Italian American

An Italian American is an American of Italian descent. The phrase may refer to someone born in the United States of Italian descent or to someone who has immigrated to the United States from Italy. Although Italians arrived early in the new world, large scale Italian immigration to the United States effectively began in the 1880s, and peaked from 1900 until 1914, when World War I made movement impossible. By 1978, 5.3 million Italians had immigrated to the United States; two million arrived between 1900 and 1914. About a third of these immigrants intended to stay only briefly, in order to make money and return to Italy. These immigrants were commonly referred to as "Birds of Passage." While one in four did return to Italy, the rest either decided to stay, or were prevented from returning by the war. Only Irish, Germans, and more recently, Mexicans have immigrated in equal or larger numbers.

In the 2000 U.S. Census, Italian Americans constituted the sixth largest ancestry group in America with about 15.6 million people (5.6% of the total U.S. population).^[1] Sicilian Americans are a subset of numerous Americans of regional Italian ancestries, such as Sicilians came from Sicily in southern Italy.

In the 1930s, Italian Americans voted heavily Democratic; since the 1960s, they have split about evenly between the Democratic and the Republican parties. The U.S. Congress includes Italian Americans who are regarded as leaders in both the Republican and Democratic parties. The highest ranking Italian American politician is currently Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) who became the first woman and Italian American Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.

History and demographics

Most immigration from Italy occurred between 1880 and 1960. Many Italian Americans came from Southern Italy and Sicily as rural peasants with very little education. From 1890 to 1900, 655,888 arrived in the United States, of whom two-thirds were men. The main push factor in Italian immigration was the huge economic problems in Italy. In America, Italians dominated specific neighborhoods (often called "Little Italy") where they could interact and find favorite foods. The immigrants arrived with very little cash or human capital; their manual labor was in demand. These neighborhoods were typically slums with overcrowded tenements and poor sanitation. Tuberculosis was rampant. In the 1890-1920 period Italian Americans were often stereotyped as being "violent" and "controlled by the Mafia". [1] In the 1920s, many Americans used the Sacco and Vanzetti trial, in which two Italian anarchists were sentenced to death, to denounce Italian immigrants as anarchists and criminals. During the 1800s and early 20th century, Italian Americans were the one of the most likely groups to be lynched. In 1891, eleven Italian immigrants in New Orleans were lynched due to their ethnicity and the suspicion of Italians being involved in the Mafia. This was the largest mass lynching in US history.^{[citation needed]}

To this day, Italian Americans are frequently associated with organized crime in the minds of many Americans, largely due to pervasive media stereotyping and a number of popular gangster movies (such as The Godfather and Goodfellas). A Zogby International survey revealed that 78 percent of teenagers 13 to 18 associated Italian Americans with either criminal activity or blue-collar work. A survey by the Response Analysis Corp. reported that 74 percent of adult Americans believe most Italian Americans have "some connection" to organized crime. [2] Italian Americans still report some workplace discrimination and harassment. (see Anti-Italianism)

However, the National Italian American Foundation, the National American Italian Association and other Italian American organizations have asserted that the Mafia in the United States never numbered more than a few thousand individuals, and that it is unfair to associate such a small-minority with the general population of Italian Americans. The United States Department of Justice estimates that less than .0025 percent of the estimated 16 to 26 million Americans of Italian descent are involved in criminal activitites. [3] Further, a majority of Italian Americans hold white collar jobs, including many distinguished positions in business, academia, the arts, medicine, and public service.

According to 2000 Census data, Italian Americans have a greater high school graduation rate than the national average, and a greater than or equal rate of advanced degrees compared to the national average. Their ratio of white collar to blue collar workers (66%:34%) is also higher than the national average (64%:36%). Italian Americans have a median annual income of $61,300, which is approximately $11,000 more than the national median income. [4]

