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Absolutely. The fact that this died down with time is the great miracle of 20th century america, but one we're so used to now that we take it for granted. Plentiful factory jobs are one factor behind this (along with rapidly rising living standards for everyone, shared experience in the army etc, and a few generations with almost no further immigration from back home).


Prior to WWI Americans typically self-identified among their ancestral lineage like Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American. It took a war and the associated shared trauma and government propaganda machine to start developing a distinct "American" nationality and more unity which developed into a much stronger nativist agenda.




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