The Historical Presidency: “An Ethnic Presence in the White House?”: Ethnicity, Identity Politics, and the Presidency in the 1970s

Abstract

This article excavates the relationship between the presidency and an emergent white, European “ethnic” identity politics during the 1970s. Rather than a response to cultural drift or backlash politics, presidential efforts to harness “ethnic” identity politics reflected a shifting institutional context. Yet despite establishing the White House as a critical center of the new politics and devising policy and political responses to it, the attentions of the presidency were not always propitious. Instead, the presidency’s efforts profoundly influenced the terms by which ethnic politics was received politically, with destructive consequences for this politics’ potential political incorporation, its interactions with other advocacy groups, and its long‐term future. Historians seeking to explain the fate of the “ethnic” moment of the 1970s should thus pay closer attention to the presidency as a contributor to both its rise and demise. Keywords: ethnicity, white ethnic, identity politics, 1970s, civil rights, social movements