Barth's Theory To The First Italian Immigrants

Italian children who grew up in the 40s and 50s did not realize that they were a second & third generation of Italian American citizen of the United States. Italian American assume that this was the way of life. The first generation instill a powerful belief of the way of life into the second and third generation. Everyone stay together and live together.

As an Italian-American, I was and am still told by my mother, grandparents, and great-grandparents how proud I should be of my heritage. I was taught to respect my great-grandmother who, after arriving in America along side her husband, fully committed herself to raising her four sons and eight nieces and nephews in a two-bedroom house in Pennsylvania. She was motivated by the drive of a better life in a new, strong country for the young-ones she loved. I was taught to treasure both food and family, praying each night through the Blessed Mother. I was handed Pizzelles and Almond cookies as snacks throughout the day, and listened to Dean Martin through the stereo almost every night. My grandmother’s family came from Mezzogiorno, while my grandfather’s family hailed from the North Country. Though I had never been to Italy, as a child, I still knew the significance of being Italian and was thankful. It was not until I entered public school that I began to understand the teasing that my own ethnic group was subject to on a near daily basis.

Americans were unsettled by the overwhelming amount of new immigrants. The new immigrants came in such massive quantities that in 1900 immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe made up as much as 70 percent of all immigrants. This is a dramatic increase considering that in midcentury these immigrants only made up 1 percent of the immigrant population. This overhaul of new immigrants led to severe hostility, bias, and nativism. Nativism is the belief that native-born white Americans were superior to newcomers. Competition for jobs and housing had never been higher in the late 19th century. America was in an economic recession and most immigrants were willing to work for much lower wages than natural born citizens which as a result put them out of work and ultimately housing. This however was only one problem, religion was another. American Protestants were suspicious of Catholicism which was the religion of many new immigrants including the Irish, German, Italian, and Polish. The majority of white Protestants would not hire, vote for, or even work with Catholics or Jewish people. In severe cases Americans would even sign contracts agreeing not to

Historian Rudolph J. Vecoli sought chronicles of the American immigrant experience to find a new view of what immigrants kept, and what they left behind. In his works The People of New Jersey and, with Professor Joy K. Lintleman, A Century of American Immigration, 1884 to 1984, Vecoli argued that, rather than abandoning their cultures in order to blend into mainstream American society, immigrants savored their traditions and developed strategies to resist embracing the American social and economic system.

Joseph Healey’s “From Immigrants to White Ethnics” is a generalized comparison between the varying groups of individuals that accompanied the colossal waves of immigration to the United States from Europe in the nineteenth century. Immigration to this country resulted from a number of reason such as religious persecution, individuals seeking to find employment after industrialization in their home countries limited their livelihood, and political oppositions to name a few. On arrival the immigrants knew immediately they were of the subordinate group and faced “discrimination and prejudice” (Healey, 2012, p. 54), although some more so than others. Among the first immigrants to arrive in the United States were Northern and Western European citizens. Unlike the immigrants from Ireland and Southern and Eastern Europe that chose the United States for their new homeland these individuals were probably the most accepted by the majority, even if considered just nominally superior to the others. Included in this group were the “English, Germans, Norwegians, Swedes, Welsh, French, Dutch and Danes” (Healey, 2012, p. 56). This acceptance was due in part to the similarities that the dominate group held as ideals such as their religion, along with cultural values and characteristics. If the Northern and Western Europeans found acceptance difficult, individuals from Ireland and the Europeans from the south and east had an even more traumatic experience. Whereas the more accepted group had

Between the years of 1870 and 1930, there was an influx of about 5 million Italian immigrants seeking a new life in the US, out of the 5 million immigrants who arrived there, 4/5 were from the South of Italy. Most Italians left their native land in pursuit of a more economically stable, prosperous and happy life didn’t come without prejudice, racism, animosity and questions. For, the Italian Immigrants that were seeking this fruitful life across in America, the main and concerning question was of their own culture, ethnicity, and race. Going to the US meant leaving behind all that was familiar and accepting, and become “white”. To hold truthfully to this custom one must obey and sacrifice not only their way of life, but essentially who and

