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
They’re no longer recent immigrants. They’ve so fully intermixed with the existing population that they are indistinguishable from the general populace. Having a surname like Rossi or O’Kelly is normal.
They incorporated culturally.
What generally tends to happen is that they lose most of their traditions and cultural roots in favor of mainstream ones, while some of their cultural practices become incorporated into the more broad American culture.
Currently it’s happening a lot more with Mexican culture as well. Tequila is among the most popular spirits in the country, Modelo is the most popular beer, and you can find multiple Mexican food places in even the most rural of towns. Cinco de Mayo is a widely celebrated holiday and Mexican people face far less discrimination than they generally did 30 years ago.
Because they, much like the Irish, became a large enough representation of the population to become the discriminators themselves.
It tickles me pink when people of Irish and Italian ancestry look down on todays immigrants, as if their ancestors weren’t running away from shitty issues in the old country and looking to make a better life for them and their future descendants.
Couple of factors. It is good to know that some of it was the death of fervent anti-Catholicism, but…
During and after the abortion/reversing of Reconstruction they were allowed to be “white” in an effort to put an end to solidarity with other poor people and subjugated black people in particular. Many Italians were not economically advantaged due to discrimination until the necessary change in attitude to reduce the chances of revolt. The Irish famously benefitted from this change too.
They assimilated and enjoy a great deal of celebration, but it’s to serve a greater purpose to fulfill the “melting pot” American fantasy that maintains a status quo of institutionalized racism against the most vulnerable groups. You can’t have a society that marginalizes TOO many of its own cultural makeup so the ones that can pass will do their part to look pretty and aspirational.
If white supremacists get their way then it’s last hired first fired. The Italians and Irish still face mild discrimination in many private situations and will not be allowed to exist in an actual white ethnostate.
Haters are gonna hate. It’s not at all about the victims of discrimination, it’s about the pathetic haters. My mother was Italian, my dad Irish. What blows my mind is how previous victims- who should know better- can turn right around and hate the new choice. All I can figure is that the haters are weak psychologically: they are afraid of change, they are afraid of life. They hate new people, new food, new creatures, new religions. Anything that is not part of their personal identity is feared and therefore hated. What a small, small life they have.
I wouldn’t say it’s non existent – where I live Guinea tee/wife beater and guido are terms that are still very popular.
Italian American here.
For one Italians are not obvious to most people at all these days. A big part of it is that different European features aren’t super obvious to the untrained eye or except when in the extremes, and also that there is an extraordinary amount of diluted Italians in the US– its common to meet someone who is 50, 25, 12.5% Italian but not very common to meet someone who is 100%.
In addition there really isn’t a distinct subculture at this point. Most of the Italian foods have integrated and become de facto American cuisine, for a very superficial example. By contrast, Italians at the turn of the century often lived in very homogenous communities, which made them stand out quite a bit from everyone else. Christians have also largely accepted other denominations as legitimate and not a threat generally speaking— the US had a great fear of the Catholic church until the 1900’s, in the presumption it’d make an attempt to create an actual takeover of the US government.
I come from a family of Italians who’ve been in Oregon since around 1900 when my gr-gr-grandpa came from Italy. My grandmother when she was around 90 told us her memories of growing up in Portland in the 1920s & seeing signs banning blacks, Irish and Italians. That was around the time that the KKK helped elect the governor.
Being a kid in school at a very rural in not wet forest western Oregon but arid high-desert eastern Oregon town (wheat/cattle country) being told by a friend that he was shocked when he found out Italians were considered white. This was late 70s/early 80s iirc.
How ironic when I joined the Army many of the Italian-American guys I knew from NY/NJ/Mass were among the most racist people I’d ever met. 🤷🏻
African Americans were leveraged to break many of the Italian strikes in the 19th century and beyond, so some of the animosity likely translated to what we now understand as racism.
“Don’t hate us, hate THEM.”
too many other brown people to worry about other whites. once schools began to integrate, the color of ones skin mattered more than their cultural differences
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