Thursday,
March 30,
Book: "The Lost World of Italian
American Radicalism" (Social Reformers).
The ANNOTICO
Report
Italian Americans
have a lengthy and influential record of radical [reformist] working-class
activity, for which the IA Community should be justly proud.
But that positive
history of promoting issues, such as Labor Unions, Safety on the Job,
Social Security, just a few among a overwhelming list of Rights that we now
take for granted, were considered "radical" then, has been ignored,
and come close to being buried, because the IA Community felt that the
"radical" actions in a "host" country seemed to be
ungracious, and reflect badly on the IA Community, and many IAs hoped to become much like "the
establishment", and therefore shunned the "activists".
This book emerged out of a 1997 academic conference on Italian American
radicalism and includes essays by prominent scholars such as Rudolph J. Vecoli, Jennifer Guglielmo , Fred Gardaphe, and Donna K. Gabaccia.
Book Review: The Lost World of
Italian-American Radicalism
Political Affairs
Magazine
By Clara West
Edited
by Philip Cannistraro and Gerald Meyer
Westport, Connecticut, Praeger, 2003
The
Lost World of Italian-American Radicalism is an important collection of essays
on Italian American working-class history. Generally perceived as conservative,
Italian Americans have a lengthy and influential record of radical
working-class activity. According to the editors, this conservative image,
fueled by media stereotypes, presents Italian Americans as "hostile to
political, racial, ethnic, and sexual minorities."
The radical history of Italian Americans is often ignored by people in that
community because it is deemed "somehow too Italian and not sufficiently
American" for fear that this history "deviated from the norms of
dominant society." In the view of the ed! itors, distorting or ignoring this
history "increase[s] the community?s
vulnerability" by eliminating a rich history of socialists, anarchists,
communists and civil rights activists who sought solidarity and equality of all
working-class people.
Often prominent Italian American figures and organizations led the way in
erasing this past and pushing a conservative image. They emphasized a
historical narrative, say the editors, of Italian American history that ignored
politics and insists that Italian Americans have no need for ideology or
struggle for society-wide equality. A recovery of this history is needed, argue
the editors, in order to tell the truth about Italian Americans and to
re-inspire the community to reclaim its long tradition of political activism.
This book emerged out of a 1997 academic conference on Italian American
radicalism and includes essays by prominent scholars such as Rudolph J. Vecoli, Jennifer Guglielmo , Fred Gardaphe, and Donna K. Ga! baccia.
Vecoli?s essay provides a broad picture of the
forging of Italian American working class radicalism and its early demise in
the first half of the 20th century. Vecoli notes the
eagerness with which Italian immigrants joined the
Vecoli catalogs a number of factors, both domestic and
transnational, that affected the early demise of this radical ferment.
Political repression in the
Most important, perhaps, was the issue of racism. Like other European immigrant
communities, Italian Americans were racialized in the
Guglielmo, co-editor of another book titled Are
Italians White?: How Race is Made in America, points out that by the 1940s with
the decline of radical leadership and activism in the Italian American
community, like many other European immigrant communities, Italian American
workers had begun "to insist on their whiteness, entitling them to
privileged political rights, better-paying jobs, and leadership of the
union." Guglielmo goes on to add that they
"did so by practicing and institutionalizing policies of racialized exclusion in the ! union and industry." Thus white identity for many
Italian American workers came as a result of their direct attack on the equal
democratic rights of non-white workers.
Fred Gardaphe?s essay works
toward recovering the left tradition among Italian American writers. Gardaphe looks briefly at the works of such figures as
Communist Party founder Louis Fraina (Lewis Corey),
Communist Party member and author of the proletarian novel, Christ in Concrete,
Pietro di Donato, pro-working class writer Jerre Mangione, anti-fascist biographer Frances Winwar, pro-Communist novelist and McCarthyite
witch hunt victim Carl Marzani, and writer Angello Pelligrini as well as a
score of other radical poets, novelists, artists and essayists.
Immigrant historian Donna K. Gabaccia closes the book
with an interesting essay that argues essentially that none of this history was
inevitable or the result of inherent cultural or racial characteristics of
Italians or Italian Americans. Rather! , the trajectory of the history of
Italian Americans resulted from the domestic and global contexts in which it
occurred. "Capitalism," Gabaccia concludes,
"class, politics, and the state were not trivial players in the making of
Italian Americans, or in the making of Italian American ethnicity. They
determined Italian Americans? losses, restricted their
choices, and made them ? along with Italian American
studies ? what they are today."
http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/
articleview/3080/1/158/?PrintableVersion=enabled
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