Italian Americans throughout the United States are well represented in a wide variety of occupations and professions, from skilled trades, to the arts, to engineering, science, mathematics, law, and medicine, and include numerous Nobel prize winners. Notable Italian Americans include scientists (Enrico Fermi, Antonio Meucci, Riccardo Giacconi, Eugenio Calabi, Gian-Carlo Rota, Salvador Luria, and Renato Dulbecco); jurists (including current Associate Justices of the United States Supreme Court Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia); artists (Frank Stella, Corrado Parducci, Joseph Barbera); politicians (Rudolph Giuliani, Janet Napolitano, Mario Cuomo, and others); athletes (Joe Dimaggio, Joe Torre, Rocky Marciano, Yogi Berra, Vince Lombardi, and many others); actors and directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Robert Deniro, Chazz Palminteri, among many others); musicians (Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Jim Croce, Dean Martin, Frank Zappa, Bruce Springsteen (half Italian), Connie Francis (born Connie Francesca Selleca), and others); numerous winners of the Medal of Honor; and composers (Bill Conti, Angelo Badalamenti, Henry Mancini, Gian-Carlo Menotti).

Italian American culture

Many Italian Americans still retain aspects of their culture. This includes Italian food, drink, art, Roman Catholicism, annual Italian American feasts and a strong commitment to extended family. Italian Americans influenced popular music in the 1940s and as recently in the 1970s, one of their major contributions to American culture. In movies that deal with cultural issues, Italian American words and lingo are sometimes spoken by the characters. Although most will not speak Italian fluently, a dialect of sorts has arisen among Italian Americans, particularly in the urban Northeast, often popularized in film and television.

Among the most characteristic and popular of Italian American cultural contributions has been their feasts. Throughout the United States, wherever one may find an "Italian neighborhood" (often referred to as 'Little Italy') one can find festive celebrations such as the well known San Gennaro Feast in New York City or the unique Our Lady of Mount Carmel "Giglio" Feast in Brooklyn, New York.

Italian feasts involve elaborate displays of devotion to God and patron saints. Perhaps the most widely known is St. Joseph's feast day on March 19th. These feasts are much more than simply isolated events within the year. They express a "typically Italian" approach to life and are taken very seriously by the communities who prepare them. Feast (Festa in Italian) is an umbrella term for the various secular and religious, indoor and outdoor activities surrounding a religious holiday. Typically, Italian feasts consist of festive communal meals, religious services, games of chance and skill and elaborate outdoor processions consisting of statues resplendent in jewels and donations. This merriment usually takes place over the course of several days, and is communally prepared by a church community or a religious organization over the course of several months.

Currently, there are more than 300 Italian feasts celebrated throughout the United States. These feasts are visited each year by millions of Americans from various backgrounds who come together to enjoy Italian delicacies such as Zeppole and sausage sandwiches.

Religion

Most if not virtually all immigrants had been Catholics in Italy. Observers have noted that they often became more devoutly Catholic in the United States, since their faith was a distinctive characteristic in the U.S.; devout Italian Americans often identified themselves as "Catholics" when talking to coworkers or neighbors. In Italy, there are religious minorities of Greek Catholics, Greek Orthodoxes and Italian Jews, whose religious community date back 2,000 years, also took part in the Italian immigration to America.

In some Italian American communities, Saint Joseph's Day (March 19) is marked by celebrations and parades. Columbus Day is also widely celebrated, as are the feasts of some regional Italian patron saints, most notably San Gennaro (September 19) (especially by those claiming Neapolitan heritage), and Santa Rosalia (September 4) by immigrants from Sicily. The immigants from Potenza, Italy celebrate the Saint Rocco's day feast at the Potenza Lodge in Denver, Colorado. Rocco is the patron saint of Potenza. Many still celebrate the Christmas season with a Feast of the seven fishes.

In some communities Italian American Catholics were discriminated by Irish and German Catholic leaders and were forced to leave the church and the join the Episcopal Church. [5]

There are some non-Catholic Italian Americans today. Some are Anglicans (Episcopalian in the USA) because of that church's similarity to the Roman Catholic Church. Fiorello LaGuardia was an Episcopalian. It should also be noted that the first group of Italian immigrants to Trenton converted to Baptist. In the early 1900s, a number of Protestant denominations and missionaries worked in urban Italian American neighborhoods of the Northeast.

