by Americans demonstrates our point. For in the antebellum United States, the Whiteness of the Irish was in serious question. “It was by no means clear that the Irish were White” (Roediger, 1991, p. 134). In general, the Irish were seen as a separate race. They were considered members of the “inferior Celtic race” that could be physically distinguished from the “superior Anglo-Saxon race.” Especially in the decades prior to the Civil War, it was not uncommon to refer to the physical distinctiveness of the Irish. Most “native” North Americans, at that time, would not have found incredulous this Englishman’s ethnological adeptness.
I even heard a member of the House of Lords in 1973 describe the differences between Irish Protestants and Catholics in terms of their “distinct and clearly definable differences of race.”
“You mean to say that you can tell them apart?” I asked incredulously.
“Of course,” responded the lord. “Any Englishman can.” (Gates, 1992, p. 49)
Inherited features like eye and skin color, facial configuration, and physique were often mentioned (Knobel, 1986, p. 88). Common adjectives such as “low-browed and savage, grovelling and bestial, lazy and wild, simian and sensual” were employed “by many native-born Americans to describe the Catholic Irish ‘race’” (Knobel, 1986, p. 88; Roediger, 1991, p. 133).
The American Encyclopedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge (1860) defined the Irish as a separate race. It accepted as fact “that the population of the United States contained elements of both northern and southern races of Europe, the first represented by the English, Scots and Germans and the second by the Celtic Irish” (Knobel, 1986, p. 89). The federal census “routinely subdivided the nation’s white inhabitants into ‘native,’ ‘foreign,’ and ‘Irish’ for purposes of classification and analysis” (Knobel, 1986, p. 90). Newspapers used the terms race wars and race riots to describe the conflicts that often erupted between the Celtics and Saxons, not as a matter of hyperbole, but because this was the way
that such conflicts were popularly understood (Knobel, 1986, pp. 88, 124). And when the influential ethnologist, Gobineau, called “race” mixture the chief threat to the United States, he left no doubt that he meant more than the amalgamation of White, Red, and Black—for he also meant the Irish (Knobel, 1986, p. 108).
With the advent of the Civil War, one can clearly detect the transformation of Whiteness. More and more Whiteness was imagined as encompassing the Irish and their descendants. For instance, Charles Loring Brace, a distinguished American ethnologist, explained in his Races of the Old World (1863) that he had rethought the position of the Celt. He had determined that “language demonstrated that the Celts and Saxons were not nearly of such different ‘blood’ as had often been assumed” (Knobel, 1986, p. 175). The work of the Swedish ethnologist, Anders Retzius, was also coming into vogue at this time and was published by the Smithsonian Institute on the eve of Southern succession.
Retzius’ work divided the races of man into two great groups according to form of the head, or rather according to the ratio existing between the length and breadth of the skull. These two groups Retzius labeled the dolichocephaloe (long-heads) and the brachycephaloe (shortheads). The former allegedly included most of the native inhabitants of northern and western Europe, including both Celts and Saxons. The latter were represented by the native people of southern and eastern Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. (Knobel, 1986, p. 176)
As dolichocephaloes, the Irish were making it into the long-headed blood group of the nation. Or, as the 1862 report by a committee of the U.S. House of Representatives declared, the natural population of the nation was “the white race, whether Anglo-Saxon, Celt or Scandinavian” (Knobel, 1986, p. 176).
Annexing Southern and Eastern Europeans
The Irish were selected not as the exception that proves the rule, but as an example of the rule. As both Anders Retzius and the 1862 Commission of the House of Representatives implied above, the new White race included the Celt but excluded Americans of indigenous, African, Asian, Slavic, and Mediterranean descent.
Hence, when immigrants began arriving in large numbers from southern and eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they found themselves being defined as a “race apart,” as non-White—just as the Celts had been positioned in the first half of the 19th century (Waters, 1990, p. 2). For instance, one physician from this time period remarked that “The Slavs are immune to certain kinds of dirt. They can stand what would kill a White man” (Ross, cited in Waters, 1990, p. 2). Italians, and other southern Europeans, tended to be racially positioned in a similar manner.
