OPINIONSnRedefining Americanby Lawrence Austern”/ began by feeling that I was a Norwegian, then changed into a Scandinavian,nand have now arrived at being a generaUzed Germanic.”n— Henrik IbsennEthnic Identity: ThenTransformation of White Americanby Richard D. AlbanNew Haven and London: YalenUniversity Press; 374 pp., $35.00nOniinver the generations,” wrotenMilton M. Gordon in hisn1964 study of the assimilation of whitenethnics, “the triumph of acculturationnin America has been, if not complete, atnleast numerically and fianctionally overwhelming.”nThere was still communitariannor “structural” pluralism in whitenAmerica, said Gordon, but this was tonbe understood within the overarchingnframework of assimilation into Anglo-nAmerican behavior patterns, self-image,nand civic ideals.nThat optimistic vision has been allnbut extinguished in recent years bynopen immigration—a policy that wasnlaunched just one year after the publicationnof Gordon’s Assimilation innAmerican Life — and the fetish ofn”multiculturalism.” The unmeltablenpluralism of whites and nonwhitesnhas become our national obsession,nand interest in white ethnicity as suchnhas correspondingly declined. Indeed,nwhen in more and more parts of thencountry white Americans have begunnto seem like the remnant of a vanishingncivilization, the subject of inier-whitendifferences, or white anything, seemsnalmost archaic.nBut now Richard Alba, a professornof sociology at the State University ofnNew York at Albany, returns to thenLawrence Auster is a freelance writernliving in New York. He is the authornof The Path to National Suicide,npublished by the AmericannImmigration Control Foundation.n32/CHRONICLESnneglected subject of assimilationnamong whites. Looking at such factorsnas ancestry, residence, education, andnincome. Alba finds that even the structuralnpluralism that Milton Gordonnobserved among Americans of Europeannancestry is rapidly eroding. Yetneven as the objective basis of ethnicitynhas declined. Alba notes that a subjectivensense of ethnic identity is persisting;nat least half of native-born whitesnstill think of themselves in ethnicnterms. Alba’s main purpose is to determinenthe “personal meaningfulness ornnnfelt intensity” of ethnic identity, basednon a study conducted among 524nresidents of the Albany region in upstatenNew York. In this phenomenonnof ethnic identity as distinct from tradi-‘ntional ethnicity, he sees the signs of annew ethnic group embracing all Americansnof European descent. Less convincingly,nhe also sees grounds forndiscarding an essential component ofnMilton Gordon’s theory of assimilation.nAlba has some important and stardingnnews to tell about ethnic change.nIntermarriage is a key factor: one halfnof all native-born white couples have,nno ethnic ancestry in common, whilenonly one out of four couples havenidentical backgrounds. Interethnicnmixture is rapidly increasing over time.nLess than one third of whites bornnbefore 1920 had mixed ancestry; butn60 percent of those born after 1960,nand two thirds of those born aftern1970, are mixed. In some groups, thenrate of intermarriage is even higher;ntwo thirds of all Italian Americans bornnsince 1940 are of mixed ancestry. Thenerasure of ethnic boundaries is makingneven the concept of intermarriage obsolete.nIn many cases people barelynknow the ethnic background of theirnspouse.nEthnic solidarity, based on the sensenof a shared heritage and destiny, is alsondeclining. The dispersal of ethnicnneighborhoods and occupational nichesnhas meant the loss of commonnpolitical interests. “The zone of commonnexperiences that can be presumednfor the members of any group has beennsteadily narrowed. . . . This meansnthat when two persons with similarnethnic ancestries meet for the firstntime, there is little they can assume isncommon to them both solely on then