America's Real Model Minority: It's white people, but don't tell them that. Ethnic pride abounds in the mythology of what makes an acceptable immigrant

The leader of an anti-racism workshop in the 1990s once noted adisquieting inclination on the part of white participants todissociate themselves from the advantages of whiteness by emphasizingsome purportedly not-quite-white ethnic background. "I'm not white;I'm Italian," one would say. Another, "I'm Jewish." After this ripplehad made its way across the group, the seminar leader was leftwondering, "What happened to all the white people who were here justa minute ago?"

The sense of a sentence like "I'm not white, I'm Italian" restsupon several historical preconditions, now loosely relayed in theterm "ethnic revival": the Civil Rights Movement heightened …