Are Italians White? - How Race is Made in America

This dazzling collection of original essays from some of the country's leading thinkers asks the rather intriguing question - Are Italians White? Each piece carefully explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans, and the significance of gender, class and nation to racial identity.

List of contents

Introduction: White Lies, Dark TruthsJennifer GuglielmoI. Learning the U.S. Color Line1. Color: White/ Complexion: DarkLouise DeSalvo2. No Color Barrier: Italians, Race, and Power in the United StatesThomas A. Guglielmo3. Race, Nation, Hyphen: Italian-Americans and American Multiculturalism in Comparative PerspectiveDonna R. Gabaccia4. Walking the Color Line: Italian Immigrants in Rural Louisiana, 1880-1910Vincenza ScarpaciII. Radicalism and Race5. Making the Italian Other: Blacks, Whites, and the Inbetween in the 1895 Spring Valley, Illinois Race RiotCaroline Waldron Merithew 6. It is Providential That There Are Foreigners Here: Whiteness and Masculinity In the Making of Italian American Syndicalist IdentityMichael Miller Topp7. I Delitti della Razza Bianca (Crimes of the White Race): Italian Anarchists' Racial Discourse as CrimeSalvatore Salerno8. Surrealist, Anarchist, Afrocentrist: Philip Lamantia Before and After the Beat GenerationFranklin Rosemont9. The Frontlines: Hip-Hop, Life, and the Death of RacismMark Vesuvio Guglielmo (aka Manifest)III. Whiteness, Violence, and the Urban Crisis10. When Sinatra Came to Italian Harlem: The 1945 Race Riot at Benjamin Franklin High SchoolGerald Meyer11. Frank L. Rizzo and the Whitening of Italian Americans in PhiladelphiaStefano Luconi12. Italians Against Racism: Yusef Hawkins (R.I.P.) and My March on BensonhurstJoseph SciorraIV. A Black Italian Imaginary13. Sangu du Sangu Meu: Growing up Black and Italian in a Time of White FlightKym Ragusa14. Figuring RaceEdvige Giunta15. Giancarlo Giuseppe Alessandro Esposito: Life in the BorderlandsJohn R. Gennari16. Italiani/ AfricaniRonnie Mae Painter and Rosette CapotortoAfterword: DuBois, Race and Italian AmericansDavid RoedigerContributors

About the author

Jennifer Guglielmo is Assistant Professor of History at Smith College. Salvatore Salerno is an independent scholar who has taught at University of Massachusetts at Boston, California State University at Sacramento, and Macalester College. David Roediger (afterword) is the Kendrick Babcock Professor of History at the University of Illinois and the author of many books, including Wagesof Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American WorkingClass.

Summary

When Italian immigrants landed on American shores they were outsiders but over time this community moved from being ethnically suspect to being racially privileged. Asking "are Italians white?", this collection of essays explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans.

Report

"This book cuts to the heart of the similarities and the differences between Italian Americans and African Americans, which historically has been a volatile mix...I applaud this insightful scrutiny." -- Spike Lee
"An outstanding collection... an all-around look at a group of people who have made a deep mark on, and been deeply marked by, the U.S. experience." -- Noel Ignatiev, author of How the Irish Became White
"Are Italians White? works from a strong antiracist premise and follows the thread of progressive, activist Italian-American history into the present. The essays lay out a careful, nuanced account of paesani (and Afro-paesani) lives in a multiracial, regionally diverse America. Bravo!" -- Micaela di Leonardo, author of Exotics at Home: Anthropologies, Others, American Modernity
"Reminds us what the study of whiteness was supposed to yield in the first place: the ultimate dismantling of racism. These thoughtful essays ought to be mandatory reading for anti-racists everywhere." -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
"This exciting collection will forever change the way we think of the words 'Italian American.' Clearly provoked by the series of tragic incidents of racist violence in Italian American communities in the 1980s and 1990s, Are Italians White? is great social and cultural history." -- Robert A. Orsi, author of The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem
"This splendid collection sparkles as it surveys the myriad ways in which Italian Americans negotiated the vexed process of racial and ethnic identity formation in the twentieth century." -- Rick Halpern, author of Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers In Chicago's Packinghouses

Product details

• Assisted by: Jennifer Guglielmo (Editor), Salvatore Salerno (Editor)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.08.2003
• EAN: 9780415934510
• ISBN: 978-0-415-93451-0
• No. of pages: 344
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 18 mm x 229 mm
• Weight: 501 g
• Subject: Social sciences, law, business > Ethnology > Ethnology