The old eugenics hierarchy of presumed value still lurks beneath the surface. A woman whose grandparents immigrated from Poland might say to an Irish-American—whose status is perceived as higher than hers—that they came from Austria (justifying it to herself by recalling the shifting borders in the twentieth century). But the same woman might “admit” that they came from Poland to an African-American of presumed lower rank, whom she had no need to impress, her higher status secure and understood.
I wouldn't have believed this a few years ago but I see and hear it in Ohio all the time.