Italian language in the United States

According to the Sons of Italy News Bureau from 1998 to 2002, the enrollment in college Italian language courses grew by 30%, faster than the enrollment rates for French and German. Italian is the fourth most commonly taught foreign language in U.S. colleges and universities behind Spanish, French, and German. According to the U.S. 2000 Census, Italian is the fifth (seventh overall) most spoken language in the United States (tied with Vietnamese) with over 1 million speakers.^[2]

As a result of the large wave of Italian immigration to the United States of America in the late 19th century and early 20th centuries, the Italian language was once widely spoken in much of the U.S., especially in northeastern and Great Lakes area cities, as well as, San Francisco and New Orleans. Italian-language newspapers exist in many American cities, especially New York City, and Italian-language movie theatres existed in the U.S. as late as the 1950s.

Author Lawrence Distasi argues that the loss of spoken Italian among the Italian American population can be tied to U.S. government pressures during World War II. During World War II, in various parts of the country, the U.S. government displayed signs that read, Don't Speak the Enemy's Language. Such signs designated the languages of the Axis powers, German, Japanese, and Italian, as "enemy languages". Shortly after the U.S. declared war on the Axis powers, many Italian, Japanese and German citizens were interned. Among the Italian Americans, those who spoke Italian, who had never taken out citizenship papers, and who belonged to groups that praised Benito Mussolini, were most likely to become candidates for internment. Distasi claims that many Italian language schools closed down in the San Francisco Bay Area within a week of the U.S. declaration of war on the Axis powers. Such closures were inevitable since most of the teachers in Italian languages were interned.

Despite the pressures of the US government during World War II, now more than ever, children of Italian heritage, especially paternal heritage, are given Italian names, and raised in traditional Italian ways. The Italian language is still spoken and studied by those of Italian American descent, and it can be heard in various American communities, especially among older Italian Americans. During the late 20th and early 21st centuries, interest in Italian language and culture has surged among Italian Americans. Today's Italian American youth no longer take for granted the impressive contributions Italians and Italian Americans have made to Western civilization, especially in the areas of fine art, music, science, philosophy, law, medicine, education, literature, architecture, and cuisine.

There is, however, a dilemma for Italian Americans who consider re-learning the language of their ancestors. The formal "Italian" that is taught in colleges and universities is generally not the "Italian" with which Italian Americans are acquainted. Eighty percent of Italian Americans are of Southern Italian origin; therefore, the languages spoken by their families who arrived between 1880-1920 were most likely variations of the Neapolitan and Sicilian dialects with perhaps some degree of influence from Standard Italian. Because the Italian of Italian Americans comes from a time just after the unification of the state, their language is in many ways anachronistic and demonstrates what the dialects of Southern Italy used to be at the time. Because of this, Italian Americans studying Italian are often learning a language that does not include all of the words and phrases they know, and which their ancestors would not have recognized well.

The situation is even more pronounced among Italian Americans whose ancestors came to the United States from Northern Italy. Italian Americans variously of Emilia-Romagnan, Lombardian, Genoese, Marchese, Piedmontese, Venetian, and other Northern Italian heritage are even further removed, linguistically, from the languages of their ancestors through the contemporary standard Italian language.

Italian American internment during World War II

(see Italian American internment}

The internment of Italian Americans during World War II has often been overshadowed by the Japanese American internment. But recently, books such as Una Storia Segreta (ISBN 1-890771-40-6) by Lawrence DiStasi and Uncivil Liberties (ISBN 1-58112-754-5) by Stephen Fox have been published, and movies, such as Prisoners Among Ushave been made. These books and movies reveal that during World War II, roughly 600,000 Italians were required to carry identity cards that labelled them as "resident aliens." Some 10,000 people in war zones on the West Coast were required to move inland. Hundreds of others were held in military camps for up to two years. Lawrence DiStasi claims that these wartime restrictions and internments contributed more than anything else to the loss of spoken Italian in the United States. After Italy declared war on the U.S., many Italian language papers and schools were closed almost overnight because of their past support for an enemy government.

Italian American involvement during World War II

During World War II, many Italian Americans joined and were drafted into the army to fight the Axis powers. An estimated 1.2 million Italian American men served in the armed forces during World War II; this was 7.5% of the 16 million total who served.

