RECENT SOCIETY EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES

PREJUDICE AND PRIVILEGE FOR ITALIAN IMMIGRANTS EXAMINED

By Nancy DeSanti

Our third AMHS program on June 10 this year dealt with the fascinating subject of “prejudice and privilege--the complex history of Italian American immigration.” Our speaker was an expert in the field, Professor Thomas Guglielmo, who spoke to an audience of 70 AMHS members and guests who had many thoughtful questions and comments.

4 Dr. Guglielmo traces his Italian roots to two small towns in southern Italy—Ferrandina in Basilicata and Apice in Campania. He received his undergraduate degree from Tufts University and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan in 2000. He taught at the University of Notre Dame before joining the faculty at George Washington University. One of his former students, Gianluca Nigro, was in the audience. Gianluca was an AMHS scholarship winner and he is now president of the GWU Students’ Italian Cultural Society. The professor was invited to be our speaker after AMHS Vice President Lynn Sorbara saw him being interviewed on a History Channel program, “America, The Promised Land,”

Immigration and race is a complicated and fraught subject, but Professor Guglielmo enlightened his audience by sharing the research he did for his doctoral dissertation, which he expanded into a book entitled “White on Arrival.” As he explained to us, “prejudice and privilege” were two sides of a coin. His research focused on the city of Chicago, which he said was a typical urban area settled by the early Italian immigrants.

The definition of “whiteness” was critical to the ItalianAmerican experience, he explained, and the impact of racial classification—both formal and informal—played a part in immigrants’ ability to acquire homes and jobs, and gain opportunities in America - in opening the “Golden Door.”

Interestingly, Professor Guglielmo explained how the distinction between Northern and Southern Italians was brought over from Italy and adopted by the American immigration authorities. He cited as an example a noted Italian sociologist of the 19th century who believed that Southern Italians were racially and culturally inferior, predisposed to crime, political extremism and social backwardness. These views were seized upon by nativists in America.

Asked by an audience member where immigrants from central Italy, such as Abruzzo, fit in, Professor Guglielmo explained that the back of the naturalization application document from the early 1900s which he showed us during his presentation, spelled out that Southern Italy was considered as anywhere south of the Po River, meaning south of Bologna, for example, and thus included central Italian regions such as Abruzzo. The front of the document he showed us for a Sicilian immigrant listed his race as “white” and his color as “dark.”

Anti-Italian sentiment arose among some Americans in reaction to the period in the late 19th and 20th centuries of large-scale immigration of Italians, mostly from Southern Italy and Sicily. The majority of Italian immigrants arrived in waves in the early 20th century, many from rural backgrounds, and with a Catholic religion different from the Protestant majority. Italian immigrants were often viewed as perpetual foreigners, restricted to manual labor. Since they often lacked formal education, and competed with earlier immigrants for lower-paying jobs and housing, there was sometimes hostility with other ethnic groups,

On the other hand, the professor explained, much of the antiItalian hostility in the United States was directed at Southern Italians and Sicilians, who began immigrating to the United States in large numbers after 1880. Before then, there were relatively few Italians in North America. The immigrants from the Southern part of Italy and Sicily were not considered wholly white by Anglo-Saxon standards. The U.S. Immigration Department reinforced this distinction by classifying Northern and Southern Italians as two distinct groups.

In reaction to the large-scale immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, Congress passed legislation (Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924) restricting immigration from those regions, but not from Northern European countries. It has been noted that after 1924, immigration by Italians fell 90% even though the vast majority of those coming to America were honest, hard-working people.

Before the great wave of migration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, people considered white generally came from Northern Europe, and the new immigrants, until they were fully brought into the “white family,” lived in a state of inbetweeness, meaning that they were placed in a racial pecking order below whites but above people of color. This mattered, Professor Guglielmo explained, because in many places, one had to be white to vote, to hold public office and even to own property.

The professor explained how societal pressures and internal desires to “fit in” shaped immigrants’ responses. For example, Italian immigrants in Chicago, including Al Capone’s mother, would sometimes sign racially restrictive covenants that were used as a tool to achieve residential racial segregation. Meanwhile, Italians were perceived as being predisposed to criminality. Professor Guglielmo showed us a front-page headline in huge capital letters, “Sicilian Gang Kills”, that appeared in the city’s leading newspaper, the Chicago Tribune.

Generally, Professor Guglielmo explained, Italians held this middle place between white and black, until the World War II and its aftermath witnessed the full recognition of their white status. Things changed around the time of World War II for a variety of reasons. The war further Americanized Italians as thousands fought in the war and those at home mobilized behind the war effort. So the war years brought about a more widespread acceptance of Italians as full-fledged Americans. By the mid-20th century, Italians were firmly established in American pop culture, from music, to fashion, to cars—even the sport of baseball, America’s national pastime, had Joe DiMaggio as one of the best players of all time.

5 Concluding his remarks, Professor Guglielmo asked us to consider what the early Italian immigrants experienced and compare that to what is happening today with other ethnic groups.

Professor Guglielmo’s book “White on Arrival,” which is available on Amazon.com, was the winner of an award in 2014 from the Organization of American Historians.

Before the talk, we enjoyed a delicious lunch catered by Osteria da Nino in Shirlington, Virginia. We also had a raffle which brought in $276 for AMHS. Our thanks to all those who donated the raffle prizes and bought tickets.