Italians faced prejudice, segregation, and racism in the United States. According to clevelandmemory.org “Italians were lynched in the South as were blacks, in some cases for permitting blacks equal status with whites in their shops.”(P. 122) Even though statistics showed that Italians were responsible for a small amount of crimes and murders and that most murders committed by Italians in the United States were committed against other Italians they earned a bad reputation anyway. One of the reasons that most Americans thought this way was probably because the Italian government sent criminals to the United States just to get them out of Italy. The image that was presented about all Italians being involved in organized crime, mainly the MAFIA, certainly did not help things any. People assumed that the rise in crime was directly associated with the influx of Italian immigrants.
Italians were also faced with segregation issues in the United States. These were seen in the form of “Little Italy’s” that could be found in a lot of big cities. The Italians were not only forced into these areas, a majority of them chose to live in these areas because they knew no one and wanted to stay with their own kind. As well as being segregated from other racial groups they were also segregated amongst themselves. Italians from one region of Italy usually chose not to interact with Italians from other regions of Italy. WWII provided another set of problems for Italian Americans with Italy declaring war on the United States and her allies. The United States government, almost overnight, forced the closure of almost all Italian papers, schools, and encouraged Italian immigrants to not speak the Italian language because the government thought that this encouraged support for the enemy.
There were racist attitudes taken toward Italian Americans. They were unable to obtain certain jobs just because they were Italian. Most recently old stereotypes are showing up in movies and television shows that depict Italian men as being in the MAFIA, “whacking” people and having rage issues. People need to realize that this is only television and movies and that these stereotypes only represent a small number of Italian Americans.
Italian Americans were affected by affirmative action in the sense that they were not eligible to participate in it. They did not have things handed to them by the institution of government regulations. They had to work themselves to get to where they are today. The reason for this is that by the time affirmative action was instituted the Italian immigrants’ status did not enable them to take advantage of it.
References
http://www.clevelandmemory.org/italians/partii.html