When Italians Were the Outsiders: Italian American Heritage and Culture Month Special
Over the past couple of years, Mediterranean Girls In Music has created content around different heritage and history months and celebrated music and culture, both on our Instagram and/or here on our blog. While we have previously dedicated content to Italian American Heritage and Culture Month, we have never written an article about it. This year, we thought it was time: not simply because Italian American culture is an important part of history, but because the roots of this patform are Italian, and there is a side of Italian immigration that, surprisingy, many Italians themselves don't know about.
Today, Italian American culture is deeply embedded in the United States. Pasta, Sunday dinners, espresso, family, music, cinema: Italianness has become part of the cultural fabric of the country. But that was not always the case. Italian immigrants did not simply arrive in a new country and become part of it. They entered societies in which they could be treated as outsiders, stereotyped and discriminated against because of their nationality, language, religion, class and regional background, and the United States provides a particularly revealing example.
Looking at the caricatures created around Italian immigration, it becomes difficult to reconcile the images with the way Italian Americans are perceived today. Some of the drawings portray Italians as dirty, dangerous, unintelligent, criminal or fundamentally foreign. Others reduce them to food, poverty or exaggerated physical features. These images are uncomfortable because they were not created simply to make people laugh. They reflected a much wider hostility towards immigration.
The Library of Congress describes the period as one in which Italian immigrants faced "a wave of virulent prejudice and nativist hostility." At the same time, pseudo-scientific racial theories circulated in the press, presenting so-called Mediterranean people as inferior to northern Europeans. Drawings and songs portrayed immigrants as "childlike, criminal, or subhuman." That history is worth remembering. Not because Italian Americans were the only immigrant group to experience racism, of course they were not. And not because the history of Italian immigration can be reduced to a simple story of victimhood. It matters because it reminds us that categories such as foreign, American, insider and outsider have never been as fixed as they can appear today.
"The Italians… they’re not like us. They smell different, they look different, act different… The trouble is, you can’t find one that’s honest." (A recorded 1973 White House conversation between President Richard Nixon and his aide John Ehrlichman).
The stereotypes were not harmless and even brougt to lynchings
Some stereotypes have survived long after the circumstances that created them have changed. The Italian immigrant became a recognisable character in American popular culture: the person with the strong accent, the temper, the large family, the pasta, the garlic.
Food in particular became a way of marking Italians as different:
"WOP"
"Garlic eater"
"Spaghetti eater"
"Spaghetti bender"
"Garlic smell"
"Dago"
"Guinea"
"Greaseball"
Many insults reduced Italian immigrants to their food. It is worth thinking about the strange trajectory of these stereotypes. Some of the things that once marked Italians as foreign are now among the things most strongly associated with Italian American culture. Pasta is no longer evidence of not belonging. Garlic is not a sign of an immigrant neighbourhood that needs to be cleaned up. Italian food has become one of the most popular cuisines in the United States. The stereotype changed, but the history behind it did not.
Anti-Italian hostility also became violent, with more than 50 documented cases of Italians being lynched, including the 1891 New Orleans massacre. in this specific one, 11 Italian men were killed. During World War II, Italian nationals were classified as “enemy aliens” and subjected to restrictions, with some also interned. Particularly, from the late 19th to the early 20th century, Italian immigrants faced discrimination in employment, housing, schools and public life, with their language and culture often ridiculed or portrayed as inferior.
And even today, references to mafia, spaghetti, garlic, accents or exaggerated Italian mannerisms can carry different meanings depending on the context. Sometimes they are affectionate. Sometimes they are jokes. Sometimes they are simply stereotypes. And sometimes they still function as ethnic insults.
They were outsiders while helping build the country
While Italians were being portrayed as undesirable outsiders, Italian immigrants were helping build the cities they were supposedly not part of. In New York, many Italian immigrants worked in municipal construction. They dug canals, laid paving and gas lines, built bridges and helped tunnel the city's subway system.
According to the Library of Congress, nearly 90% of the laborers in New York City's Department of Public Works were Italian immigrants in 1890. Their contribution came at an enormous human cost. Italian immigrant workers were often directed towards dangerous and poorly paid jobs because many had arrived from agricultural backgrounds and had limited access to other forms of employment. Italian women and children also worked in sweatshops and factories. When the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory caught fire in 1911, killing 146 workers, nearly half of the victims were young Italian women. They were building New York while trying to build a life within it. Italian immigrants were already contributing to the physical, economic and cultural life of the United States while many Americans were still questioning whether they belonged there.
Italian American music
Fordham historian Mark Naison has described the Bronx as a place where different communities came together through music, from doo-wop and mambo to jazz, salsa and hip-hop. “The unparalleled musical creativity of the Bronx,” Naison explained, “is in large part because of the mixing of cultures that took place in Bronx neighborhoods and Bronx schools.” The Crests are an especially interesting example. Their lineup included three African American members, a Puerto Rican member and an Italian American lead singer, Johnny Maestro.
The Library of Congress describes Italian American musical heritage as having had “a major impact on shaping United States culture as a whole,” from opera to popular music.
Enrico Caruso became one of the defining voices of early 20th-century American opera.
Then came artists such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, ️ Dean Martin, Perry Como, Bon Jovi, Lady Gaga , Madonna, John Travolta and Corbin Bleu, between others. Artists from different generations, but all united by their roots.
From immigrant neighbourhoods to Broadway, jazz clubs, doo-wop groups and the Great American Songbook, Italian Americans became part of the USA musical identity. The connection between Gaga and Tony Bennett makes that history almost impossible to miss. Their Cheek to Cheek project brought together a contemporary Italian American pop superstar and one of the defining Italian American voices of the previous generation. Bennett's official biography describes their 2014 album as a No. 1 Billboard 200 record and a Grammy-winning collaboration.
Italian American Heritage and Culture Month
This is perhaps why remembering Italian American history matters. Heritage is often presented as something comfortable: food, family, traditions, music, celebrations, and those things matter. But heritage can also mean remembering the uncomfortable parts.
The caricatures, the insults, the poverty, the dangerous work. The women who died in factories, the communities that were treated as something separate from the priviledged society, the complicated relationships with other immigrant and minority groups. The moments of racism and the moments of solidarity. The music that emerged when different communities lived close enough to hear one another.
When you live in a place where your culture is familiar, it's easy to forget what it feels like to be different. But cross a border: Suddenly your language can sound foreign, your traditions can look strange, your food can become a stereotype, the majority can become the minority.
It’s important to never orget this part of the history.
