Over the years, I have encountered many a part-Italo who carried an Italian surname but preferred his or her “better” half.  In one case it was the managing editor of Long Island’s Newsday who told me bluntly that he was “half-Yankee” on his mother’s side and identified as Anglo rather than Italian American, despite his surname.

To give this exchange some context, I had invited this editor out to dinner to discuss Newsday’s often degrading reports and features on Italy and Italians in general (eg., a people who don’t follow rules, Italy’s “hardscrabble” South, a government of clowns, etc).  In fact, I had clippings to show him that demonstrated my point.  He explained that his father was a stonecutter in Vermont where he met and married a Yankee.  He credited his maternal genes for his instincts for education and journalism.  I almost felt sorry that he suffered being mistaken for Italic. 

I often wonder about the perspective of people who are all or part Anglo.  I suppose you don’t think of yourself as “trailer park trash” when you’re English, Scottish, or Welch.  A different image comes to mind, one of Founding Fathers, fierce warriors, frontiersmen, entrepreneurs, statesmen, and great thinkers.  If you’ve ever watched movies of the 1930s and post-war 1940s and early 1950s, the “upper crust” of America featured largely, always wearing suits and house dresses in their own living rooms with Martini fixings nearby.  Meanwhile, our folks were pictured more as street people and small restaurant owners.

Needless to say, Hollywood never inspired us to be more than that; it didn’t connect us to the larger picture of our contributions in America or to humanity.  The Renaissance geniuses were no relation to the southern masses that arrived at Ellis Island.  Explorers’ names were anglicized to Columbus and Cabot; Romans came with English accents, infrastructure was built by the Irish and Chinese, and WW II won by Tuskegee Airmen and the Nisei 442^nd Regiment.  The Anglo may have committed the most heinous of crimes in the conquest of North America, but the Anglo paragon—from the Pilgrims to Robert E. Lee—carried the noblest of Anglo-Saxon traits.

So, it came as a surprise this week that King Charles III is setting the stage for a Britannic apology for the trans-Atlantic slave trade.  The Anglos were responsible for at least a quarter of African slaves sold in the New World; that’s about 3 million souls.  Bad enough, but when are we going to hear about the wholesale rape of Black females by our noble WASP role-models?  They were subjects of the King for almost two centuries while plugging away.  The average Black American carries about 25% White DNA, overwhelmingly Anglo from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.  I coined the term Afro-Saxon to better describe the result of this coupling.  Cupid may have played a role in some of this intercourse but enough studies point to criminal behavior.

I wonder if that Newsday editor or any proud WASPs would acknowledge Blacks as their cousins rather than some distinct race?  Famous American Blacks with lighter skin and White features are familiar to all of us, from actress Rashida Jones and Johnny Mathis to Malcolm X (“Detroit Red”) and Barrack Obama. Within the Black community there is an unspoken pecking order based on racial features.

Race-conscious WASPs like to disdainfully note our various complexions as swarthy or olive and have too often informally omitted us from the august list of “White” Americans.  Technically, the average Black is more “WASP” than the Italian American.  We, in turn, are the original Latins, but rarely acknowledged so.

I would refer His Majesty King Charles to the abundant sexual studies of his former WASP subjects.  They created colonial laws exempting the rape of slaves from criminal prosecution.  They indulged in a “fancy trade” buying and selling Black women for boudoir usage.  They almost always enslaved their own half-White offspring to increase their slave holdings.  Neither racial pride or marriage vows kept the Master, his sons, overseers, and good fellows from nightly visits to the slave quarters.

But conveniently, they prefer blaming Cristoforo Colombo for introducing slavery to the Americas.  –JLM