Here are some interesting things:
Southern Italians were considered “black” in the South and were subjected to the Jim Crow laws of segregation. They weren’t allowed to marry “whites.” It was difficult, damn near impossible.
They were designated as “black” on census forms if they lived in the South and that is because the majority of them were dark-skinned Sicilians.
Mass lynchings happened to them often.
One of the biggest mass lynchings happened to Italians in New Orleans when they thought that a Italian immigrant had killed a “white” police officer.
The very few Northern Italians that immigrated here perpetuated the myth that Southern Italians and Greeks were of a different race than them in order to save their own asses. This wasn’t true, and there are actually dark-skinned Italians all over Italy, not just in the South, as well as light-skinned Italians all over Italy.
The reason I say very few is because over 80% of Italian immigrants were from Southern Italy (Sicily, Abruzzo, Calabria, Campania, Sardinia, Naples, etc.)
It was highly unlikely (damn near impossible) for a Southern Italian to own a slave because they were seen as the same as blacks, and at the time, they were the second (right behind blacks) most discriminated against group.
The mass immigration for Italians didn’t start until 1880 and even then, they were discriminated against. However, this mass immigration leads into Italian-Americans today:
Italian is the fourth largest ethnic group reported among white Americans.
The great majority of Italians are now middle class to upper middle class and wealthy. They also mostly work white collar jobs.
Their intermarriage rate is around 90%. It was at 80% in the 70’s. So most Italian-Americans also have a white parent of some other descent, especially if they were born after 1980. Exactly like my friend who has a Sicilian father (and he is very dark-skinned) and white Southerner for a mother. We spoke to my friend’s Sicilian grandfather, and he said that one of his brothers was dating a white girl from the South back in the day and that her family considered him “black.” They thought that was weird because by that time, they were living in New York.
They are now considered white
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Comments:
I thought it was interesting looking at back then and looking at them now. I knew they weren’t considered white back then, but I had no idea they actually wrote them down as black on census forms. That shocked me, and when I found that my friend’s ancestor was listed as black on that census form, I thought the ancestor was just a biracial who had a Sicilian father, and so did she. We were just as surprised to find that he was just a teenage Sicilian immigrant. My friend has tanned skin, dark hair, blue eyes, and freckles to boot. So you can see both ethnicities in her. My Greek professor is way darker than her, and he also has a white, WASPY mother.
Italians are still discriminated against. I remember hearing a group of white women referring to them as “Ghetto Whites”. Many whites who feel they have a “true bloodline” dont like them. Anglo Saxonism is a bitch. Pretty much anyone not from England, Gemany (not Jews), Netherlands and so on is not “truly white”. From my experience and when I look at history, this is how white supremacists feel. Spaniards are technically considered Euopean/”white”, but many dont accept them as that. Discrimination among the white race is very prevalent.
Courtesy Lipstickvalley
My Great grandfather came to the Us from Sicily I’m trying to learn my family history his last name Do Tomaso could some please help if possible,Thank you!
Italy is a fantastically diverse country. I am of northern Italian descent on both my Mum and Dad’s side, but my DNA Ancestry results show that I’m only 48% Italian. The other 52% is mainly western European (25%) and Scandinavian (18%), with a bit of British(6%) and eastern European (3%) thrown in. Always suspected I was a mutt!
We have plenty of racism in Europe but you guys have turned it into a science. *golf clap* This is very noticeable during elections, where racial demographics are frequently used to describe blocks of voters. This kind of thing just doesn’t happen in Europe.
The US gets described as ‘a melting pot’ but I just don’t believe that. Its a mass of tiny bubbles from coast to coast. More like a foam. Each bubble could be a few blocks big in a city, or a few miles big out in the suburbs, or a few thousand acres out in the country. Where I visit in upstate New York there are 7 Italian language radio stations and the Delis sell salami milano. Go down the road far enough and it will all be Swedish or Hungarian radio stations and meatballs or goulash in the delis. In these bubbles a person could live their entire life without meeting anyone from beyond their own sphere of existence. Europeans have strong historical relationships and ties with all of their neighbours, probably because of wars, so although we aren’t all killing each other, we still make it our business to know what’s going on in other places. You guys only have Mexico and Canada and most of you are thousands of miles from either.
