“Many historians have studied the complexities of how European immigrants became American, but it's hard to ignore what they all had in common that other groups of immigrants did not—their white skin. European immigrants assimilated and gained power because whiteness was available to them. That's what made them American. That's what made grandiose myths. This country many times uses them as a shiny example of what immigrants should be, as a backdrop of everything we are not. But white became white by excluding others.”