I think that ethnicity in the 21st century is still important to white ethnic racial groups but just in a different way. In the generation we live in I don't feel as though your ethnicity completely defines who you are or who you hang out with the way that it did when the book Whiteness of a Different Color was written. Now your ethnicity is something to be proud of because it shows your heritage and where you come from. Not that your ethnicity wasn't always something to be proud of it has just taken on a different meaning. In the book Whiteness of a Different Color ethnicity is "who" you are, compared to now where your ethnicity is "what" you are.