Italians … were one of the most despised groups. Old-stock Americans called them wops, dagos, and guineas and referred to them as the “Chinese of Europe” and “just as bad as the Negroes.” In the South some Italians were forced to attend all-black schools, and in both the North and the South they were victimized by brutality. In 1875 the New York Times thought it “perhaps hopeless to think of civilizing them, or keeping them in order, except by the arm of the law.” (Dinnerstein and Reimers, cited in Waters, 1990, p. 2)
Yet, these immigrants, just like the Celts, eventually became White. The descendants of these South-Central-Eastern (SCE) European groups have done relatively well in the United States. By all accounts, their education, occupations, and incomes are presently close to—or even in excess of—white Americans from the earlier Northwestern European sources. (Lieberson, 1980, p. 1)
In the past, descent from these ethnic groups had been “a powerful determinant of life chances—to attain a high level of education, to get a good job, and to choose a marital partner of a different background, among others” (Alba, 1990, p. 290). However, recent research has found “a broad convergence across generations of socioeconomic life chances around those for an ‘average’ white American, as represented by men of English background, with some departures from this standard in the form of exceptional achievement for a few groups” (Alba, 1990, p. 6). Parity with regards to educational attainment has been achieved (Alba, 1990, p. 8). And intermarriage among these groups is extremely high.
Three of every four marriages of individuals of predominant European origins involve some degree of ethnic boundary crossing (Alba & Golden, 1986). Thus, in general, there have been “enormous changes” that have largely leveled “the once important social distinctions deriving from European origins” (Alba, 1990, p. 290).
Subsequently, ethnicity can best be described as having increasingly become “symbolic” to the lives of many Americans of predominant European origins. Richard Alba argues, based on his research in upstate New York, that instead of ethnicity being a basis for social divisions among European Americans, it is merely a vestigial attachment to a few ethnic symbols imposing little cost on everyday life (Alba, 1990, p. 305). This symbolic identification with the ethnic group allows individuals to construct personal identities that contain some ethnic “spice.” “But at the same time,” Alba continues, “it represents a personalization of ethnicity and frequently amounts to little more than a token acknowledgement of ethnic background” (pp. 29-30).
Richard Alba comes to understand this homogenization of European ethnics as the formation of “a new ethnic group.” He writes:
Ethnic distinctions based on European ancestry, once quite prominent in the social landscape, are fading into the background; other distinctions appear more highlighted as a result. In a sense, a new ethnic group is forming—one based on ancestry from anywhere on the European continent. (Alba, 1990, p. 3)
In a sense, a new ethnic group has formed. But in another sense, a not-so-new racial group has been transformed. Just as the White category was redefined in the 19th century to include the Celt, it has in the past century expanded to include ancestry from anywhere on the European continent.
The Race to Whiteness Across Black Terrain
This phenomenon of an expanding White category raises the question of how has the White category come to include previously defined non-Whites? How did the Celts, Slavs, and Mediterraneans come to be included in the White race? Why were these groups allowed to blend, to intermarry, to move up the socioeconomic ladder, to become unhyphenated Americans? The answer, we will argue, rests in large part with the way in which Whiteness is constructed in the United States.
Scholars of Whiteness have found that North American Whites often define Whiteness as a void, as cultureless (Duster, 1992; Frankenberg, 1993). As one White woman put it, “to be a Heinz 57 American, a white, class-confused American, land of the Kleenex type American, is so formless in and of itself. It only takes shape in relation to other people” (Frankenberg, 1993, p. 196). Whiteness is, of course, not formless. On the contrary, it is in many cases “the norm against which all are measured and all are expected to fit” (Frankenberg, 1988, p. 238).
