A very common feeling repeated ALL over the globe, and a worthy read!

The bitter experience of Internment during WWII, left the Italian community with a sense of fractured identity, of cultural confusion, that continues to this day. Many Scots-Italians feel slightly out of place in both countries, outsiders wherever they go.

The author's experience has been shared by many. As a youngster, “native” Scots labeled him a foreigner because of his name, but they thought I was a reasonably clever guy. In Italy, on the other hand, they took me as one of their own — and considered me an idiot for my plodding use of language.

So where did that leave him? He was well into his thirties before he found the answer. He was neither a Scot with a funny name nor a poor relation to the people in Italy. He was a pure-bred, 100% Scots-Italian; part of a group with a history that spans three centuries and whose members have had an influence in business, sport and the arts that is out of all proportion to their modest numbers.

The author has obviously solved for himself the Hyphenate question!! :) :)

Read about another Scots-Italian kid, who in war games always wanted to be British attacking Italy, so he could "convince" his buddies that he was one of THEM!! :(

These Scots-Italians shouldn’t have to choose between the country of their ancestors or the country of their birth in order to forge a stable identity!

"Tally" is shorthand in Scotland for an Italian, and "tally" also means "adds up",
so the Title of the article is a clever turn of a word.

Celebrating his rich and varied culture at a rare gathering in Glasgow,
Sergio Casci finally feels a sense of belonging

The Scotland Times
Sunday,  November 07, 2004

I remember as a kid in the 1970s visiting Glasgow’s Casa d’Italia, the magnificent social club built by Scots-Italians in the 1930s. Despite its grandeur, it was a friendly, easy place. I knew the folk there. Not personally, necessarily, but they were familiar to me all the same. They laughed easily and spoke gruffly. They dressed well. And at a time when Glaswegians didn’t drink good coffee, they drank good coffee.

The Casa closed many years ago and it’s been a while since I saw those people in any kind of numbers. Then on Tuesday, at a Mass for the feast of All Souls, there they were again. Nearly 700 of them — the biggest gathering of Scots-Italians for more than a generation — laughing easily, talking gruffly.

Up front was a man whose own grandparents travelled here from Tuscany and Liguria more than a century ago to escape poverty and build a better life: Archbishop Mario Conti, the leader of Glasgow’s Catholics, potentate of the church and a “Tally” like the rest of us. You wished your grandfather could have witnessed the spectacle. “Hey Nonno,” you felt like shouting, “look at us now!”

This sense of delight stemmed from a feeling of belonging. Apart from the bitter experience of internment during the second world war, the Italian community has overwhelmingly been welcomed in Scotland. Yet a sense of fractured identity, of
cultural confusion, continues to exist. Many Scots-Italians feel slightly out of place
in both countries, outsiders wherever they go.

My own experience has been shared by many. As a youngster, “native” Scots labelled me a foreigner because of my name, but they thought I was a reasonably clever guy. In Italy, on the other hand, they took me as one of their own — and considered me an idiot for my plodding use of language. I could never be as Italian as those teenagers on their Vespas whom I saw each summer, whose identity was so ingrained they didn’t even know it was there.

So where did that leave me? Was I simply a second-rate Italian, condemned to playing catch-up with those lucky enough to have been born and bred in the Old Country?

I was well into my thirties before I found the answer. I was neither a Scot with a funny name nor a poor relation to the people I met on holiday. I was a pure-bred, 100% Scots-Italian; part of a group with a history that spans three centuries and whose members have had an influence in business, sport and the arts that is out of all proportion to their modest numbers.

To me, this was a revelation. I no longer had to justify why, if I was so proud of my Italian roots, I didn’t just move back there. Nor did I have to apologise for my linguistic shortcomings. After all, I’ve yet to meet an Italian who speaks English as well as I do, and I speak Italian a damn sight better than most Scots.

I wasn’t the only one with “issues”. I remember a classmate who enjoyed playing war games with lines of soldiers and tanks. It was always Britain versus Italy, and Britain always won. Noisily, spectacularly, overwhelmingly. Nothing unusual there, you might say, except for this: the kid was as Italian as they come. Name, face, everything.

And maybe that was the point. The only way he could convince his ginger-haired, freckle-faced buddies that he was one of them was by publicly attacking the part of his heritage that made him different. While everybody else was taking on Panzer divisions and Kamikaze squadrons, he was bombing the Bersaglieri.

Another memory: the first time I saw the Spike Lee film Do the Right Thing. The movie features a character whose pizza house is covered with pictures of famous Italian-Americans: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Joe DiMaggio.

I remember taking great delight in this when I saw the movie, but also being slightly envious. Why couldn’t I walk into a Glasgow pizzeria and see the heroes of my community? They are not in short supply: Eduardo Paolozzi, Tom Conti, Peter Capaldi, Daniela Nardini, Dario Franchitti, Lou Macari and Sharleen Spiteri spring to mind, and there are many more.

These people aren’t second-rate Italians, and nor are they Scots with funny names. They are full-blooded members of my community, a community that shouldn’t have to choose between the country of its ancestors or the country of its birth in order to forge a stable identity.

If I were to sit down with any of the people listed above, or with any one of the Scots-Italians crowded into St Andrews Cathedral last week, we could come up with countless common experiences that help define who we are.

How many of us had school friends who loved coming round for dinner because our mums made such great food? How many were berated for supporting the wrong side when Italian teams played Celtic or Rangers? How many delighted in taking a Scots friend on holiday to their grandparents’ village? And how many wished their less-than-perfect Italian didn’t make them stand out when they finally got there?

Little things, perhaps, but it is often the little things — good and bad — that make us who we are. Behind those details, however, lies a bigger story, a shared history that is unique and precious. I’m reminded of it every time I see Italian tourists stepping off the plane at Glasgow airport.

Dressed in duvet-sized ski jackets, they jump into taxis that take them to centrally heated hotels. There, a friendly concierge gives them advice on which pizzeria does the best calzone and which satellite channel shows the Serie A games.

It was very different when our grandparents and great-grandparents stepped off the train at Glasgow Central, not just in the last century, but in the century before.

Their journey had begun on hilltops where the smell of sun-ripened tomatoes wafted from kitchen windows, and it ended in a cold, wet place where a single tenement housed more families than were housed in their entire village. No pizzerias, no supermarket own-brand espresso mix, no central heating to keep out the cold. It was a different world, and one in which most would remain for the rest of their lives.

Jump forward to the outbreak of the second world war. Those same people who had spent their lives working hard in little shops and cafes suddenly found their sons and grandsons thrown into jail as “enemy aliens”.

The “lucky” ones were transported to camps on the Isle of Man or Canada and spent the next five years locked away from their families. Hundreds of others were placed on a ship called the Arandora Star, which on July 2, 1940, was torpedoed by a German submarine and sank. There were 734 Italians on the ship, of whom 486 died.

After the war, many of those same “enemy aliens” returned to Scotland to rebuild their lives. And despite everything that had gone before, most succeeded.

If this were America, they’d have made a mini-television series. Instead, with a few honourable exceptions, that chapter in the history of my community exists only in stories told by the dwindling number of people who were fortunate enough to live through it.

Which is why the Mass held by Archbishop Conti and the subsequent reception hosted by Liz Cameron, the lord provost of Glasgow, meant so much to so many people.

For the first time in a long time the Scots-Italians were able to look around and recognise themselves for what they are — a community with an extraordinary combination of cultures, a community that has made a distinguished contribution to its adoptive land and whose unique identity should be celebrated loudly and often.