Ethnic Groups and Discrimination

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Ethnic Groups P.

Ethnic Groups and Discrimination

By: Michael P Boyer

Axia College of University of Phoenix


     Italians immigrated to the United States for many reasons.  In 1657 about 167 Italians immigrated to the United States from Holland due to religious persecution.  Between 1850 and 1880 about 65,000 Italians had come to the United States.  This set up the later immigrants with newspapers and “Little Italy’s” popping up all over the United States.  Between 1875 and 1930 over 5 million Italians immigrated to the United States from Italy.  This was primarily due to the poor farming conditions in Southern Italy.  Most Italians that came to the United States were illiterate and unskilled causing them to work as common laborers.  But by 1910 many Italians showed that they could progress upward in the types of jobs that they were able to take.  

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     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 ...

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