Whiteness does, however, take shape in relation to others. In their separate studies of 19th-century minstrelsy, both Alan W.C. Green and David R. Roediger concluded that Blacks were key to the development of an “ersatz whiteness,” which came to incorporate both Catholics and Celts. “As various types – particularly the Irishman and the German—fused with native-born Americans, the Negro moved into a solo spot centerstage, providing a relational model in contrast to which masses of Americans could establish a positive and superior sense of identity” (Green, 1970, p. 395).
Striking a similar cord, Roediger wrote, “Like a doomed master in Hegel’s celebrated essay Lordship and Bondage,’ blackfaced whites derived their consciousness by measuring themselves against a group they defined as largely worthless and ineffectual” (Roediger, 1991, p. 118). Hence, Blacks served as the “other” against which a popular sense of Whiteness, which cut across ethnicity, religion, and skill, could be generated (Roediger, 1991, p. 127).
Researchers of Whiteness in the contemporary United States have also found that Blacks, more than any other racial group, serve as the defining other (Frankenberg, 1988, p. 71). Evidence of this can be seen in how often Blacks are used as a metonym for non-Whites. As Ruth Frankenberg (1993) discovered “For many (white) women, ‘racially different from white’ meant, simply, ‘Black’” (p. 12).
White students whom we interviewed in 1992 at the University of California’s Berkeley campus also commonly substituted Black for non-white.
Interviewer: What distinguishes non-whites from Whites?
Tony: Blacks carry themselves differently, their attitudes, their whole nonverbals are different.
Carla: Probably the way they dress. I have very rarely seen a black guy wearing a Jay Curtlin outfit, or even a granola Black man I have never seen. What do they wear? Blacks wear gold.
Their use of Black for non-white is even more telling given that these interviews were conducted at a university where Asians and Latinos, not Blacks, were the numerically significant non-white populations.’ What this means is that White students at Berkeley were actually in much more direct competition with Asians and Latinos than with Blacks. Yet, Blacks were still seen as the significant racial other in the minds of these students.
Thus, Blacks, at least at the national level, serve as the anchor for Whiteness. And because of this, “a kind of pseudo-homogeneity” among non-blacks as Whites is possible (Hoetink, 1967, pp. 106-110). In other words, precisely because Blacks represent the “other” against which Whiteness is constructed, the backdoor to Whiteness is open to non-blacks. Slipping through that opening is, then, a tactical matter for non-blacks of conforming to White standards, of distancing themselves from Blackness, and of reproducing anti-black ideas and sentiments.
This would at least partially explain the Irish’s often noted rapid transformation upon arriving in America from friends of the Black to ardent racists (Rubin, 1978). Their inclusion in the White category was at stake. For the “Blacker” Blacks were made, the “Whiter” the Irish became in the eyes of White Americans. In other words, the more vulgar, grotesque, and the obscene simulations of Blackness, the Whiter, the more palatable to Whites the Irish became. Thus, by embracing and producing White supremacist images of Blacks and simultaneously conforming to White norms, the Irish were able to reposition themselves as White.
In visiting Ireland, Frederick Douglass found the Irish to be “warm-hearted, generous and sympathizing with the oppressed everywhere when they stand on their own green island” (Rubin, 1978, p. 5). However, upon arriving in America, he noted, they are “instantly taught . . . to hate and despise the colored people. They are taught to believe that we eat the bread which of right belongs to them. The cruel lie is told the Irish that our adversity is essential to their prosperity” (Rubin, 1978, p. 5).
On one hand, Douglass’s argument that the Irish’s embracement of White supremacy would ultimately not lead to their prosperity may have been correct. Perhaps it was a “cruel lie,” for class exploitation was less likely to be addressed and challenged. Class conflict was racialized and class grievances were not even articulated (Roediger, 1991, p. 127). On the other hand, it seems that racism may not have been such a false prophet. A psychological wage, a feeling of superiority, was gained (Du Bois, 1935/1964; Roediger, 199 1). And even more important, inclusion in the White race, in the nation, was won. Whiteness and, concomitantly, Americanness and all the psychological as well as material benefits to be gleaned by being full members were begotten. Seen from this angle, White supremacy was the cruel truth.
