Stefania Puxeddu and Benedetta Scardovi-Mounie
The event promoted by "In Italiano - Bilinguismo a New York" on June 13th at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York is addressed to all those who want to join the Big Apple's linguistic revolution
You chose: race
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In order for Italian Americans to tackle head-on the discourse of race and ethnicity we should abandon the implicitly exclusionary term “tolerance,” which implies something distasteful, if not outright negative. We should embrace instead the more inclusive term “acceptance,” which underscores assent of a condition or situation—in this case, someone’s difference (e.g., race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality)—without attempting to disapprove or modify it.
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Enter Francis with an opportunity to identify once again according to religious affiliation and the public has seized this opportunity.
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Berlusconi, who has dominated Italian politics for over seventeen years, is not leaving the political scene just yet. What happened?
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i-Italy receives and publishes an article by Chris Lambright, a 37-years old Italian-American and African-American man whose experience as mixed ethnicity kid in the 1980s had him struggle for acceptance from both sides. The article was inspired by the hurtful memories stirred up by the discriminatory treatment reserved to Mario Balotelli, the Italian soccer player, who was thrown bananas at by Croatian supporters during Euro 2012.
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It is difficult to explain why, in reference to the passage of HR3962 "The Affordable Health Care for America Act," so many people who will actually benefit from it protested against it (and continue to do so). Attempts like this one are doomed to failure but I least I can say "I tried." (Ci ho provato)
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There is nothing new in certain segments of the community trying to impose their views of what it means to be Italian American on others. This controversy reminds me of recent tensions around the celebration of Columbus Day. On the one hand, identifying with the discoverer of their adopted land was an ideal strategy to gain full inclusion into mainstream America. But on the other hand, in today’s era of multiculturalism with a rhetoric that celebrates cultural diversity, the “discovery” of America by Columbus is equated with the beginnings of the demise of native peoples and their cultures. And there are already many Italian Americans who do not celebrate Columbus Day because of what Columbus has come to represent. It seems to me that this desire to squelch any consideration of the so-called “Guido culture” is a similar attempt by some to impose a uniform identity on a diverse group.
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Again, Italian Americans are involved in racist attacks. Again, it's time to speak up.
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This essay is the third, and last, in my series alluding to the similarities between Bensonhurst 1989 and Italy 2008.
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This was the first of two articles I wrote in The Brooklyn Free Press shortly after Yusuf Hawkins' murder in the summer of 1989. Although it concerns his brutal slaying by a cowardly group of bigoted hoodlums in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, it connects that single, very local, act to city-wide, nation-wide, and indeed world-wide issues of racism and politics.