Italian involvement was also pivotal in the invasion of Sicily where United States government troops worked with locals (possibly including underworld bosses) in order to secure and fortify the newly acquired foothold in Europe. In fact, numerous documentaries and texts have documented the delicate relations the United States government had at that time with organized crime within the United States and how the United States government used their relations to ensure a safe landing in Sicily. It is rumored that even Lucky Luciano helped smooth relations between the two communities during World War II.

Italian American communities

Main article: List of Italian-American Neighborhoods

Areas known for their high concentrations of Italian Americans include New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, California, Ohio, Indiana, and Florida. In cities across the country, Boston, Chicago, Miami, Tampa, New York City, Los Angeles and Philadelphia have large Italian communities.

State totals

Number of Italian Americans

1. New York 3,254,298
2. New Jersey 1,590,225
3. Pennsylvania 1,547,470
4. California 1,149,351
5. Florida 1,147,946
6. Massachusetts 918,838
7. Illinois 739,284
8. Ohio 720,847
9. Connecticut 652,016
10. Michigan 484,486

Percentage of Italian Americans

1. Rhode Island 19.7%
2. Connecticut 18.6%
3. New Jersey 16.8%
4. New York 16.4%[6]

See also

• List of Italian Americans
• Italy USA Foundation

Notes

References

• Baily, Samuel L. Immigrants in the Lands of Promise : Italians in Buenos Aires and New York City, 1870-1914 (1999) Online in ACLA History E-book Project
• Bona, Mary Jo. Claiming a Tradition: Italian American Women Writers (1999)
• Diggins, John P. Mussolini and Fascism: The View from America (1972)
• D'Agostino, Peter R. Rome in America: Transnational Catholic Ideology from the Risorgimento to Fascism (2004).
• Gans, Herbert J. Urban Villagers (1982)
• Guglielmo, Thomas A. White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (2003)
• Gardaphe, Fred L. Italian Signs, American Streets: The Evolution of Italian American Narrative (1996)
• Giordano, Paolo A. and Anthony Julian Tamburri, eds. Beyond the Margin: Essays on Italian Americana (1998).
• Hobbie, Margaret. Italian American Material Culture: A Directory of Collections, Sites, and Festivals in the United States and Canada (1992)
• Juliani, Richard N. The Social Organization of Immigration: The Italians in Philadelphia (1980)[7]
• Juliani, Richard N. Building Little Italy: Philadelphia's Italians before Mass Migration (1998)[8]
• Juliani, Richard N. Priest, Parish, and People: Saving the Faith in Philadelphia's Little Italy (2007) [9]
• Lagumina, Salvatore J. et al eds. The Italian American Experience: An Encyclopedia (2000)
• Stefano Luconi. The Italian-American Vote in Providence, R.I., 1916-1948 2005
• Nelli, Humbert S. The Business of Crime: Italians and Syndicate Crime in the United States (1981)
• Nelli, Humbert S. Italians in Chicago, 1880-1930: A Study in Ethnic Mobility (2005).
• Prendergast, William B. The Catholic Voter in American Politics: The Passing of the Democratic Monolith (1999)
• Sterba, Christopher M. Good Americans: Italian and Jewish Immigrants During the First World (2003)
• Tamburri, Anthony Julian. A Semiotic of Ethnicity: In (Re)cognition of the Italian/American Writer (1998).
• Tamburri, Anthony Julian, Paolo A. Giordano, Fred L. Gardaphé, eds. From the Margin: Writings in Italian Americana (2000, 2nd ed.)
• Whyte, William Foote. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (1993).
• Italians in the United States - article in the Catholic Encyclopedia.

See also

• Fox, Stephen, The unknown internment: an oral history of the relocation of Italian Americans during World War II, (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990). ISBN 0-8057-9108-6.

Useful links for Italians in USA

• (English) Ministry for Foreign Affairs
• (Italian) How to vote Abroad
• (Italian) How to vote Abroad FAQs
• (Italian) America Oggi, an Italian-language daily published in the US

Wikipedia information about Italian American This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Italian American". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.