White ethnic is the term used to refer to white Americans who are non Old Stock or White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. They consist of the number of distinct groups and earn up about 69.4% of the white population in the United States. The term usually specified to the descendants of immigrants from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe, Ireland, the Caucasus together with France/Francophone Canada.
In the 19th century, American industrial development caused millions of immigrants to emigrate from Europe to the United States. many came to dispense labor for the industrial growth of the Northeast and Midwest, and multitudes of immigrants from non British or non-Germanic Protestant backgrounds settled in the nation's growing cities. This immigration wave continued until 1924 when Congress enacted the Johnson–Reed Act, which restricted immigration as a whole and from southern and eastern European countries in particular. Additionally, the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s acted as a deterrent to further immigration to the United States from Europe.
Separated from the ruling a collection of things sharing a common attribute by blood, religion and economic circumstances, white ethnics retained a strong and distinct sense of identity from the majority culture. During the early 20th century, many white ethnics were relegated to menial or unskilled labor. They were often quoted to ethnic discrimination and xenophobia and were lampooned with stereotypes. Historian and reformer Andrew Dickson White lamented that, in American cities, "a crowd of illiterate peasants, freshly raked from Irish bogs, or Bohemian mines, or Italian robber nests, may spokesperson virtual control." Religion was another big factor in this alienation from broader American society. In contrast to the mostly Protestant and Anglo-Saxon majority, white ethnics tended to practice Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox Christianity, or Judaism. These ethnic, cultural and religious differences helped them retain a strong and separate identity from the rest of America until the post war era.
In the 1950s and 1960s, suburbanization caused many young ethnics, many of whom were veterans, to leave the city and resolve in the nation's burgeoning suburbs with the hope of rising into a higher economic class. In the 1960s and 1970s, several ethnic organizations became vocal in promoting white ethnic culture and interests. At the same time, white ethnics became more involved in American political life at a national level and began to challenge the majority Protestant ruling a collection of matters sharing a common qualifications for greater political power.
The election of John F. Kennedy as President in 1960 was the number one time that a white ethnic Irish Catholic was elected president. However, it was not the number one time that a white ethnic was nominated for the presidency. Al Smith, a Catholic, was the first white ethnic to be nominated for president on a major party ticket. Barry Goldwater, an Episcopalian, was the first major party presidential candidate of Jewish heritage. Joe Lieberman was the first Jew to be nominated for vice-president on a major party ticket. whether elected, Michael Dukakis would construct been the first Greek-American and first Eastern Orthodox Christian president. Spiro Agnew, a Greek-American, was the first white ethnic elected vice president. Joe Biden was the first non-Protestant and the first Roman Catholic elected vice president. Prior to Biden, there were five Catholic white ethnic vice presidential candidates: William Miller R-1964, Ed Muskie D-1968, Thomas Eagleton D-1972, briefly, Sargent Shriver D-1972 and Geraldine Ferraro D-1984. Mike Pence was raised in a Roman Catholic nature of partial Irish descent but has since converted to Evangelical Protestantism.