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Very true...I think nowadays you can put Mexicans and other Central Americans in this camp.
But that's because so many are here illegally. Hispanic-Americans who respect our laws and assimilate are not looked down upon. Staying on topic I love Italian food. It's my favorite. I find those of Italian ancestry to be warm and robust. Having been around awhile I haven't seen much discrimination against Italians past or present but everyone has different experiences I guess depending on where they have lived.
I mod the football forums, here is an example of a man who rose above it all.
He went to a catholic school and was continually picked on because of his heritage. He rose above it and went to Fordham University. In college football lore he was part of the front four that was referred to as the "Seven Blocks Of Granite." He was the least talented of the four but as he eventually got to be a position coach he was able to get it out of other people better than he could get it out of himself.
After years of being a position coach he yearned to be a head coach. And was denied and denied and denied. He finally gets an interview at Wake Forest University, probably the worst NCAA school for college football. He doesn't care, he just wants to get his foot in the door. According to Jerry Izenberg, the long time writer of the New York Post, has been quoted as saying when one of the people on the selection committee came to him, the guy said "I don't know why they feel this way, but the rest of the committee said we are not going to hire a coach who has a last name that ends with a vowel.
He rose above this idiotic mindset. His apprenticeship with Red Blake at Army caught the eye of the New York Giants, who hired him as offensive coordinator. In 1959 he was hired to coach an NFL club that had been a loser for the past decade and a half. When he hired on, there was one black player on that club. When he left in 1968 14 black players were on that club. The club was the Green Bay Packers.
In NFL lore they have referred to that franchise as "Titletown USA." Before this individual got there it was known as a place where "coaches careers go to die." When he left this organization, he led his team to 5 NFL Championships and 2 Super Bowls in nine years. And speaking of Super Bowls, the title of the Super Bowl trophy bears his name.
He , along with Cleveland Brown great Jim Brown and Baltimore Colt great John Unitas, are primarily responsible for transforming the United States from a baseball watching nation to a football watching nation. It didn't happen overnight, but these three men started that change.
so would you say American society has largely accepted Italian Americans? I ask Italian Americans, before you were looked down about because of your heritage, but now you are accepted. I want my people, Mexican Americans to also be accepted. We are trying hard, with hard work we want to show the rest of American society that.we are valuable citizens of this country. That they should not discrimate us because we are of spanish, mix spanish/indigenous, or indigenous descent. We see each othe as a unit. We also want Americans to view us as one of them. Yes there are bad apples, but most of us are good. . Italian Americans did it through hard work. We want to do the same thing.
Sorry for my grammar i am writing this through a cell phone, a very crappy one
Very true...I think nowadays you can put Mexicans and other Central Americans in this camp.
That's not true at all. Mexicans and the majority of Hispanics don't assimilate and the nationalities who came before them did learn English and American culture.
I'm half Italian, since my Mom is full-blooded, with her parents coming from the Florence, Italy region back in the 1920s.
And I can pretty much safely say that I have really experienced no sort of serious prejudice during my 40 or so years on Earth. I was raised in the SoCal and then Bay Area areas, and also have travelled extensively due to my military service.
Oh, I've had the occasional friend make good-natured fun of my insatiable love of pasta and really, all Italian food: "What is it with you eating spaghetti every other night, ya damn wop?" LOL--but all this was in fun, the way guys will do with each other.
Too, while I look the part of what most Americans think of when they think of Italians: olive-colored skin that tans easy; brown eyes and dark hair, you must remember that not all Italians look like that; some, especially from the Northern Most regions of Italy, i.e. above the "knee" on the map where Rome is, are actually fair-skinned and have light brown or even blonde hair and blue eyes. The reason for the So. Italy and Sicilian darkness stems from the fact that hundreds of years ago the Moors conquered Sicily and changed the bloodline.
The Germans went to the Northern part. Both "bloodline"s were changed.
And do Italians, in general, consider themselves White? I hear terms like 'ethnic whites' and 'Mediterranean whites' used often to describe Italians, and also Greeks and even Portuguese. Do Nordic/Scandanavian Whites, the folks who fit the stereotype of what a White person looks like, consider Italians White?
I've always been curious about this. I know technically speaking Mediterranean Whites are Caucasians, but are they thought of (or do they view themselves) as more of a subset or outlier of the White race?
I have fair features (I don't like revealing personal information online. I won't go into specifics) as did my mother and father. No, I don't consider Italians, Greeks, or Portuguese white.
That's not true at all. Mexicans and the majority of Hispanics don't assimilate and the nationalities who came before them did learn English and American culture.
lol they do learn English even faster than other previous immigrants.
I have fair features (I don't like revealing personal information online. I won't go into specifics) as did my mother and father. No, I don't consider Italians, Greeks, or Portuguese white.
This is among the most ridiculous statements I have ever read. At one point is history, Germans were not white, Irish were not white, Poles were not white, etc. That whole debate of who is white is relegated to the trash heap of history.
My dad immigrated from Italy to the US shortlyafter WW2. As a kid in San Diego in the 70´s I remembered a friends really WASPy mom did not like her son hanging out with me because I was 1/2 Italian. I think though that has mostly changed and people have new Immigrant groups to be prejudiced towards.
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