Oh, most of the comments here are so full of shit once the narrative strays outside of North America. Europe was African 300 years ago? Albinos emigrated en-masse to conquer Europe? Sicilians only spoke Italian once they emigrated (nearly all Italians speak both the national language and their local dialect. Italian language is just a nationalised version of the Tuscan dialect)? Muslims ruled Sicily with a rod of iron? Try some actual history. And remember we weren’t all ‘tired, poor, huddled masses’ in Europe, even those of us that weren’t Lords and Ladies. Believe it or not, some of us were doing OK thankyou and didn’t want to leave it all behind.
I have dozens of family members in Sicily, dozens more in the US. I visit at least one of these every year. My experiences in the States make me feel that everyone is very tribal and this seems to be reinforced in lots of little ways. My father-in-law, a first-gen immigrant after WW2, had ‘Italian’ printed on his drivers license, ffs.
Actually Italians have never been considered “blacks”, they always had the white status. They were dinscriminated against because they are not Wasp, that happened also against Irish. The “non-white” story is more a myth than a reality.
It is false that Italians, Southern Italians and Sicilians are not white and behind the lynching by the KKK against Sicilians there were game of thrones involving a beef between Italians (there are books about it).
AND IT WAS UNCOMMON FOR ITALIANS TO HAVE SLAVES BECAUSE THEY ARRIVED IN THE U.S. AFTER IT GOT ABOLISHED.
The fact is that the Moors conquered Sicily but never perpetrated an ethnic cleansing, so the admixture is negligible. Most Sicilians are mediterranean white, a minority has a small admixture that doesn’t make them non-white, especially since “race” is merely a political concept: Italy, from North to South, gave birth to the Western culture so we are white by definition.
Well, sort of. WASPS white angle saxon protestant have long since identified with being “white.” There was never anything called “white Mediterranean” except in Jim Crow America.
Italians are Caucasian and not all have white skin and I think you mean they have always been considered Caucasian, but the fact is they have not always been considered “white,” because white is a skin color not a race.
Now, America has invented a new race called “white,” but in doing so has cut out 50% or so of the entire Caucasian race.
It’s absolutely imperative when discussing race to use the proper term for race and NOT skin color. Skin color is not race, except only in America, and come to think of it in England and Nazi Germany.
In the rest of the world we use the correct term Caucasian.
Caucasian defined: “The Caucasian race (also Caucasoid or Europid) is a grouping of human beings historically regarded as a biological taxon, which, depending on which of the historical race classifications used, have usually included some or all of the ancient and modern populations of Europe, the Caucasus, Asia Minor, North Africa, the …”
Don’t refer to the new American NewSpeak definition as simply a “person from Europe,” that is absolutely incorrect and clearly shows the ignorance of Americans in this area. Okay, not all Americans but the uninformed and the ignorant which prevails in US media and in general in USA today. American educational system is plagued with political correctness and wishful thinking and basically FANTASY. The Americans even call other Americans “Asian” and even call Spaniards a different race.
The Sicilians had a lot of “Jew” in their bloodline. Many of the mafia were actually Jews and not Italians. You people are deceivers and very stupid. Italians are not blacks.
First off, let’s keep the discussion honest, “white” is not a race, it’s a slang term for skin color, made popular by JIM CROW USA of the past century and still being repeated in America today. It’s an antiquated term of the past century of the dark ages of America and should be dropped from any intelligent discussion on race. And it was a term for the early American Anglo Saxon peoples and didn’t include Spaniards, Italians, Mexicans, Middle Easterners, North Africans, Turks nor any olive skinned nor dark skinned Caucasians. They were distinctly NOT included in their “white” membership.
They referred to themselves as “white,” a way to redefine race by skin color inn order to bar darker skinned Caucasians from their land.
And sadly, Americans, continue to use this antiquated ignorant Jim Crow term.
