“Beyond the second generation the Commission made no reference to race except in the case of Orientals, negroes, and American Indians.”

About 1882, the character of our immigration changed in a very remarkable manner. Immigration from the north of Europe dropped off rather abruptly, and in its place immigration from the south and east of Europe set in and soon developed into a great stream.… These southern and eastern Europeans are a very different type from the north European who

lacking in self-reliance and initiative and not possessing Anglo-Teutonic conceptions of law, order and government, their coming has served to dilute tremendously our national stock, and to corrupt our civic life.33

Hattam’s work shows how our very sense that race is largely about descent and being forced into categories, while ethnicity is about consent and choice, developed out of the contested inclusion of U.S. immigrants in the early twentieth century.