Blood Ties and Civic Consciousness
One of the most popular stories from my book ADRIANA'S EYES AND OTHER STORIES (Lorenzo Press 1999), “The Carpenter’s Son,” begins with Joe Gambino’s dramatic announcement to his fellow members of the Society of Saint Anthony in the North End of Boston that he wants the annual funds collected in the saint’s name to help finance his campaign for a seat on the city council. It is 1962, and the insular community made up mostly of immigrants from Padua is shocked by the ambitious plan of the humble carpenter. With visionary foresight Joe tells them, “Is it always disgrazia or is it sometimes maybe politics that takes a man’s job away . . . ?” He manages to convince his fellow tradesmen that they need a voice in the political arena.
Since World War Two we Italian Americans have done very well for ourselves. We have acquired a good deal of property and financial security. We have become vastly more educated -- in fact, we are one of the most highly educated minorities in the U.S. Yes, we have indeed come a long way since the days when we couldn’t find decent housing because landlords refused to rent to “dagos” and “wops”.
We now live comfortably in the suburbs; however, we have remained within our ethnic enclaves and social cocoons far too long. Devotion to family may be one of our enduring strengths, but blood ties tend to keep us in our own insular world, and this confinement is neither realistic nor healthy. Italian Americans must learn to break through the social isolation that prevents many of us from participating more fully in American life. We must become more socially sophisticated and civically aware.
The long and sad history of injustice and abuse at the hands of various lawmakers and rapidly rotating authorities in Southern Italy made our grandparents instinctively wary. They brought this predisposition for distrust with them to the New World and instilled it in the first generation to be born here.
Unfortunately, this dark worldview was reinforced by the political climate of the 1890’s and the first half of the 20th century when Italian Americans were the victims of acts of prejudice and bigotry. In the 1890’s Italian and Sicilian immigrants were beaten, murdered, or lynched in West Virginia, Colorado, Louisiana, Illinois, Florida, and Mississippi. In the early 1900’s racial slurs and malicious insults were directed at Italian Americans in speeches given by Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Henry Cabot Lodge, a prominent Massachusetts senator. In 1927, two Italian immigrants named Sacco and Vanzetti were executed for a crime they didn’t commit after a 7-year trial that shocked he world and became an international cause celebre. Is it any wonder that second generation Italian Americans withdrew into the protective embrace of their own communities?
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