Italian American
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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, Italian immigration to the United States effectively began in the 1880s, and peaked between 1900 and 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. While one in four did go back, the rest either decided to stay, or were prevented from returning by the war. Only Irish and Germans 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]
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 elected Italian American is Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-N. CA), who will become Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2007.
[edit] History and Demographics
Most immigration from Italy occurred between 1880 and 1920. Many Italian Americans came from Southern Italy and Sicily as rural peasants. Italians lived in cities, mill towns and mining camps all over the Northeast, with New York City the favorite destination. A small proportion became garden farmers. They 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. 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.
To this day, Italian Americans are frequently associated with organized crime in the minds of some 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]
However, the National Italian American Foundation 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.
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. 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]
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, Pete Domenici, Mike Enzi, Geraldine Ferraro, Nancy Pelosi, Janet Napolitano, Mario Cuomo, and others); athletes (Joe Dimaggio, Joe Torre, Yogi Berra, Vince Lombardi, and many others); actors and directors (Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Al Pacino, Nicolas Cage, Robert Deniro and Anne Bancroft, among many others); musicians (Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Jim Croce, Natalie Merchant, Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi and others); numerous winners of the Medal of Honor; corporate executives (Lee Iacocca, Thomas Golisano, Jerry Colangelo, Robert Mondavi); and composers (Alan Silvestri, Bill Conti, Angelo Badalamenti, Henry Mancini, Gian-Carlo Menotti).
[edit] 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 totally speak Italian, a dialect of sorts has arisen among Italian Americans, particularly in the urban Northeast, often popularized in film and television.
[edit] Religion
Most 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. A minority of Italians came to the U.S. because of the growing wealth of the Roman Catholic Church in Italy.
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.
[edit] 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 existed in many American cities, especially New York City, into the 1990s, 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 Lombardian, Genoese, Piedmontese, Venetian, and other Northern Italian heritage are even further removed, linguistically, from the languages of their ancestors through the contemporary standard Italian language.
[edit] Italian American internment during World War II
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.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Italian American communities
Areas known for their high concentrations of Italian Americans include New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Florida. In cities across the country, Boston, Chicago, Miami, New York City, St. Louis, Baltimore, and Philadelphia have large Italian communities.
[edit] State totals
[edit] Number of Italian Americans
1. New York 3,254,298
2. New Jersey 1,590,225
3. Pennsylvania 1,547,470
4. California 1,533,599
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
… 47. Alaska 17,173
48. Colorado15,000
49. South Dakota 8,437
50. North Dakota 5,437
[edit] Percentage of Italian Americans
1. Rhode Island 19.7%
2. Connecticut 18.6%
3. New Jersey 16.8%
4. New York 16.4%[5]
[edit] See also
[edit] Notes
- ^ Brittingham, Angela, and G. Patricia De La Cruz. Ancestry: 2000. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, U.S. Census Bureau, 2004.
- ^ Language Use and English-Speaking Ability: 2000
[edit] 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)
- Hobbie, Margaret. Italian American Material Culture: A Directory of Collections, Sites, and Festivals in the United States and Canada (1992)
- 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)
- Whyte, William Foote. Street Corner Society: The Social Structure of an Italian Slum (1993).
[edit] 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.
[edit] Useful links for Italians in USA
- (English) Ministry for Foreign Affairs
- (Italian) How to vote Abroad
- (Italian) How to vote Abroad FAQs
[edit] External links
- (English) Italian American T-shirt Store
- (English) H-ItAm daily discussion email group moderated by scholars
- (English) National Italian American Foundation
- (English) National Organization of Italian American Women
- (English) Sons of Italy in America
- (English) ItalianAmericanShowcase.com
- (English) Feast of the Seven Fishes: Italian American Christmas Eve Tradition
- (English) Towards a New Italian American Identity
- (Italian)(English) L'IDEA MAGAZINEA Magazine for the Italians in USA
- (English) ItalianAmericanTalk.com
- (Italian)(English) Fondazione Italia USA
- (English) The Italian American Press
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