Contours of White Ethnicity: Popular Ethnography and the Making of Usable Pasts in Greek America

6. Redirecting Ethnic Options: Historical Routes of Heritage

 C h a p t e r s i x Redirecting Ethnic Options Historical Routes of Heritage [A] good theory of identity does more than simply celebrate or dismiss the various uses of identity—rather, it enables cultural critics to explain where and why identities are problematic and where and why they are empowering. —Paula Moya, Reclaiming Identity Marked by its European origins, modern black political culture has always been more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation that is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes. —Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic As a consequence of this process [of political intimidation], GreekAmerica developed a kind of amnesia. It forgot its own turbulent history inAmerica. Illusions grew: that the transition from impoverished immigrant to affluent American had been relatively brief and painless, that America had always loved its Greeks. —Dan Georgakas,“The Greeks inAmerica” In what ways did history mediate the encounter between the immigrants and the dominant society?And how have social discourses in the past shaped the available contours of white ethnicity today? Symbolic ethnicity brackets the crucial questions of how specific immigrant cultural forms interacted with host structures and how some of them came to be recognized as available ethnic resources in the present while others were suppressed, silenced, or even eradicated.This  c o n t o u r s o f w h i t e e t h n i c i t y inattention to processes of exclusion conveniently leaves out questions of cultural domination and political oppression in the historical encounter between the dominant society and immigrant cultures. In fact, the theory’s reluctance to acknowledge the operation of power in the constitution of immigrant subjectivities renders it ideologically suspect.What are we to make of the shocking assertion that “American ethnics have always been characterized by freedom of ethnic expression” (Gans 1979, 13), for example, when overwhelming evidence demonstrates how nativism brutally oppressed the “new immigrants” in the United States in the years after World War I? In this instance, the concept of “choice” mystifies the process, allowing ubiquitous social practices and policies responsible for cultural and economic marginalization to escape interrogation. An alternative landscape becomes visible, however, once “ethnic options” are examined as a specific mode of cultural production embedded in history; inevitably , this perspective casts light on ethnicity as a domain defined by exclusion and inclusion. It demonstrates how expressions of roots that we take for granted today—dance, ethnic cuisine, and the revitalization of language—came about, not naturally but as the result of a power struggle. It explains, for example, why Greek dancing was performed indoors, behind drawn blinds, as a precaution against nativist hostility in 1930s rural America (according to recollections of elders I have interviewed) and how it has now turned, arguably, into a popular “choice” among the youth for performing Greek ethnicity.A historical investigation also explains why certain immigrant practices and political activities ceased to capture the social imagination of white ethnics. It illuminates the manner in which what was considered a viable course of action in the past has been relegated to the cultural margins in the present. I must therefore supplement my discussion of identity and roots with an examination of “identity as a process of movement and mediation” (Gilroy 1993, 19) across space and time, that is, in terms of routes.In adopting this approach,I intend to show that history mediates, if not determines, the making of usable ethnic pasts.To correct the partiality that symbolic ethnicity accords to the present, I maintain that history makes itself present in white ethnicity, albeit in a radically transformed manner. I initiate this historical inquiry by examining how a specific literary artifact is imbued with meaning as it travels through space and time. Scholars have already noted that inquiring into how material culture travels and attending to the effects of that travel make for a powerful research approach, one that, interestingly, also organizes The Bellstone. As David Sutton (2003, 295) comments in his review of the book, “‘Follow the object,’ is the injunction of many in current anthropology and cultural studies, and Kalafatas responds to this call, following sponges Redirecting Ethnic Options  through their natural and social contexts.” In telling his family story, however, Kalafatas also follows another kind of cultural artifact, a poem. In what can...