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During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#131

Post by finid »

rpeden wrote: post #102
krapp wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Many young Americans are shocked to learn that Italian and Irish (who are often a baseline of appearance in modern America)were once not only considered not "white", but were demonized even as much as other races that Europe has traditionally looked down on. This was parodied in the movie Blazing Saddles, set in the American wild west, with a quote that I'd be [edit: apparently not] banned for repeating verbatim.

Another reply to your post added the quote. I sincerely hope that posting such a quote isn't cause for a ban - since it's pulled directly from the film, and does a good job of emphasizing the point you're trying to make.

Posting such a thing shouldn't be reason for banning, and one should not be afraid of quoting such text.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#132

Post by ChillyWater »

davidw wrote: post #99

The largest mass lynching in the United States was of 11 Italians in New Orleans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_14,_1891_lynchings

38 Sioux in Mankato, MN 1862. This sounds like a lynching, but it was the sanctioned by the government, so maybe it doesn't fit the definition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sibley_Park

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#133

Post by soundwave106 »

paulddraper wrote: post #56
ctrl-j wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Italians, Germans, Swedes, Jews, and Japanese didn't immigrate to other countries and slaughter its citizens. Neither do Muslims? I mean, show me the statistics that show that they have a higher terrorism rate than other groups. The IRA, the extremist christian groups, and the mentally ill all do a lot of damage as well, but they're not being banned from the USA. I think Muslims get targeted by the media because th…

Overall numbers are hard to come by, especially for smallish incidents, but of the 23 acts of terrorism in 2016 killing a hundred or more people, 100% of them were done by Muslims. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in... > they're not being banned from the USA Were there countries with huge numbers of extremely violent mentally ill people, I have no doubt the US would limit or halt immigration…

In my opinion it's one thing to acknowledge that Islamic terrorism is an issue; it is another to hand-wave this into an entire billion strong community with a simplistic framing.

Fitting a United States perspective into your criteria seems difficult. Using this Wikipedia reference (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States), there have been only three terrorist incidents in the United States that have killed more than 100 people. One was September 11th (Islamic extremists). The second was the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 (right-wing extremist). The third, curiously enough, appears to be Mormon militias (the 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre). Note, the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 could possibly fall in this category depending on the death estimate. A rather oddball collection there, not enough to generalize for sure.

Recent terrorist incidents in the United States with >=10 deaths have been biased towards Islamic terrorism, sure. However, going back to 2001, the perpetrators were: a person born to Afghan immigrants in the US (Pulse nightclub shooting); a Pakistani couple, one a US citizen and one a permanent resident (San Bernardino); a person born to Palestinian immigrants (Fort Hood); an African American who converted to the Nation of Islam (Beltway shootings); and September 11th (15 from Saudi Arabia, 2 from the UAE, 1 from Egypt, 1 from Lebanon).

Aside from September 11th, all of these incidents involve US citizens. And even if in the greatest of stretches we include the nationality of the parents, it is worth noting that (including September 11th) none of the nationalities that committed these terrorist acts are on Trump's 7 country travel restriction list.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#134

Post by humanrebar »

mikeash wrote: post #18
daemonk wrote: post #7

Seems like a lot of these historical incidents are being brought up recently. They are certainly interesting and perhaps show that humanity as a whole tend to repeat the same actions. But is it also the goal to attempt to justify the current immigration ban by citing history? Conway brought up the Obama's tightening of the Iraqi immigration during his term. Does that somehow justify Trump's immigration ban? I guess y…

I don't think these WWII-era actions are being brought up to justify anything. It's pretty widely agreed that Japanese internment was really bad, for example, and I think other stuff from that time tends to be seen is the same light. I have seen a lot of cries of hypocrisy, involving Obama's Iraq action you mention, and other things like drone strikes. It's a bit silly, since Obama did get a lot of criticism for this…

> It's a bit silly, since Obama did get a lot of criticism for this stuff, so the only argument for hypocrisy is that he should have had more.

That's a fair point, right? People weren't skipping work and class to march in the town square when Obama bombed Yemen and other countries, but they'll do it when Trump makes a (insensitive, idiotic, broken, heavy-handed, unjust) change to the visa process?

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#135

Post by KirinDave »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #108
KirinDave wrote: post #75

I like this article because it reminds us that "whiteness" is not actually a strictly racial identity. There are numerous factors that make someone "white" in America, which makes them acceptable to white nationalists. These purity rules can change over time to represent what's politically expedient. Many young Americans are shocked to learn that Italian and Irish (who are often a baseline of appearance in modern Ame…

As a Italian , I surely feel demonized by the Guardian style of 'journalism' and American leftists. Too bad no one is calling them out. I guess Fascist tendencies too are acknowledged out of convenience, not rationality.

