Most historians see WWII and the postwar suburban boom as the crucial moment in which non-protestant ethnic groups form Ireland, southern and eastern Europe came to be see as within, rather than outside the boundaries of whiteness-- and I the breakdown of traditional ethnic cultures and enclaves in the US. The anti-fascist rhetoric, the tremendous sacrifice of soldiers, workers and families from, European immigrant communities, and the postwar availability of government programs like VA mortgages and the G.I. education bill allowed these communities to cross over into whiteness, particularly as they moved into suburban communities in which the ethnic divisions proved less compelling the bonds of nation, of military service.
Glass half-full or half-empty-- here's a model of assimilation in which the boundaries of citizenship exploded -- or is it evidence that separation from blackness was central to successful process of immigrant communities making the claim of white citizenship.
For Glazer-- the central change that leads to integration was official ethnic-and color-blindness; US the first nation not to define itself not by ethnic descent; moreover, the American approach to immigrant assimilation is to create equal playing field not total cultural acculturation; ethnic-mixing and cultural integration will then follow naturally. Thus, ethnic identity in the U.S. becomes a voluntary rather than required categorization.
To Glazer, economic success through hard work gave immigrants the opportunity to assimilate into (white) American culture, to maintain their ethnic identity by living in ethnic enclaves, by building ethnic institutions etc., or by finding the right mixture of both options. Thus, the successful integration of immigrant communities into whiteness becomes confirmation of the logic of Robert Park and the Chicago school. A laissez-faire approach from government, combined with enforcement of anti-discrimination legislation, will allow natural integration of all racial and ethnic communities in the U.S. Thus, his opposition to affirmative action.
Waters offers a similar view white advantage lies in the ability to treat ethnic identity s a cloak or umbrella that ca be worn when needed and discarded when necessary-- describe study. Voluntary ethnicity becomes a sign of americaness-- within shared culture to declares one's ethnicity is to tie oneself to the immigrant narrative.
Williams-- white ethnic identities have become a sign of americanness to the extent media misinterpreted Crown Heights riots within the frame of successful white ethnic (Jews) community versus ghettoized poor blacks when, in actuality, it was battle between 2 sub-racial/ethnic immigrant groups (ultra-orthodox Jews versus black immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean-- "West Indians") fighting for control over an ethnic enclave. Thus, representations of the riot as a black-white conflict-- and more specifically as an extension of the tensions between former Jewish and black allies-- obscured the actual struggle between two immigrant communities seeking to defend and expand their ethnic turf.
Model -- ethnic niche strategies used by all, but benefit only those able to claim and take advantage of white privilege; representations of hard working immigrants do benefits actual immigrants in the workplace, but not those suffering from racial stigma and structural barriers.
The Jazz Singer: Is the Jolson character an example of the ways white immigrants could achieve assimilation by adopting antiblack cultural practices like blackface? Or should Jolson's singing of minstrel songs be seen as an attempt to link the black and Jewish experiences of sorrow and oppression, thus representing the humanity of the two groups.
The Jazz Singer is based on Samson Raphaelson's short story "The Day of Atonement". Al Jolson plays the son of an immigrant cantor who would rather sing ragtime. He runs away from his family home in a Jewish Ghetto in New York rather than become a cantor like his father. Jolson eventually returns to New York when he gets his big break to become a Broadway headliner. He returns to the Ghetto triumphant but is disowned for a second time by his father for his determination to sing Jazz. When his father falls sick and is unable to sing at Yom Kippur services, "the Day of Atonement," Jolson is forced to choose between singing at services and the opportunity for reconciliation with his father and opening night on Broadway… or to put it another way, between old world values and new world ambition.
In Raphaelson's story he chooses the synagogue over Broadway. In the movie, he is able to do both. By singing of his love for Mammy in the final scene, Jolson symbolically reconciles the tension between his ethnicity and his Americaness. The message is clear: there is no contradiction between his love for his mother, for his origins, and his desire to be an American.
But Jolson's black face performance raises an interpretative dilemma-- does the film implicitly connect the demand of Jolson's religion that he honor his father by singing for Yom Kippur to his performance of Mammy? Is this a linking of two traditions of loyalty to family and cultural perseverance in the face of racial/ethnic oppression?
Mammy! My little Mammy!
The sun shines east.
The sun shines west.
But I know where the sun shines best.
It's on my Mammy I'm talkin' about. Nobody elses.
My little Mammy!
My heart strings are tangled around, Alabamy.
Mammy! I'm comin'!
I hope I didn't make you wait!
Mammy! I'm comin'
Oh God, I hope I'm not late.
Mammy! Don't ya know me?
It's your little baby!
I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles!
My Mammy!
Or is Jolson's appropriation of black musical styles and his use of blackface part of process in which non-Anglo-Saxon, non-protestant European immigrants were able to assert a white racial identity within the context of American racial hierarchies by drawing distinctions between themselves and non-white peoples, particularly blacks. In Playing Indian, Phil Deloria discussed the way that white Americans appropriated Indian cultural practice in order to distinguish themselves from their European past. Jolson is no more becoming black than the early settlers went native. Rather, like the activists of the Tea Party, Jolson's character in the Jazz singer is creating something new, a synthesis of a black musical form with the feeling and aesthetic of traditional Jewish music. Thus, we can see Jolson's use of blackface NOT as an effort to identify with Black Americans but to disguise (literally hide) his immigrant ethnicity behind the mask of blackface minstrelsy. Now, he appears to be just like any other (white) American pretending to be black. In this sense, Al Jolson and other ethnic performers were, by adopting blackface, seeking to transcend the stigma of their ethnic pasts by reinforcing black racial inferiority.