During the interwar years, American Jewish leadership establishes a place for American Jewry within the mainstream of American society. While providing legal and political resistance to the Michigan Registration legislation, Jewish leadership asserted their claim to European whiteness, distanced themselves from other groups such as Asians, Mexicans, and Communists, dispelled the myth of ethnic criminality, and asserted their standing as protectors of constitutional rights and legal legislation (pp. 149-151, 165). They argued not as members of a minority group requiring protection, but as Americans protecting the Constitution and American values (p. 167).