Prejudice: “an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, or race, or their supposed characteristics.”  – MERRIAM-WEBSTER Dictionary

When I mention anti-Italian prejudice, people giggle, though it wasn’t my intent to make them laugh. Regular folk wave their hands and say, “Are you kidding? Look around. Italian Americans live in the suburbs, their kids go to college, people love Italian food. Get over it!”  

The reaction of media people is even more condescending. Their metric is that Italian Americans are now considered “white,” and, therefore, they haven’t suffered the horrible historical indignities inflicted upon African Americans (slavery and Jim Crow), Native Americans (near-annihilation), and Asian Americans (internment camps).

This is largely true; however, being journalists, they should take the next step and do some genuine research on Italian American history. They would discover that, unlike other “white ethnics,” Italian Americans were subjected to consistent brutalities not visited upon the Irish, Jews, Greeks, etc. These included lynchings (New Orleans, 1891), deportations (Palmer Raids, 1919/20), public executions (Sacco and Vanzetti, 1927), and being labeled by the U.S. government as “enemy aliens” (600,000 of them, 1942, with 10,000 Italian Americans in California evicted from homes and jobs). 

(Note: Jewish American Leo Frank was lynched in Atlanta, Georgia in 1913 but this is one incident compared to the over 50 – and still counting – documented lynchings of Italian Americans in the Deep South.)

What regular folks and journalists don’t realize is that it they’re both responsible for promoting anti-Italian prejudice, and via the same means: their refusal to recognize the gap between “reel” Italians (Hollywood) and “real” Italians (what we’re like in real life). It wasn’t until relatively recently that Italian Americans were considered “white.” A 1983 cover story in the New York Times Magazine acknowledged the sudden ascendance of Italian Americans in every sector of our society, from politicians and priests (NY governor Mario Cuomo and Cardinal Joseph Bernardin in Chicago) to businessmen and baseball managers (Lee Iacocca of Chrysler and Tommy Lasorda of the Dodgers). 

Even the 2017 independent film, Sorry to Bother You, had a scene in which Black and Hispanic activists talked about taking on the white power structure, listing white group like “the Italians.” Said one character: “Italians? When did Italians become white?” The response: “About forty years ago!” 

That response was followed with laughter, the same kind of laughter exhibited by the aforementioned regular people and mediacrats. What it all boils down is simple: a basic lack-of-respect toward Italian Americans – individually, collectively, and historically. Prejudice doesn’t just refer to housing or job discrimination. It can be something even more insidious: a generalized disdain floating in the ether, which freely allows others to either denigrate Italian Americans publicly (via late night talk shows or YouTube parodies like “Bensonhurst Spelling Bee”) or to essentially ignore our history (via the media). 

And where do people get such cues about Italians? From popular culture, where our main media images – mobsters or morons – remain frozen in time. 

The nay-sayers are somewhat right: Italian Americans have “made it” – that is, if material success is your gauge. But, as we can see with the recent flowering of movies dedicated to more balanced and complex portrayals of other racial, religious or sexual groups, material success counts for very little if your fellow Americans – including, I might add, new immigrants from Africa, South Asia, and Eastern Europe – know nothing about Italian Americans except what they see on movies and TV shows. I can use one among many anecdotal examples from one of my former high school students, a kid from El Salvador who once asked me, “You’re Italian? Do you swear a lot with your friends?” (Note: He got this idea from endlessly watching Goodfellas.) 

And, shockingly, it’s not just from the mouth of babes. As the Chicago Sun-Times reporter Maureen O’Donnell noted in a 2007 opinion piece on The Sopranos, she was appalled at the constant insults against Italian Americans by people she worked with in social settings:

“I recently sat at a banquet table and listened to a highly educated person joke about a way to solve a problem. “Do you know anyone named Vinnie or Mario?” he asked, brushing under his chin for emphasis….I’ve covered stories with journalists from all across the nation – people who have presumably achieved a certain level of sophistication – and I’ve heard them make ignorant comments about “wops” or that Italians are prone to criminality….I’ve known reporters who have been asked if they’re “connected” because their names end in a vowel…I heard a Red Bull radio commercial in which an Italian-accented character named “Luigi” at Pier No. 13 is trying to fit someone with concrete shoes, which didn’t work as the victim drank Red Bull, which ‘gave him wings.’ I heard another radio spot in which a girl introduces her aghast dad to her new boyfriend–‘Rocco.’ ”  

O’Donnell then goes on to note how her own Italian relatives (she married an Italian American man but kept her maiden name) are war veterans who defended America, one of them a researcher who now screens tissue samples for cancer. 

She notes: “My husband’s relatives have names like Annunziata, Arcangelo, Pasqualina, and Rosaria. Say them out loud. Those aren’t mob names. They’re music.” 

Maybe to O’Donnell; but, to the great unwashed masses, thanks to media prejudice, those names still come with either shadowy associations or intimations of idiocy. 

Ironically, since that 1983 New York Times Magazine piece (nearly 40 years indeed!), Italian Americans have become even more mainstream and assimilated, yet our fossilized media images remain constant. O’Donnell’s concluding point gets to the title of my piece: Reel life vs Real life – that is, images which Hollywood and the media promote as “Italian American” vs. what Italian Americans are like in-person, face-to-face. 

Quick examples: The Italian American community recently lost two literary giants, both poets: Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Feb. 2021) and Diane di Prima (October, 2020). Ferlinghetti and di Prima were central to the Beat Poetry movement of the 1950s, people who advanced American intellectuality and promoted social change. There was also a third poet, for good measure: Gregory Corso, who passed away in 2001, of whom Beat author Jack Kerouac stated, “(Corso) rose like an angel over the roof tops and sang Italian songs as sweet as Caruso and Sinatra, but in words.” 

And last month, a popular and beloved businessman from Illinois, Richard Iosso, passed way. Here is what it stated in his obit:

“In 1967, Iosso developed several breakthrough metallurgical processes, including a chrome-plating method that makes zinc harder. It was patented in 27 countries and parts using his innovative process were used in the Apollo 11 mission that flew Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the moon.” (Daily Herald).

Can you name any recent Hollywood films, TV shows, books, etc., which feature Italian American as poets or technological innovators? I know the answer.

Italian Americans are a proud people. They are loathe to complain about things (“It’s just a movie!”), and are quick to wince at anything suggesting victim status (“Italian Americans don’t do protest marches”). But, sad to say, it is precisely these attitudes which have largely caused this predicament I have just mentioned, the contrast between “reel” vs. “real.” The best defense against ignorance isn’t to ignore it, but to confront it and correct it. 

And imagine how much easier this job would be if Hollywood and the media “had our backs” for a change, promoting the overwhelming positivity of our culture, past and present – a positivity which, on a daily basis, continues to be corroded by negativity, caricature, and, yes, prejudice. -BDC