Prejudice and Discrimination

Abstract

I propose to discuss the topic of anti-Italian discrimination by treating it under three different headings. I shall begin by reviewing the vocabulary we now use to discuss discrimination. In the second part of my essay, I will treat historical anti-Italian discrimination. In the concluding section I shall discuss discrimination in the present generation.

“Tonight I am going after Wops. I am going to beat up Wops”

—One of the actors, while drunk, in It’s a Wonderful Life, directed by Frank Capra (1946)

“Still there seem to remain a few groups one can stereotype and slur with impunity, for instance, religious fundamentalists, Roman Catholics, and Italian Americans. As Italian-Americans are usually Catholics they get hit twice. The president of the Columbus Citizens Foundation has good reason to be sore. If Spielberg’s film emphasized Italians’ contributions to Western culture from the Roman Empire on down through the Renaissance, to modern engineering, science, the arts, and let us not forget such staples of American cuisine as pizza and pasta, who would object? But Spielberg’s Shark Tale is fixated on the Mafia as an Italian enterprise, with no mention of the occasional German, Jew, or Irishman, who made their contributions to organized crime in America”

—R. Emmett Tyrell, “Ugly Jaws,” American Spectator, September 16, 2004.