When Joe DiMaggio died, the WSJ ran a front page story on his life and career, in which the writer asserted that Joe encountered ‘racism’ at the beginning of his career? Racism? Where did he get started? In Japanese leagues? Or in the National Nigerian Baseball League?
College educated people (or probably even Ivy League, if they work at the WSJ) don’t know the term ethnocentrism! Everything is now ‘RACISM’!
WASPs were reluctant to consider Eastern European immigrants whites (regardless of their skin color). There is a book called Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White (author is named Roediger) which gives many instances of this. I recall seeing something written about the time Joe DiMaggio was at the height of his career which asserted that Americans did not consider Italians white.