In some circles, notably among social scientists and government
policy makers, I think the process of transforming east and
southern Europeans to "white" status takes place after World War
I, not World War II. One can see a major shift in emphasis during
the 1920s, in the Supreme Court decisions on naturalization
(*Ozawa* and *Thind*) and the determination of national origins
for purposes of establishing immigration quotas after passage of
the 1924 immigration act. An interesting discussion of the former
is in *White by Law: the Legal Construction of Whiteness,* by Ian
Haney-Lopez (NYU Press, 1996).
Mae Ngai
Dept of History
Columbia Univ.
mn53@columbia.edu