In the only published ethnography of the Mississippi Chinese, James Loewen (1972/1988) described how Chinese Americans in pre-civil-rights Mississippi were able to successfully transform themselves from Blacks into Whites. As with the Irish, “Key to their success in making this transition was their ability to define themselves as [non-Black] and thus as fully human, as full citizens” (Loewen, 1972/1988, p. 99). As Loewen documents in rich detail, the Mississippi Chinese were able to “prove” their non-blackness by cutting off all of their social ties with Blacks, invoking racist representations of Blacks, and culturally imitating the White community.
Loewen discovered that immediately following World War II, Chinese leaders “set out to eradicate the Chinese-[Black] minority, by influencing Chinese males to end [Black] relationships and throw out their Chinese-[black] kin, or by forcing the families to leave the community.” The “Chinese community also moved to end nonmarital friendships with [Blacks]” (pp. 76-77). Eventually, “the Chinese went further and denied that they engaged in relations of sociability or courtesy with [Black] customers. For instance, in the presence of whites, a grocer would joke about blacks, telling whites of the Cantonese derogatory term for ‘nigger’ and relating amusing requests of illiterate sharecroppers” (p. 78).
In addition to severing their social ties with Blacks, Loewen (1972/1988) also found that the Chinese went to great lengths to model themselves after the southern White community. Chinese patterns are being pushed to one side; but there is no patterning from [Black] characteristics among the young. The way they dance, sing, the argot they use, their gestures and mannerisms—all are incredibly free of black influence, when it is remembered that most Chinese children live in [Black] neighborhoods, wait on blacks in the stores, and have more contacts with [Blacks] than with Caucasians of their age groups. (pp. 81- 82)
Loewen noted as well that the Chinese “developed a wide range of institutions and activities—from birthday parties to funerals—rather closely approximating Mississippi white prototypes” (p. 88). One specific example of their attempts to imitate Whites is the first names that they gave themselves and their children. “They are usually traditional Southern white names, such as ‘Coleman’ or ‘Patricia’—not ‘Beulah’ or ‘Ernestine’” (p. 82).
In concluding, Loewen (1972/1988) argued that,
In a variety of ways, then, the Delta Chinese have altered aspects of their lives and patterns of thoughts. They changed as individual families, under their own volition, and as a group, with community pressure, but in any event the changes were based on white standards and were in part due to a desire to transform their image in white minds. (p. 82)
Thus, in their attempt to define themselves as non-black, “there has been a rather complete acculturation” (p. 82). “Their Caucasian atmosphere and structure prove to whites that the Chinese are not like [Blacks]” (p. 89). They demonstrate that they are different from [Blacks],” that they are not heathens (p. 86). And by implication, they are also demonstrating that they should be allowed to participate in society as full members, as Whites.
In the end, this strategy paid off for the Mississippi Chinese. By the late 1960s, they had almost fully repositioned themselves from a Black to a White status (p. 96). Their children could attend White high schools and universities, they could live in White neighborhoods, join the infamous White citizens’ councils, become members of White churches, be defined as White on driver’s licenses, and the Chinese women could marry White men—all “privileges” that were denied Blacks.