CAUCASIAN is a race, so if we are going to have an intelligent discussion about race, let’s stick to RACE not skin color. Skin color is not race. And not all Caucasians have white skin, refer to Italians, Sicilians, Turks, Syrians, Iraqui, North Africans, and many others in the Middle East and Mediterranean peoples in general. A good example is Luigi Di Maio our new deputy prime minister https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcR0ZN4PAKPvSJ2CPRV_yrBRQ554kb7z25yUpatKkW_hQ5yvNb5N
Di Maio is Caucasian and he is not white-skinned. He is also ITALIAN. Caucasian is also throughout Western Asia. Caucasian is not determined by skin color, it’s skull and other t
It is also untrue that Sicilians have “Jew” in their bloodline. Both Sicilians and Mainland Italians in DNA testing, including my own and that of my Italian family, shows not just Italian but Mediterranean, including Western Asia aka Middle East and in many cases goes double for Sicily. If there are physical similarities between us it is because we are both Mediterranean peoples. Even though Jews and Italians and Sicilians get along rather well, we are not directly related any more so than the other Mediterranean peoples.
p.s. “Mexicans” who are not Negro nor Indio are in fact Spanish and CAUCASIAN. Even though in America ignorant people have somehow managed to define Latin and Hispanic as a “race.”
The word Hispania is the ancient name for SPAIN. And all Latin originated in Europe, specifically Italy and Spain.
A lot of Mexicans are receiving a rude awakening with the onset of DNA testing and shocked when they discover they are Caucasian (European), although some do show Native American, about 40% do not.
Again, Caucasians do not all have white skin and “white” is not a race.
Read a book pea brain .
And Jews are not “Israelites.” Jews are Edomites and Canaanites, and Babylonians and Assyrians.
I’m italian, sicilian and I say we’re not totally white (at least the sicilians, sicilians). We are mixed. We have got different dominations, how can you think you are totally white?
Moori, Normans, Lombards, Greeks, Byzantines… we’re mixed. I have curly black hair and green eyes, my mother’s family is darker than my father’s. my cousin is really dark skinned while his sister is light skinned. I don’t know if we should be considered poc but we surely aren’t only white
There is no such thing as a “white race,” the race is Caucasian and most all Italians and Sicilians are in fact racially Caucasian whether they are mixed with West Asian, Middle Eastern, as most West Asia are Caucasian too. This is where you are confused. Not all Caucasians have white skin, refer to Italians, Spaniards, Mexicans (who are not Negro nor Indio), Iraqui, North Africans, Western Asia – Asia Minor, Turkey and many in Middle East.
Race is not determined by skin color.
You are correct about Italians, and I consider Sicilians Italian since they are part of Italy, can have one child very light skinned and another of the same family dark skinned. For example here: https://i.imgur.com/RiNzP79.jpg BTW DiMaio is not Sicilian. And I’ve seen lots of Sicilians with light skin and light colored eyes, they are not all dark skinned.
But I also have one cousin who is dark like the boy on the right and yet her own sister is blond and very light skinned.
It’s not just Sicilians that have darker skin, my father is from North Italy and is dark skinned. So he is not “white” but he is Caucasian. We did our DNA and it shows Western Asian what Americans consider the “Middle East” in addition to Italian and Mediterranean (both East and West Med). So yes there is a mix but mixed with South African? Not usually, and if so it is very small and around the same as Europeans in general.
So if you want to say whether Italians are white or not, better to just say CAUCASIAN. Remember, skin color is not race and race can be determined by scientists solely on skull and other skeletal features, skin is not even necessary.
Many darker peoples are Caucasian but don’t classify as “white” but only in America where due to ignorance call “white” a race.
Personally, when I am in US (who is the ONLY country that lists skin color as a race and the ONLY country that asks what skin color a person is on their US Census and even an application for employment!) I just check “other” and write in “Caucasian.”
In Italy we are NEVER asked what race a person is nor what their skin color, just where they hold their citizenship. The sick skin color obsession is an American thing and it is sickening.
Abbracci.