Exactly. It makes no sense. The story is similar with regard to Irish cultural heritage.

Actually, it does make sense if you look at it through the right lens.

    "Oppressed" => affirmative
    "Hegemonic" => racist, bad

AFAICT, this is how the calculation works. And to be fair, it's not entirely without merit. It just seems to me the pendulum -- which was too far in the pro-European heritage direction before -- has now swung too far in the "European/White bad, everything else good" direction.

Well kind of, in the last century 1900-2000 in Australia, Greek and Italian immigrants weren't considered "white". The only immigrants that were considered white were from the UK (and maybe France, Germany, and the Nordic countries).

There is a semi-derogotary slang term used for people of that descent in Australia, but it escapes my mind at the moment. Nevertheless the people immigrated from Greece and Italy and made a significant impact on Australian culture.

Wog is the slang term you are looking for I believe

That's the one, seems I've been outside Australia long enough to lose some slang.

It doesn't seem very derogatory now (context matters more), and the community has taken it up as their own.

wop

And the quote apparently comes from a Jewish-American, which seems to have a vibrant culture even as people become less religious and/or inter-marry.