Quotes from Heidi Ardizzone

In adopting blackface, Jolson, as one of those new immigrants, not only traded on a form that had grown in popularity during the nineteenth century, he also found the perfect means of becoming white.

Once in the United States, buttressed by the nation's legacy from the days of slavery, many of these questionably white groups became whiter with time. In effect, the black-white dynamic in the United States enabled former European "races" to become white. Some did so by drawing a sharp distinction between themselves and African Americans.24