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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

#141

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

Quite so. I recommend Colin Woodard's excellent book American Nations to anyone who wishes to understand the often-conflicting worldviews that shape the USA and which have come to transcend state borders.

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

#142

Post by mikeash »

humanrebar wrote: post #134
mikeash wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It can be a fair point, depending on exactly what the ultimate argument is.

Some have used this argument to defend Trump's actions. It doesn't work for that at all. "You didn't protest sufficiently about Obama, so you should approve of Trump's policies" is just a non sequitur.

Some have used this argument to say that we should have protested more about these other things. That argument works, but it's not actionable unless someone invents a time machine (and we'd have to go back and assassinate Hitler first anyway).

The only good, useful argument to be made with this is that we should be more critical and more willing to make ourselves heard in the future, which is great, but I don't know that I've seen anyone make it.

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

#143

Post by tptacek »

throwawayww947 wrote: post #94
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…

First, the article doesn't discuss 'whiteness', so your comment is something of an irrelevant narrative imposition. Second, it's intellectually dishonest to imply that this had anything to do with a malleable concept of race. Italy and the US were at war during WW2, and the additional scrutiny was very clearly based upon ancestral nationality, rather than ethnic, lines.

Your argument fails, because Italians obviously weren't the only ethnicity now considered "white" and formerly considered not. The US has never been at war with Ireland, but white America's rejection of the Irish is so well-known it forms the basis for one of the most famous Simpsons jokes.

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

#144

Post by tptacek »

toyg wrote: post #116
jcomis wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also a scene in The Sopranos that covers this. Tony is talking with his therapist and they basically come to the conclusion that he thinks Italians aren't white and won't ever be truly accepted by what I think he called "Mayonnaise Americans" (basically WASPs). Growing up in a large Italian family there was definitely some family members that felt this way as well, particularly the older ones.

Even in Europe, we Italians often carry an inferiority complex towards our Northern neighbours, historically reinforced by the wealth gap that started accumulating since the Industrial Revolution.

To me that read as a rhetorical flourish and not a genuine concern about moderation. Ironically, the zeal with which it's being interpreted as a live concern sort of makes its own point. :)

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

#145

Post by tptacek »

Also, a really great Popehat post on the same topic:

https://www.popehat.com/2017/01/29/randazza-what-shall-we-do...

When we observe that Italians were feared as enemy aliens in the early 20th century, we mean it literally: Sacco and Venzetti were "anarchists", but "anarchist" was the term used at the time for "terrorist".

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

#146

Post by masklinn »

mikeyouse wrote: post #127
WillyOnWheels wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Then there's always the Tulsa Race Riots in which upwards of 300 people were killed while a white mob burned one of the country's wealthiest black neighborhoods to the ground while arresting thousands of black people and displacing nearly 10,000. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulsa_race_riot Technically not a lynching I suppose, but as far as mass killings of minorities go..

Tusla is more of a massacre than a lynching, Greenwood was bombed from private planes.

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

#147

Post by zeveb »

iambateman wrote: post #15

I love this article, because we have to remind people that Americans have been afraid of Italians and Germans and Swedes and Jews and the Japanese and Muslims and the Chinese and DEFINITELY the Irish at one time or another. Established groups feared new groups. But in the end, these people generally brought new innovations and economic growth and interesting new foods. They mashed new cultures with old - not without…

> In other words, it's gonna be alright.

In the long run, sure. But in the short run, were there Irish gangs, German mafia &c.? Were those forms of criminality different from the forms prevalent amonst ethnic-English Americans of the same time period? I honestly don't know.

What sort of social upheaval and strife occurred along the way to assimilation? In the long run, things might be okay, but how much pain will there be along the way?

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

#148

Post by hsod »

humanrebar wrote: post #125
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…

For whatever reason, nobody has brought up the actual thought processes of the people who support this ban. My understanding of the arguments is this: 1. too many terrorist attacks in the U.S. have been committed by people born overseas 2. many come from certain "bad actor" or otherwise dysfunctional countries; that they are majority-Muslim is true but it's an incidental fact, not the reason, which is international t…

In case anyone was wondering about point 1, there have been three terrorist attacks in the US since 9/11 perpetrated by immigrants from countries on the list, with zero deaths.

(http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/...)

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

#149

Post by zeveb »

toyg wrote: post #123
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

And there were Sacco and Vanzetti, of course.

> And there were Sacco and Vanzetti, of course.

They were, of course, guilty — as their lawyer later told Upton Sinclair.

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

#150

Post by anigbrowl »

humanrebar wrote: post #139

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 understandin…

I dispute your attempt to conflate protests against Trump's ban on entry with an indictment of middle America. People who support the ban do so for a variety of reasons and are not neatly grouped in the political center as you suggest, just as people who oppose the ban do so for a variety of reasons and can not be neatly grouped on the left.

it may not matter if it seems like they're calling middle America racist

It's true that promoting such a perception would benefit the Trump administration, but as I always say to people seeking to capture some ideological territory, 'you don't speak for the American people.' At present the administration is rather overdrawn at the credibility bank.

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