I’m addicted to watching the PBS series Finding Your Roots hosted by Prof. Louis Gates Jr of Harvard. The series is in its 8th season, and last week it explored the roots of Tony Danza.
This being Black History Month I thought it appropriate to mention that Danza’s maternal side is Sicilian and entered the country through New Orleans, heartland of the old Confederacy. His folks came after the Civil War, leaving many Sicilians to find employment as replacements for slave labor, cutting sugar cane. Gates had Danza read this news clipping from the New Orleans Times-Democrat for July 13, 1900: “Italian labor has driven 75% of [free] Negroes from harvesting sugar cane. They are preferred by employers because they work cheaper and work steady including Saturdays and Sundays. Their endurance is phenomenal.” Danza could only exclaim “Cheaper?”
Whether it was cutting sugar cane, picking vegetables, collecting garbage, mining coal, fishing the oceans, tunneling subways, or sewing in sweatshops, there were no “Italians Need Not Apply” signs stopping our ancestors looking for menial work. Fortunately, they were spared what Black slaves had to endure for some three hundred years – wholesale rape by their Anglo masters.
The other guest on Finding Your Roots last week was Black athlete and actor Terry Crews. Like nearly all the Black guests on the show, Crews is part White (15%). Prof. Gates has noted that the average percentage of White blood in Black Americans is 24%. Gates, himself, is 50% White. (FYI, Danza is 80% Italian, 10% Greece/Albania, 7% Middle East, and 3% Cyprus.)
How does it feel to be Black knowing that your White DNA, more often than not, came from some rapacious White Anglo – perhaps the master, his sons, his overseer, or even his neighbor centuries ago? Both WASPs of the South and the North feared and despised what they termed “amalgamation.” Still, it was practiced with abandon. Even during his run for president, Thomas Jefferson, a slave owner, was regularly accused of messing with the help. (DNA testing has now proved that!)
Although rape is abhorrent, is there some pride among Blacks to be part WASP, especially when it comes with lighter skin, straighter hair, and different personality traits? Truth be told, there are plenty of Italian Americans who would love to find WASP genes that Louis Gates could trace back to Plymouth Rock or the Revolution – he has traced some White guests back to English royalty – hey, count me in! For Blacks the 1% ‘rule’ still confines them to one race, and it seems that the less Black they are physically the more Black they want to be. Yet, wanting to be Black doesn’t cover all emotions. Many Black celebrities are drawn to Euro-Caucasian partners. Prof Gates has had two White wives. Is having White DNA a factor in their preferences? Or does society steer them to the dominant White value system? Nature vs. Nurture?
Among our own, I recall a former editor of Newsday who was half Italian/half “yankee,” as he put it. He snidely informed me that he identified as a WASP even though he had an Italian surname. Then there’s the author of Crossing Ocean Parkway, who testified to her disdain for her own Italian American community by marrying a Jewish man and embracing his culture. In both cases, I would say society’s values definitely infected them, and many like them who can’t intellectually get past the old neighborhood. They thought their only choice was to reject their roots to save their self-respect. We understood this faulty logic when we founded the Italic Institute. We are proving that the “classic” Italian heritage is deeper than the old neighborhood and even the Jewish and WASP heritage.
There is always a pecking order in any community. It is common knowledge that Blacks share a preference for certain physical traits, just as we do. Many of those preferred traits came out of ‘amalgamation’ and today’s interracial couplings. It shouldn’t be a surprise that most Blacks, with their mixed DNA, are closer to being WASPs than we are – Tony Danza doesn’t have an ounce of English genes. Those Blacks who today condemn Whites as devils and rapists may someday find that a distant White ancestor signed the Declaration of Independence, fought with General Washington, or was a King of England. Then they will surely lord it over us lowly Italians.
The ole massa still lives on, in the chromosomes! -JLM
if we can ever get over stereotypes, articles like this would prove to be more fascinating than fiction. The port of New Orleans was the primary port for Italian immigration to the USA up until the 1890s. Its origins were a part of a pre-civil war trading route that included sending raw cotton and other products to Mediterranean ports including Genoa where jean-like cloth was made (a slang, abbreviated, form of the word for Genova, ‘geans’) –through Palermo for citrus products and laborers under the Patroni System, and back to New Orleans.
After the Civil War, this trade pattern was re-established with the need for more laborers from Sicily and Southern Italy. At one time the French Quarter was known as Little Palermo or Sicily. Once the community was established in New Orleans, there was a secondary migration to other parts of the Mississippi via the river, and even to farming areas in Houston, parts of Colorado, and San Jose, CA. In addition, those early Sicilian immigrants included Albanian Sicilians from several historic villages close to Palermo. In New Orleans, the two communities kept some distinct separation with lodges and support organizations. That pattern held through in San Jose where it was assumed the Albanian Italians spoke a dialect…called “Ghi-Ghi” which in reality is a version of the Albanian language. Bottom line is Tony Danza’s heritage pretty much fits the Italian American experience, via the New Orleans connection, as do other Italian American families in the Mid-west and the Western US.
Just like Italian-Americans, there have been many sellouts among Italian “intellectuals” too. They have made a living out of publishing books and articles disparaging Italy for the pleasure of international readers. Among them, I can think of Luigi Barzini, Beppe Severgnini e Roberto Saviano.