Dining at the Ethnicity Cafeteria

In contemporary America, ethnicity -- especially white ethnicity -- seems to have become a matter of choice. Collective white identities -- German American, Italian American, Polish American, Irish American and so on -- increasingly serve the whims of the individual. And what’s happening to white ethnicity is spreading. The old arbiters of ethnic authenticity are losing their authority. In the new frontier of ethnic identities, you are who you say you are. And if it turns out that you aren’t, well, few seem to care.

Take Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, a leading presidential contender. In advance of his announcement to seek the Democratic nomination, the Boston Globe hired a genealogist to research his family history. It was widely known that he hailed from prominent Boston Brahmin families on his mother’s side. Because his surname is that of a county on the southwestern tip of Ireland, many assumed that Kerry was also half-Irish. As a politician in the most heavily Irish American state of the union, Kerry never denied his reputed Irish roots. Nor did his staff ever protest when newspapers routinely listed him among prominent Irish pols. The Globe even unearthed copies of Kerry speeches that boasted of his Irish background.

It turns out, however, that Kerry’s paternal grandfather was an Austrian Jew named Kohn who changed his name to Kerry and converted to Catholicism around the time he migrated to America in 1905. The senator told the Globe that he learned of his true roots 15 years ago, but he never went public about his ancestry. Still, Kerry didn’t seem embarrassed by the Globe story, nor did his presidential campaign have to go into spin control. Some 24 hours after the newspaper published its findings, Kerry was in Florida trying on his Jewish identity at a synagogue. “A light has literally turned on within me -- like an epiphany -- and I am proud to share this special measure of connection with you,” he told his Jewish audience.

Several scholars have explored the phenomenon of latter-generation whites seeking to reestablish ethnic ties, real or imagined. These connections can add a missing dimension to an atomized suburban existence and provide a sense of rootedness in a highly mobile population. For politicians and entrepreneurs, optional ethnicities are also ways to broaden appeal. Former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti didn’t boast of his Mexican heritage until he faced a formidable reelection challenge. Ralph Lauren, who created the tanned, khakied-WASP look, chose not to go through life as Ralph Lipshitz. His biographer says that Lauren’s success derives from one simple idea: “faux ethnicity.”

America, of course, has always been a culture of reinvention. Immigrants have long taken advantage of their new home to recast themselves in new guises. But rather than a simple act of exchanging the old identity for a new one, assimilation has involved mixing customs, rituals and identities from the past and present. Notwithstanding the myth that new arrivals to America jumped off the gangplank eager to emulate the native-born, becoming an American has always been a gradual, highly self-conscious act of reconstruction. This mind-set may explain why Americans, perhaps more than anyone else, have always been acutely aware of the malleable nature of ethnic and cultural identity.

“We are just [now] more aware that we are active partners in creating our own identities,” says Hasia Diner, professor of American Jewish history at New York University. “In a postmodern, multicultural world, the process has simply become more transparent.”

In the past, ethnic “passing” was something one did in shameful silence. Today, Americans openly celebrate ethnic borrowing and fusion. Other than a few outraged Boston columnists, there was no genuine uproar over Kerry’s imagined identity. Latter-generation American whites are so thoroughly mixed that when someone describes himself as, say, Irish, the expectation is never that he is pure Irish.

Yet, ethnic fluidity and mixing have their psychic costs; losing one’s ancestral bearings can produce feelings of loneliness or alienation. Hence the popularity of multiculturalism. By celebrating differences among Americans of varied cultural origins, it helps reestablish connections between American-born children of whatever generation and their foreign-born ancestors. By cultivating a sense of ethnic continuity, multiculturalism -- the promotion of separate but equal cultures in one place -- seeks to mitigate our alienation by encouraging membership in a collective identity.

“Despite the wide range of choices [ethnic fluidity] gives them, people ultimately don’t want to be just individuals,” says Gary Gerstle, a historian at the University of Maryland and author of “American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century.” “They want a greater sense of bondedness and community.”

Ironically, collective racial and ethnic movements helped pave the way for the triumph of individual over group identity. The explosion of new identities in the 1960s among marginalized groups who refused to accept the labels imposed upon them by a white elite gave credence to the idea that individuals had a right to choose who and what they called themselves. Although the ethnic-pride movement imposed its own series of constricting identities and prescribed behaviors (“acting” Chicano or black), it ultimately encouraged all Americans to rail against externally imposed labels.

Although ethnic advocates correctly condemned the coercion that once characterized “Americanization,” Americans who were not allowed to recast their collective identities suffered an even greater indignity. In this country, racial lines have always been more rigidly drawn than ethnic ones. The identities of Americans with non-European physical attributes were more circumscribed. Faced with the largely unwritten rule dictating that children of racially mixed unions would automatically take on the identity of the lower caste, Americans of any noticeable African descent were seldom granted the freedom to be anything other than black.

But just as white ethnic mixing created a more fluid view of ethnicity, increased racial mixing has begun to do the same for race. If high median incomes and intermarriage rates are any indication, contemporary Asian Americans can employ class and education to trump race. Latter-generation Mexican Americans and other Latinos have also had the ability to forge new individual identities. Though they once may have called themselves Italian or Spanish to avoid discrimination, today acculturated Latinos can choose new identities to explore other opportunities. Jennifer Lopez can play a Latina character in one movie, then demand to play a non-ethnic white in the next. Yet, because Hispanicity can now be an advantage, there is an upward trend in the number of Americans embracing it.

Writer Leon Wynter argues that, at long last, the growing number of mainstream black political and cultural figures has begun to make black identity more fluid too. Black icons don’t cross racial lines, he says; they “cross into recognition as singular individuals.”

While ethnic and racial mixing surely lower the barriers that once divided groups, the white-ethnic experience indicates that it would be a mistake to conclude that the connection to racial identities will disappear altogether. “All this mixing doesn’t mean that there will no longer be blue or red,” says Phil Kasinitz, a professor of sociology at City University of New York Graduate Center, “but that there will be more purple around the edges.”

And though purple may be the only color that could redeem this race-conscious nation, it should not be used to smother the primary colors that are sure to linger. Like “white,” a generic term that denotes non-blackness more than it does anyone’s actual ethnic heritage, an amalgamated purple may not satisfy future Americans’ need for more intimate connections.