White ethnic is a term used in United States sociology to refer to whites who are not of European Protestant background.[1] They consist of a number of distinct groups, and within the United States make up approximately 9.4% of the population.[2] Only once in the United States Census (the 1970 US Census) was there an official demographic survey of "white ethnics" and it found about 19 million out of the then 200 million people claimed white ethnic ancestry.
The term "white ethnic" almost always carried the connotation of being blue-collar, northeastern or Midwestern. The term generally refers to white immigrants and their descendants from Central, southern and eastern Europe.[3]
White ethnic identities were thought to be the strongest in the late 19th and early 20th century (see Hyphenated American), but over time when white ethnics became more involved in community and later national politics (esp. from in the 1920s to 1950s), it demonstrated how the country was not strictly Anglo-Saxon and that white ethnics were an integral part of the national scene. Also a number of ethnic organization groups in the 1960s and 1970s were more vocal and supported promotion of the white ethnic cultures of the United States.
In the early 20th century, many white ethnics claimed to have been placed in a low socio-economic level, due to discrimination and ethnic stereotypes by the White Anglo Saxon Protestant or "WASP" elite. However, since the mid-20th century, most traditional white ethnic groups have ranked at the top of socio-economic indicators that suggest social status, such as income level, occupational status and level of educational attainment.
White ethnics (i.e. Italians, Russians, Poles, Greeks, Hungarians, Slovaks, French-Canadians, and Jews among them) experienced some levels of ethnocentric racism and xenophobia by the majority culture they lived among with. Although in the USA the main racial divide was between light-skinned "White" and darker-skinned "Black" African Americans and so the European immigrants became "white" ethnicities were absorbed, assimilated and integrated into the mainstream in a much faster rate.
There has been some debate among sociologists and other scholars as to whether persons of Irish and German ancestry should be considered as white ethnics. One school of thought asserts that since the descendants of these two ethnicities often maintain a strong sense of identification with their origins, they should be deemed as white ethnics. However, another theory holds that since these two northern European elements were among the earliest settlers of colonial America, and today actually form the two largest ancestry groups in the U.S., that they can't really be considered as traditional "ethnic groups" as the term is normally understood in the United States.
According to this line of thought, persons of German and Irish origin have been in the country for so long, and were so instrumental in the formation and development of American culture, that like, say, persons of English descent, they are today indistinguishable from the American white population as a whole and do not possess any unique social habits or cultural characteristics that would set them apart.
http://academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/white13.htm How the Irish Became White, by Dr. Art MacDonald M.D., University of Dayton (Ohio). White America