Italian Americans used to face a lot of discrimination but now Italian hate in America is virtually non existent. How did this happen? Is it possible for this change to happen for other marginalized groups?
Edit: You don’t need to state the obvious that they’re white and other minorities aren’t, we all have eyes. Also my definition of discrimination was referring to hate crime level discrimination, I know casual bigotry towards Italians still exists but that wasn’t what I was referring to.
Anyways thank you for all the insightful answers, I’m extremely happy my post sparked a lot of discussion and interesting perspectives
In: Other
Kind of amazing that I’m not seeing this mentioned here but a large and significant reason is because of Columbus Day. Yes that controversial holiday.
[One of the largest group lynchings in American history happened in New Orleans in 1891](https://www.history.com/news/the-grisly-story-of-americas-largest-lynching) brutally murdering 11 Italian men.
The following year President Harrison declared Columbus Day a national holiday. This was intended both to cool tensions with the Italian government and give all Americans a chance to see Italians as an included part of the founding of the country. It worked! This is part of the reason why cities with large Italian populations fight vehemently against losing the holiday. For them it’s less about Columbus and more about celebrating Italian American heritage.
NYT did a good article a couple of years ago on the subject called [How Italians Became ‘White’](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/12/opinion/columbus-day-italian-american-racism.html)
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