The Bigotry Toward Italian Immigrants

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/19/opinion/letters/bigotry-italian-immigrants.html

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To the Editor:

Re “How Italians Became ‘White,’” by Brent Staples (Sunday Review, Oct. 13):

My very white Italian-American children find it hard to believe when I tell them that their four great-grandparents who immigrated to the United States from Sicily in the early 1900s were the brown people of their era. My paternal grandmother, Jennie, would say, “They called us bad names.”

In the 1960s, when I was in high school on Long Island, we had a system of somewhat impenetrable cliques arranged by ethnicity, and I hung out with the Italian kids. I learned from the kids whose families had come from northern Italy that as a Sicilian I was less than O.K. A couple of the boys occasionally lobbed the “N” word at me. My white American children, born in a post-assimilation era, can’t imagine that world.

In my family the immigrant experience, with all of its troubles and glory, shaped a family narrative embracing social equality that lives on in ensuing generations. My grandmother’s staunch belief that “we are all God’s children” rings just as true today.

Janice SabinVashon Island, Wash.

To the Editor:

I think that Brent Staples exaggerates the extent to which Americans viewed Italians through the lens of “racism.” There was plenty of skepticism and fear as millions of impoverished people — Italian and otherwise — poured into American cities. With them came crowding, crime, filth, disease, nondemocratic political ideas and social chaos. Urban places had not developed the physical and institutional infrastructure to accommodate this influx of needy people.

Yes, there were unfortunate events like the lynching in New Orleans and plenty of condescension toward swarthy “dagos.” However, over all, American communities absorbed Italians, educated their children, provided jobs and supported their entrepreneurial efforts as small-business owners. The vast majority of Italian-Americans viewed these opportunities with gratitude, worked extremely hard and took meticulous care of their homes and families.

The results of their resilience are obvious today. As a descendant of these extraordinary people, I don’t buy your victim narrative. Italian-Americans were beneficiaries of America’s democratic capitalist system and pluralistic culture, not victims of it.

Laura Compagni-SabellaHastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.

To the Editor:

What a short memory Americans have of their own immigrant experience. With very few exceptions, every family came here from somewhere else and went through, to one degree or another, some challenges, bumps and bruises on their way to becoming American. But it’s a bit like Snapchat, where their collective memories dissolve.

Without a trace of self-awareness, they just point at newcomers and shout: “We must raise the drawbridge! Keep them out! They are too different!” More than likely, someone (or many someones) was saying the same thing about them or their forebears when they came here.

America is — and always has been — a powerful, even irresistible idea that draws people to it. Understanding the meaning of America fully — and adjusting to it — takes some time. Freedoms are easier to grasp than responsibilities. Opportunities are more exciting and grab attention faster than do barriers and challenges. But, with some time and work, almost everyone “becomes” American and feels rewarded for the investment.

Gene BoccialettiNew York

To the Editor:

Both of my paternal grandparents were born in Ireland and emigrated to the United States around 1900. I remember their describing “Irish Need Not Apply” signs and being discriminated against in many ways. Their story is quite similar to what you have described for Italians.

As a country we have a very checkered history of our treatment of anyone not of British ancestry. Asians, Africans, South Americans, Southern Europeans, Eastern Europeans, Irish, Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Hindi — all were treated as inferiors at one time (most still are).

Only when the accents disappeared and it became impossible to tell that someone was Italian or Irish were we “accepted” as white. Unfortunately, many still fall under the label of “them” — inferior and to be feared.

President Trump has done a very effective job of bringing out into the open how deep and alive racism still is in America. For a “Christian” nation we fall quite short of the values that Christianity stands for; we have a lot of repair and repentance to do, a lot of forgiveness to be earned.

John TwomeyRaleigh, N.C.

To the Editor:

Even as a third-generation half-Italian-American, I still feel a surge of nausea whenever faced with choosing an “ethnicity” on official forms or job applications. The only choice allowed for my mixed European heritage is “white,” but checking it feels like a betrayal of my ancestors and a forced whitewashing of this country’s true microdiversity.

I resent, every time, that my identity will be assumed into a featureless, monolithic bloc of whiteness and ascribed to an established majority I neither identify with nor aspire to. And leaving the box unchecked in protest feels even worse, like choosing voluntary self-erasure over involuntary state erasure.

Paul LeoNew York

To the Editor:

My father, whose parentage was Irish and Italian (two immigrant groups that were each reviled at some time), instilled a pride in us about our southern Italian ancestry. He didn’t talk about the discrimination, perhaps because he was of the generation that produced Italian-American entertainers like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Tony Bennett. Much had improved by the mid-20th century.

With this in mind, I was mortified when Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of Citizenship and Immigration Services, made his recent remarks about who should be emigrating to the United States and what the Statue of Liberty should say today (“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet”). Is he unaware of (or in denial about) the history of his own ancestors in this country? We Italian-Americans were once as poor, wretched and hated as many of the asylum seekers trying to come to the United States today.

Mary Gordon RossanoWilmore, Ky.

To the Editor:

Your article cites Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, but he was not alone in the prejudice against Italians from the south of Italy in the late 19th and early 20th century. His hated rival, Woodrow Wilson, wrote in his 1902 “History of the American People”: “Throughout the [19th] century men of the sturdy stock of the north of Europe had made up the main strain of foreign blood … but now there came the multitudes of men of the lowest classes from the south of Italy and men of the meaner sort out of Hungary and Poland, men out of the ranks where there was neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence … as if the countries of the south of Europe were disburdening themselves of the more sordid and hapless elements of their population.”

H.D.S. GreenwayNeedham, Mass.The writer is a former editorial page editor of The Boston Globe.

To the Editor:

Bravo, excellent piece! Its point is that Italians were the scary foreigners to be feared not so long ago. As an Italian-American, I am greatly troubled by how far too many of those who share my heritage support the current president’s anti-immigration policies.

Had he been elected in 1916 instead of 2016, I assure you that he would have been denouncing Italians as the dangerous immigrants to be kept out.

Frank L. CocozzelliStaten Island

To the Editor:

America has never been a melting pot. Your third-grade teacher was wrong about that. It was and continues to be a boiling cauldron. And every new generation needs to learn old lessons.

Peter BalesEast Northport, N.Y.The writer teaches American history at Queensborough Community College.