ABSTRACT
In the early 1970s, white Americans by the millions rediscovered their ethnic roots, and champions of ethnicity like Michael Novak (1973) sang the paeans of the "unmeltable ethnics." In the ensuing decades we went from melting pot to ethnic society, and closet ethnics became hyphenated Americans: Italian-Americans, IrishAmericans, Polish-Americans. It was suddenly no longer unAmerican to admit or even to be proud of one's foreign, read European, origins.
