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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Religion was a significant motivating factor in anti-italian and anti-irish discrimination. As America became more secular there was less motivation to focus on such differences — further, the religious Protestant mainstream found more common ground with Catholics as a bulwhark against secularization. Further, WW2 became a point of shared experience, where Americans from around the country were forced to work together, read the same army material, and eat the same type of food. This is understood as an essentially “Americanizing” event, where young men would basically be conditioned into a uniform understanding of their place in society and other whites would see and treat them as equal. Finally, suburbanization and “urban renewal” meant the destruction of the traditional political and social bonds that defined various white ethnic groups, essentially forcing them to assimilate into the American mainstream (Which in turn was influenced more heavily by them and their food).
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