Helene Stapinski writes in this NYT op-ed
“From 1906 to 1915, the year Vita died, Basilicata lost nearly 40 percent of its population to emigration. The Italian landowners — the same ones who raped and starved my relatives and maybe yours — were devastated by American emigration, left with too few hands to work their land.
The Italian government, initially happy to see its poorest and most troublesome people leave the country, realized that the best and strongest were now leaving as well, looking for a better life and higher wages. Before a United States congressional commission, a politician from Calabria testified that emigration from the South had gone too far, adding that he was sorry Columbus had ever discovered America.
The United States government used the theories of Cesare Lombroso, a 19th-century Northern Italian doctor, to stop more of his suffering, starving countrymen and women from immigrating.
Lombroso, a traitor to his own people, was convinced that there was such a thing as a “natural born criminal.” He measured the heads and body parts of thousands of fellow Italians — particularly Southerners — and came up with a description that matched the description of most of the immigrants coming over at the time: short, dark, hairy, big noses and ears.
He compared them to lower primates and said they were more likely to commit violent crimes when they arrived in the United States than immigrants from Germany, Norway, Austria, Sweden, England and every other European country.
Lombroso — and a growing sea of American nativists — branded the Southern Italians savages and rapists, blaming them for the crime that was on the rise in the United States.
The United States Immigration Commission concluded in the infamous 1911 Dillingham report: “Certain kinds of criminality are inherent in the Italian race. In the popular mind, crimes of personal violence, robbery, blackmail and extortion are peculiar to the people of Italy.”
The Immigration Act of 1924 barred most Italians from coming into the country — causing immigration from Italy to fall 90 percent. Even though the vast majority of those coming to America were good, honest working people and not criminals.
Italian-Americans who today support the president’s efforts to keep Muslims and Mexicans out of the country need to look into their own histories — and deep into their hearts. After all, they’re just a couple of generations removed from that same racism, hatred and abuse. Had our ancestors tried to come days, weeks or months after the 1924 ban, we may not have even been born.”
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Read the entire op-ed at the link.
Notwithstanding Trump and his White Nationalist gang (whose anti-American, anti-world efforts were on display this week), we are a nation of immigrants.
PWS
06-02-17
Third generation? That’s about right.
According to Bill Kristol (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68synHItMpg) President John Adams once said:
“You can make a case that America has been great because basically if you are in free society, a capitalist society, after two or three generations of hard work everyone becomes kind of decadent, lazy, spoiled — whatever. Then, luckily, you have these waves of people coming in from Italy, Ireland, Russia, and now Mexico, who really want to work hard and really want to succeed and really want their kids to live better lives than them and aren’t sort of clipping coupons or hoping that they can hang on and meanwhile grew up as spoiled kids and so forth. In that respect, I don’t know how this moment is that different from the early 20th century,” Kristol added.
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68synHItMpg
Sadly, that’s somewhat true. But, it shouldn’t be. Catholics, Jews, Mormans, Irish, Poles, Germans, Cubans, Slavs, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Indians, Pakistanis, Africans, Russians, gays, the disabled, women, children, even Scandanavians, have been the targets of meanness and negative stereotyping as either undesirable or less desirable. Sometimes it seems that after a group is eventually “admitted to the club” they are eager to turn around and slam the door in the face of the next group, muttering nonsense like “we did it the right way,” we worked hard for everything we got,” or “we learned how to speak English and fit in.” I read something by an Irish American some time ago comparing his family’s migration favorably to that of Muslims fleeing known terrorist states. Ireland! Are you kidding me! Few, countries in the world both practiced and exported more terrorism from all sides and groups over the past two centuries. Clearly, by today’s Trump standards, immigration from Ireland should have been suspended before it ever got started. Families like Mike Pence’s ancestors should have been barred from admission, not because of anything they actually did, but for where they came from. And, that religion — Catholicism. Even as a kid growing up,in the 50’s I remember hearing folks say you couldn’t trust Catholics because when push came to shove they owed first allegiance to the Pope.
But, now guys like, Pence have “made it” into the governing class. So, that entitles them to prevent the scourge of Syrian refugee families — who, by the way, have been screened and vetted more thoroughly than the “first Pences” ever were — from resettling in Indiana. And, as a country, we elect guys like Pence to govern us? Incredible! Go figure!
Best,
Paul