When America Barred ItaliansItalian-Americans are strikingly less into Ms. Stapinski’s kind of ancestor worship / Ellis Island ethnocentric schmalz arguments for Moar Immigration than are Jewish-Americans and Irish-Americans. Maybe Italians just aren’t that sentimental.By HELENE STAPINSKI JUNE 2, 2017
Twelve years ago, I began researching a family murder that happened in Southern Italy in the 19th century. It took a decade to find the details of the crime, but the facts I uncovered about the daily life of my ancestors and the racism they faced — even from their own countrymen — were more shocking than the killing. In today’s climate of refugee bans and xenophobia, the facts have taken on a new urgency and are even more disturbing to me, as they should be to anyone whose family traces its roots to Southern Italy.[More]
