ABSTRACT
The factors shaping white racialization include the decline of ethnicity, the rise of identity politics, the perception that whiteness is a social and economic liability, and the precepts of neoconservative racial politics. A fundamental transformation of how young whites define and understand themselves racially is taking place. Young whites selectively resurrect their ethnicity through “immigrant tales” mainly when they feel white privilege is being contested, even though their perceived ethnic history does not necessarily concern a specific nation but rather a generalized idea of a European origin. As the importance of ethnicity wanes in the lives of young whites, the immigration experience of older kin becomes a mythologized narrative providing a historical common denominator of passage, victimization, and assimilation. The decline of ethnicity among later-generation whites has created an identity vacuum, one that has been at least partially replaced by an identity grounded in race.