Implications for the New Immigrants
Given that Whiteness expanded and was transformed so that Slavs, Celts, and Mediterraneans could fit snugly into the White box, why would one assume that this process will come to a halt on the European borders? Is it not possible that “some non-white and Hispanic groups may be beginning to undergo processes similar to those that have undercut ethnic difference among European whites—one thinks in this connection of Cubans, most Asian American groups, and the many Americans of American Indian ancestry who are integrated in the white population” (Alba, 1990, p. 9)? In other words, are Whites becoming a minority or will the White category simply continue to expand so that some of today’s non-whites will be tomorrow’s Whites? What are the indicators, if any, that the boundaries of Whiteness are continuing to expand? While in Chicago during the summer of 1993, we visited a White couple who live in Bridgeport. Bridgeport is located on the South Side and has historically been a racist White” community of Italian, Irish, and Polish Americans, When we asked how the neighborhood had been changing, we were told that the old, strictly ethnic blocks had been breaking up and that a lot of Mexican and Chinese families had moved into the area. We then asked if that had not created a lot of animosity—knowing the potential of White flight and violence toward any perceived non-white invaders. Our friend responded that there had not been any. She added that “Blacks are not allowed to move into this area, but Mexicans and Asians are different—they can blend.”
Her words differed little from those of the 16-year-old White girl interviewed roughly 30 years earlier. The girl was a student at Little Rock High School where the White community was adamantly opposed to Black students attending the school. A reporter asked her how she was adjusting to a post-apartheid school system. Her reply was, “Well I think if a Spanish or Chinese person came here it wouldn’t be hard to get along with them. It’s just that the Negroes are what you might say, are more different to us than a Spanish Christian might be” (Vecchione, 1986). It is clear that she saw Latinos and Asians as qualitatively different from Blacks. They were “less different,” therefore, unlike Blacks, they could be absorbed into the White community.
Jack Miles (1992), an Anglo Angeleno, described Los Angeles employers (and the non-black community at large) as having similar attitudes. “They trust Latinos. They fear or disdain blacks. The result is unofficial but widespread preferential hiring of Latinos—the largest affirmative-action program in the nation, and one paid for, in effect, by blacks” (p. 54). And on a similar note he later explains, “True, walking the streets of downtown Los Angeles, I do not expect to be panhandled or shaken down (the two grow increasingly similar) by Latinos; I do fear that from blacks. True, I am wary of black men and generally nonchalant with Latinos. I think my attitudes are typical” (p. 58).
A Black Japanese American’s description of her first week at primary school in a northern California suburban community suggests a similar attitude vis-a-vis Asian Americans. “The first day, my mom (Japanese-American) took me to school and they just thought I was just a darker Asian. Then the second day, my Dad (African-American) took me, and this little (White) boy … said,
‘I didn’t know you were a nigger jap!” (Twine, Warren, & Ferrandiz, 1991).
Thus, as an Asian she was “admissible” in that she was simply a “darker Asian,” but as a girl of African descent, she had clearly crossed a line of social acceptability.
A friend of ours, a South Asian of dark complexion, was arrested during an antiwar demonstration in San Francisco in 1991, Upon arriving at the jail, she was officially classified as Caucasian and deemed a “political prisoner.” Subsequently, she was separated from her Black peers (also student protesters), placed with the Whites, and not too shortly thereafter released. The Black demonstrators, on the other hand, were not defined as political prisoners or as Caucasians. They spent the night in jail.
A significant segment of the Latino population has been reclassified from a separate race to essentially a White ethnic group. In the 1930s, Hispanics were classified as a separate race by the federal census (Bean & Tienda, 1987, p. 18). However, one now sees the emergence of such terms as non-Hispanic Whites and Hispanic Whites. And this is not a classification that is simply being imposed by the federal government but is also being embraced by a large proportion of the Latino community. In the 1990 census, more than half of the Hispanic population racially self-identified as White (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1993). And the U.S. Bureau of the Census found in 1992 that about 95% of Latinos self-identified as White (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992b, p. B-1).
