This essay examines the politics of memory associated with the construction of an "American Hellenic" identity by AHEPA (American Hellenic Educational Progressive Association) in the context of Post World War I American nativism. It examines AHEPA's assimilationist politics in relation to two dominant narratives about American national identity at the time, (a) political/cultural nationalism, and (b) racist nationalism. It shows that although political/cultural and racist nationalisms were incompatible in their expressions of Americanism, they worked dialectically to make race a crucial consideration in the immigrant quest for national belonging. Thus AHEPA's assimilative politics of national inclusion entailed more than political and cultural conformity; it required a narrative of its racial fitness to American "whiteness." A politics of memory was instrumental for AHEPA's inclusion in the racialized nation. AHEPA sought to exclude ethnic memories that were deemed incompatible with the imperative of "white" American republicanism.
This article undertakes a critical analysis of symbolic ethnicity, an influential sociological paradigm of white ethnicity in the US. It highlights a fundamental contradiction that is present in the work of one of its most influential proponents, sociologist Mary Waters: the simultaneous affirmation and negation of the operation of choice in the making of ethnic identities, followed by the methodological neglect of the cultural production of identity. The article argues that this methodological oversight embeds symbolic ethnicity in a wider discourse on choice as a constitutive element of American identity. Also, it shows how the privileging of choice makes it possible to achieve a vision of American multiculturalism based on the dialectical synthesis of two historically competing ideologies: the concept of America as a melting pot and a cultural mosaic. Showing that symbolic ethnicity conflates culture, identity and ancestry, and noting that it undervalues the social valence of white ethnicity, the article concludes with a discussion of how to recover ethnic identity analytically as an enduring, politically significant disposition and practice.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.