Not yet free more than three hundred years after being brought to these shores, and more than one hundred years after the so-called emancipation of slaves, many Blacks in the U.S.A. are wary of—indeed, frightened by—current national emphasis on white ethnicity. White people seeking more rights on a land that has established white as right? White people chiding Blacks for continually exposing this nation's systematic and systemic racism?1White people chiding other whites—liberal WASPS and Jews—for responding to the needs of Blacks while allegedly ignoring the needs of other whites? To many Blacks in this country these questions describe an astounding situation. To many Blacks the recent and increasingly loud cries of white ethnic Americans sound like a resurgence of the white backlash against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Not now or ever will we understand all the meanings or implications of white ethnicity. But one possible meaning...