The so-called Asian success story is often overstated (see Suzuki, 1977), frequently used to dismiss the existence of racism, and has so saturated the media and folk beliefs that it has become cliche. Nevertheless, the economic and educational success that Asian Americans have enjoyed in the United States is not insignificant. For instance, by 1990, 39% of Asian and Pacific Islanders older than 24 years had completed 4 or more years of college, as compared to 22% of Whites. Furthermore, in the same year, Asian and Pacific Islander men had a median earnings of $26,760, which was somewhat lower than the median earnings of comparable White men, which stood at $28,880. Yet, female Asian and Pacific Islanders had higher median incomes ($21,320) than comparable White female workers ($20,050) (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992a). Given the number of generations it took most other immigrant groups to reach this level of economic and educational parity with unhyphenated Americans, the “success” of Asian Americans, many of whom are first- or second-generation immigrants, would seem to highlight what others have observed: “They can blend.”
Finally, prohibitions and taboos against intermarriage are a primary marker of a group’s ability to assimilate. High rates of intermarriage not only highlight a group’s social acceptability but also tend to undermine ethnic affiliation (Alba & Golden, 1986).
Thus, the fact that the intermarriage rates for both Asians and Latinos is fairly high is significant indeed. The outmarriage rate for Blacks is 4.3%, whereas Latinos born in the United States marry out at about 40%. Seventy percent of Asian Americans born in the United States, between the ages of 25 and 40 in California (the state with by far the most Asian Americans), marry non-Asian Americans (L. Shinagawa, cited in Pagnozzi, 1991, p. 132). These figures are even more significant when one considers that the children of Black outmarriages are usually perceived and come to perceive themselves as Black (Twine, 1996; Twine et al., 1991), whereas most of the offspring of the Hispanic-white marriages identify as non-Hispanic Whites (L. Shinagawa, cited in Pagnozzi, 1991, p. 132).
Conclusion
In the post-civil-rights United States, it has been argued that the rules of the binary racial politics of the modernist era no longer apply (Winant, 1994). For instance, Peter Skerry (1993), in his contemporary analysis of Mexican Americans, has lamented the passing of the era when immigrant groups integrated themselves into the nation via machine politics and not by asserting a minority status identity. And in Alien Nation, Peter Brimelow (1994) bemoans the alteration of the old racial nature of the nation that consisted of a White majority and a strong Black minority.
It is no doubt true that from the civil fights movement emerged discourses, identities, and practices that have allowed and demanded immigrants from the third great wave of immigration to strategize and frame their struggles for unhyphenated Americanness differently than immigrants from other time periods.
Nevertheless, we have sought to underscore that despite these changes, a racial politics based on a Black-White dualism is still the prevalent logic in the United States. Furthermore, we have argued that Blacks (not Celts, Mediterraneans, Latinos, or Asians) are still the key racial referent in the construction of Whiteness (Frankenberg, 1993; Roediger, 1991, p. 167). Thus, we have taken the position that the “old racial nature” is the contemporary racial nature of the nation.
Given this continuing binary oppositional logic of racial politics in the United States and that Blacks represent the racialized other against which Whiteness takes shape, we tried to map out what we saw as the consequences of this for Blacks and non-Blacks. For Blacks, it essentially means that they remain the defining other despite how much they conform to “White standards” of dress, speech, behavior, cultural values, and so on. As the “anti-Whites,” it is much more difficult, if not impossible, for them to reposition themselves as unhyphenated Americans. However, for other non-Whites, we argued, it has the opposite implication. For them, it means there exists a cultural space in which they can reposition themselves as White by distinguishing themselves from Blacks and adopting the cultural diacritica of Whiteness.
Finally, we have sought to offer an example of how racial categories are not etched in stone, but are malleable. History has shown the United States to be an “ethnically dynamic society, in which the meaningful social contours of ethnicity can be significantly reshaped within a relatively brief period of historical time” (Alba, 1990, p. 312). By both conforming culturally to Whiteness and distancing themselves from Blacks and the signifiers of Blackness, groups formerly imagined as non-White were reimagined as White and in the process transformed the cultural and phenotypical diacritica of Whiteness in the United States. Given this dynamism, we have argued that one cannot safely assume that Whites will become a numerical minority simply because the current immigrant population consists largely of people who are today defined as non-White.