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
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Not as often as it did for my parents, but it still happens, even today.
Especially outside of the major Italian-American hub of the Central-Northern New Jersey / New York City / Connecticut / Delaware area.
I was shocked to personally come across it (and be the focus of it) multiple times in South Jersey.
The main reason it’s better than before is that we’ve integrated our culture with American-American culture. The big turning point began in the late 1970s, and culminated in the 1990s to the point of the pizza craze (which wasn’t the *reason* but an indicator — it was no longer “weird”). Also Catholicism isn’t as big of a bogeyman as it once was, either.
But we’re still portrayed pretty piss-poorly in the media. I found it heartwarming in the 3d Mario movie that they did a bunch of things right. But most of the time it’s gangsters, guidos, trash talk, and other crap like that.
In a surprisingly sad number of places in the US we’re *still* kinda seen as “white by technicality and when convenient.”
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