Stop being part of the problem and you can stop self-assigning to the group that is causing the problem?

Shame only works inasmuch as you believe folks have a point. It doesn't work on the guiltless or the guileless.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#136

Post by URSpider94 »

paulddraper wrote: post #64
URSpider94 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call complete BS. "The 1909 murder of Elsie Sigel in New York, of which a Chinese person was suspected, was blamed on the Chinese in general and led to physical violence. "The murder of Elsie Sigel immediately grabbed the front pages of newspapers, which portrayed Chinese men as dangerous to "innocent" and "virtuous" young white women. This murder led to a surge in the harassment of Chinese in communities across th…

Well, "complete BS" right back. > portrayed Chinese men as dangerous to "innocent" and "virtuous" young white women Suspecting a group of criminal activity is hardly terrorism; you could have just quoted attitudes towards blacks for a less obscure analogy. > So your allegation that the linkage of Muslims to terrorist extremism is unique is provably untrue. I never said that no other group has ever been linked to terr…

Here's a list of the terrorist attacks in the UK over the past 40-odd years. You can see that up until the early 2000's, the vast, vast majority of them were perpetrated by the IRA, and the sheer number was much greater than those by Islamic extremists in current times.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in...

Also, here's a list of plane hijackings by Cuban sympathizers from the 50's and 60's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cuba%E2%80%93United_St...

My point is not that Islamist extremist terrorism is not A BAD THING that we should do our best to eliminate. It's more that we should resist the temptation to label it as a unique existential threat that justifies discrimination against an entire religion. History tells us that we've been down this path scores of times before, we've been wrong every time, and we've lived to regret our prejudice.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#137

Post by davidw »

WillyOnWheels wrote: post #113
davidw wrote: post #99

The largest mass lynching in the United States was of 11 Italians in New Orleans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_14,_1891_lynchings

This page claims 18 to 21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_massacre_of_1871

Looks like someone needs to do some editing.

In any case, it just goes to show that many groups have been 'the other' that people blame for problems.

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#138

Post by tptacek »

Red_Tarsius wrote: post #108
KirinDave wrote: post #75

I like this article because it reminds us that "whiteness" is not actually a strictly racial identity. There are numerous factors that make someone "white" in America, which makes them acceptable to white nationalists. These purity rules can change over time to represent what's politically expedient. Many young Americans are shocked to learn that Italian and Irish (who are often a baseline of appearance in modern Ame…

As a Italian , I surely feel demonized by the Guardian style of 'journalism' and American leftists. Too bad no one is calling them out. I guess Fascist tendencies too are acknowledged out of convenience, not rationality.

You don't have to agree with 'KirinDave's comment, but to express that disagreement on HN, you have basically two options:

1. You can write a civil rebuttal that uses evidence to dismantle the point he's trying to make.

2. You can downvote him.

What you should not do is write a comment like this, where you vent emotionally without providing anything for anyone to grasp onto or respond to. Those kinds of comments get flagged (by clicking the timestamp on the comment, revealing the "Flag" button).

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#139

Post by humanrebar »

I'm starting to think that Trump made this move partly to get his left-wing opponents to lose credibility with people in the center by doing something with (if you're generous or disinterested) plausible justification.

That is, it's clear to me that people calling this "racist" might even be correct, but it may not matter if it seems like they're calling middle America racist. That looks a lot like being understanding towards Iraqis ("I know you're not all terrorists") while being bigoted towards Americans ("You're clearly all racist!"). Anyway, once that meme (doesn't really like Americans) is implanted, then Trump takes a hit today but get some "marketing" wins in the long run when it comes to other issues coming up (Supreme Court appointments, ACA changes, etc.)

Re: During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security

#140

Post by masklinn »

JackFr wrote: post #19

> By the 1920s, pseudo-scientists and polemicists in the 1920s popularized the notion that Italians were a separate race from Anglo-Americans. These scientists were 'pseudo' only in retrospect. It literally took a world war to knock eugenicists out of the mainstream. As we pat ourselves on the back today for being so rational and enlightened, we would do well to remember episodes like that and restore some sense of h…

> It literally took a world war to knock eugenicists out of the mainstream.

That was still pretty mainstream post-WWII in the US. And of course it's undergoing a renaissance as "race realism".

> As we pat ourselves on the back today for being so rational and enlightened, we would do well to remember episodes like that and restore some sense of humility. The progressives of that era considered themselves no less enlightened and rational than we do ourselves.

Aren't these issues exactly why modern progressives tend to be wary of cultural absolutism and monocultures?

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