The Italian population in America originally emigrated from the southern half of the Italian peninsula. The people of this region were peasants and had experienced great economic hardships under the rule of the Spanish and then the Italian government and nobles from the north. It was these economic hardships that formed much of their culture. According to Maggio (2015) Italians from the southern region felt a strong obligation to their families and did not trust outsiders. As Italian families began immigrating to America they had a difficult time assimilating into American culture because of their mistrust of outsiders and their desire to maintain their family traditions. Maggio (2015) stated that “Little Italy’s” began in several major

Irish had often lived in unhealthy and unclean tenements. Then when they arrived in America they too had faced discrimination. They had many organizations conspired against them to ensure the immigrants could not vote, or hold office (Baker 262). “In 1844 controversy arose in Philadelphia over whether Catholic children in public schools could be allowed to read from the Catholic version of the Bible rather than the King James version and other issues”(Baker 262). This caused a violent reaction of the people who were against the Irish and Catholics (Baker 262). “Catholic churches and priests were the most frequent nativist targets” (Baker 262). The Americans had thought that the Irish Catholics had used the U.S voting system to elect followers of the pope so the pope could have some power in the United States. The nativist did not just have conspiracies about the Irish but many other immigrants too (Baker 262).

One of the primary reasons that led to the very different, and very much worse reception of Catholic Italian immigrants in the United States when compared to other Catholic European immigrants, was the attitude Italians held in regards to the country they lived in, the United States. Italian immigrants felt alienated in their new country. They believed that conforming to American values too quickly was a direct threat to their own beliefs (Specifically the domus). This was especially true in the Italian Harlem. However, as Orsi states, “the alienation was not a purely internal matter; it was also caused by American xenophobia” (Orsi 160). She goes on to say that this discriminating view held by Americans led to Italians being stereotyped as the “worker”, meaning a threat to take the jobs of Americans born in the United States. This led to almost everything of Italian significance being omitted in schools which led to students getting a sense of Italian inferiority. Teachers and students went as

“The Italian Americans” is a documentary that explains the immigration of Italians to America in the 1800 and 1900s. Italian Americans have a deep devotion to their families and family life. It is theorized that the family structure originates from the idea that you can only trust the family. People from southern Italy were not treated as equals by the government, and many southern Italian families were impoverished and struggling to survive. Consequently, the largest group of Italian immigrants in America came from southern Italy. Italian men worked on the plantations and in the heart of the industrial factories (Maggio, 2015).

In Ethnicity by John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith identify two existing camps of ethnicity: primordialist and instrumentalist/circumstantialist. The term ‘priomordialist’ in terms of ethnicity was fathered by Edward Shils, a notable sociologist. Shils sought to differentiate various social bonds-personal, primordial, sacred and civil ties and to demonstrate how even in contemporary, civic societies other types of social bonding existed (Hutchinson and Smith ). After Shils coined the concept of primordialist, late anthropologist, Clifford Greetz advanced the subject and spoke of the ‘overpowering’ and ineffable quality attaching to certain kinds of tie, which the participants tended to see as exterior, coercive, and given. Greetz further emphasized that the catalyst to an effective and successful modern state is the drive for personal identity-a fundamental basis of primordial ties. By definition,

Members of a group share the same language, accent, religion, history, and even national origin. Most of the time, ethnicity is something that is obtained through learning, under the form and lifestyle, among others. Although each individual at a given time can seek a new ethnicity, every individual is born belonging to a particular ethnic group.

While many models exist to describe the phenomenon of ethnic identity, the model in question is the Ethnic Identity Development model proposed by Phinney and Ong in 1992. Their theory contains underpinnings of both Erikson and Marcia and is divided into three stages: Unexamined Ethnic Identity, Moratorium, and Ethnic Identity Achievement. Phinney’s theory rests on the proposal that “individuals begin in a state of indifference, confusion, or minimal awareness about their ethnicity, and move toward more complex, flexible, and informed ways

The distinction between race and ethnicity is evident when according to Chandra (2006), an ethnic group is “...a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, one or more elements of a common culture, a link with a homeland and sense of solidarity” (p.403). This statement relates to when I left my small town and attended an affluent

On the contrary, Bhabha contends that cultural hybridity is the appropriate frame through which individuals and groups can be described and identified. For him, cultural hybridity has the ability to shape/reshape the individual as well as its identity. Bhabha intends to claim that in order to see one’s real self; one must go beyond logical