Why Italy
What is the HISTORY of Italian stereotypes?
Do you know where i can find the HISTORY of the Italian stereotype "all Italian men are in the mafia"??? I need to answers the questions... -when -why -how thanks!
Public Comments
- You wouldn't find a history per se on this stereotype, but I can give you a modest starting point to understand how it arose. First, you should know this was a strongly American stereotype of Italian-Americans and not a worldwide phenomenon. Italians largely migrated to the United States and Argentina, and to a lesser extent Canada and Brazil, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Mafia is a Sicilian institution, and while some Sicilians ventured to Argentina and Brazil, most came to the United States. Argentina and Brazil were settled by a large number of northern Italians, who had nothing to do with the Mafia and many knew little if anything of this peculiar and "backward" cartel among the southern peasants. Many of the Sicilian men who came to America did not intend to stay, they were hardworking youths who hoped to become wealthy and go home. There were plenty of Sicilian families who emigrated to the US, but the larger pattern, especially in the late 1800s, was the youthful, hardworking sons came first, and after a few years they planned to return home, or if they stayed, they'd then bring mothers and sisters to the US. Some returned to Sicily, but many stayed. Still, during the first few years the immigrants had few family members to rely on in the US, and without such family connections here, at the end of the 19th century a Padrone system emerged, where more senior immigrants (perhaps those who emigrated a few years before, or the ones who decided to stay) held more power, they took in the newest immigrants, found work for them (on the railroads, in factories, etc.) and expected a certain cut from them. The padrone system and the Mafia hierarchy can and do overlap each other - both are essentially systems of protection - one is cultural and economic protection, the other financial and business protection. Its one of several reasons the Mafia emerged in the US. Similar criminal rackets occur in Chinatowns in the American West, where a similar Chinese padrone system and large number of culturally vulnerable, isolated, single young laborer-immigrants come to form a community, helped (or used) by a more powerful Chinese hierarchy. Another reason for the early association with the stereotype of the Italian man as a mafioso has its roots in the general stereotypes of the time, where the impoverished, Catholic, olive-skinned immigrants were inferior to the white Protestant red-blooded Americans, and were seen as inherently godless and criminal. Catholics "lacked" the American individualism and work ethic. They were disloyal and their patriotism questioned (or altogether assumed non-existant). At least, this was the Protestant, American view of things. Throw tens or hundreds of thousands of impoverished Sicilians into the tenements of a city like New York or the dockworkers of New Orleans, or the factories of Philadelphia, Boston or Chicago, and it's easy to see how a well-to-do gentried American could easily see them all as everyday low-lifes and criminals. Add to that the fascinating trans-Atlantic hierarchial structure that the Mafia exported to the United States which began to be understood as it came to public attention (i.e. middle class America) in the early 1900s, and you can see where, how and why such a stereotype could stick. While the stereotype of Italians as mafiosi predates the movies, although this visual medium, and the fixation upon criminal rackets during the Prohibition era of the 1920s, definitely cemented the stereotype for later generations. Perhaps the Godfather and Goodfellas simply glorified and gave new life to the stereotype, what was by the 1970s already a dying component of Italian-American life - the elusive Mafia with its hands deep into the pockets of everything in any Italian-American community.
- where the hell did this stereotype come from? probably from thefuckingt.v. stupidass sopranos. imagonnashootyoudownwithamy shootgun. yeah its not like that sofuckoff.
- -ignorance -ignorance -ignorance
