Becoming Old Stock The Paradox of German-American Identity / Russell A. Kazal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kazal, Russell A. (Russell Andrew)

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

White people--Race identity.

Social conditions.

Social classes.

Race relations.

Immigrants--Social conditions.

German Americans--Social conditions.

German Americans--Ethnic identity.

German Americans--Cultural assimilation.

Ethnicity.

Cultural pluralism.

Cultural pluralism--United States--Case studies.

Ethnicity--United States--Case studies.

Social classes--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--History--20th century.

Immigrants--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--Social conditions--20th century.

Immigrants.

German Americans--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--Social conditions--20th century.

German Americans.

White people--Race identity--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia.

White people.

German Americans--Cultural assimilation--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia.

German Americans--Pennsylvania--Philadelphia--Ethnic identity.

United States.

Pennsylvania--Philadelphia.

Philadelphia (Pa.)--Social conditions--20th century.

Philadelphia (Pa.).

Philadelphia (Pa.)--Race relations.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (408 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2004.

Summary:

"Becoming Old Stock sheds light on the way German Americans used race, American nationalism, and mass culture to fashion new identities in place of ethnic ones. It is also an important contribution to the growing literature on racial identity among European Americans. In tracing the fate of one of America's largest ethnic groups, Becoming Old Stock challenges historians to rethink the phenomenon of ethnic assimilation and to explore its complex relationship to American pluralism."--Jacket.

"Using quantitative methods, oral history, and a cultural analysis of written sources, the book explores how, by the 1920s, many middle-class and Lutheran residents had redefined themselves in "old-stock" terms - as "American" in opposition to southeastern European "new immigrants." It also examines working-class and Catholic Germans, who came to share a common identity with other European immigrants, but not with newly arrived black Southerners."

"More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country. Arguably, German Americans form America's largest ethnic group. Yet they have a remarkably low profile today, reflecting a dramatic, twentieth-century retreat from German-American identity. In this age of multiculturalism, why have German Americans gone into ethnic eclipse - and where have they ended up? Becoming Old Stock represents the first in-depth exploration of that question. The book describes how German Philadelphians reinvented themselves in the early twentieth century, especially after World War I brought a nationwide anti-German backlash."

Contents:

German Philadelphia : a social portrait

Two neighborhoods

The gendered crisis of the Vereinswesen

Destinations : the ambiguous lure of mass commercial and consumer culture

Destinations : fractured whiteness, "American" identity, and the "Old stock" opening

Resisting assimilation : middle-class and working-class approaches

European war and ethnic mobilization

Intervention, the anti-German panic, and the fall of public Germanness

An ethnicity subdued

Changing neighborhoods

Middle-class Germans : American identity and the "stock" of "our forefathers"

Workers and Catholics : toward the "white ethnic"

Pluralism, nationalism, race, and the fate of German America.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [291]-370) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780691050157

0691050155

OCLC:

1231563299