I propose a theory of an expansion of the definition of "whiteness" out of the diversity of nineteenth-century European immigration based on an idea of race as performative. It was during the turn of the twentieth century that this expansion began to take shape, especially as one response to immigration and emancipation. By 1910 in New York City the new immigration seemed so uncontrollable and threatening that the older, mid-century concept of who was white no longer served to define Americans and demarcate strangers without the danger of the narrowly defined Anglo-Saxon white population losing majority status. I enlist various "post-colonial" literary theories and rhetorical theory to examine the extent to which English language curricula and textbooks in the New York City school system were used to Americanize and socialize immigrants at the turn of the century to Anglo behaviors which we would later come to recognize as “white.”