Thursday, June 21, 2007

Accepting Negative Italian Stereotypes Hurts Blacks Also, Warns Black Award Winning Writer

The ANNOTICO Report

 

Gregory Kane of BlackAmericanWeb.com was stunned to see how many black folks rocked "The Sopranos." Some of those black folks he  considers pretty sharp, who would be the first to sniff out -- and condemn -- anything even remotely resembling the stereotyping of African-Americans.

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He says:"I don't want Hollywood stereotyping black folks, and I don't want Hollywood stereotyping any other ethnic or racial group either. And if one ethnic or racial group is fair game for stereotyping, then all groups should be. Black fans of "The Sopranos" couldn't make that connection."

 

But one Italian-American did. His name is Mark Di Ionno. His column forThe Newark Star-Ledger.  (ANNOTICO Reports June 10,11/07)about the final episode of "The Sopranos" and the vicious stereotyping of Italian-Americans pretty much said it all.

Di Ionno said the show  "makes many Italians embarrassed, and is damaging to their image."

"Worse, it gives some impressionable Italian-American young men - a role model for acting like wannabe goons. Don't believe it? Cruise the bars at  Seaside this summer and watch the boys from Staten Island, North Jersey and South Philly act it out."

But what grabbed Kane's attention was that Di Ionno pointed out that young Italian-American men aren't the only ones acting out stereotypes of their ethnic group.  Di Ionno tells the stories of how hard Tracy Morrow, ("Ice-T"), and  Sean Combs ("Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Diddy") try to "bury deep" their rather uneventful and middle class backgrounds, and assume a "Mobster" persona. 

Kane then goes on to warn the Black American Community of embracing this Black Negative Stereotype, or celebrating ANY Negative Stereotype.

 

Commentary: Why Are Some of Us More Comfortable with Negative Stereotypes of Ourselves than the Truth?

 

BlackAmericanWeb.com 

Dallas,Tx,USA 

By Gregory Kane

Thursday, June 21, 2007

It's been over two weeks since the season finale of "The Sopranos," and people are still  talking about the ending.

That includes a lot of black folks, many of whom were diehard fans of the HBO series about an Italian-American mob family. I was stunned to see how many black folks rocked "The Sopranos." Some of those black folks are ones I consider pretty sharp, who would be the first to sniff out -- and condemn -- anything even remotely resembling the stereotyping of African-Americans.

So exactly why were some of these same black folks ardent watchers of "The Sopranos"?

I don't know how "The Sopranos" ended, because I only watched one episode of the show. It was what I expected: Another tired, overdone Hollywood production that stereotyped Italian-Americans as Mafiosi. I tuned out as soon as I tuned in. My logic was simple: I don't want Hollywood stereotyping black folks, and I don't want Hollywood stereotyping any other ethnic or racial group either.

And if one ethnic or racial group is fair game for stereotyping, then all groups should be.

Black fans of "The Sopranos" couldn't make that connection. But one Italian-American did. His name is Mark DiIonno. He writes a column for The Newark Star-Ledger. His column about the final episode of "The Sopranos" and the vicious stereotyping of Italian-Americans pretty much said it all.

DiIonno said the show  "makes many Italians embarrassed, and is damaging to their image. Worse, it gives some impressionable Italian-American young men - a role model for acting like wannabe goons. Don't believe it? Cruise the bars at  Seaside this summer and watch the boys from Staten Island, North Jersey and South Philly act it out."

Young Italian-American men aren't the only ones acting out stereotypes of their ethnic group. DiIonno tells the story of Tracy Morrow, a black man who grew up in an integrated, middle-class, two-parent household in Summit, N.J. After his parents died, Morrow lived with an aunt in Los Angeles. It was while in Los Angeles that Morrow became involved with drugs, gangs and pimping.

We know Morrow as Ice-T.

DiIonno said biographies of Ice-T mention the gangbanging and drug dealing and the pimping, but "leave out the 13 years in Summit, going to Brayton School and the junior high, playing on safe playgrounds ? being a nice, regular middle-class kid in a nice town, guided and cared for by well-meaning people. That wouldn't fit the stereotype of who Tracy Morrow became: Ice-T, gangsta rapper."

Amen to that, DiIonno. No wonder black devotees of "The Sopranos" couldn't recognize the show's relentless and ruthless stereotyping of Italian-Americans. Many of us also buy into how we stereotype ourselves.

Apparently Ice-T has no problem with bios that portray him as a gangbanger, drug dealer and pimp while downplaying his middle-class upbringing. It's as if he's ashamed of it. Sean "Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Diddy" Combs downplays the fact that his mom moved him from "the 'hood" to suburbia, where he had two paper routes. His mom sent him back to Manhattan to attend an all-boys prep school. Even when his family lived in Harlem, Combs went to a predominantly white Roman Catholic school and became an altar boy.

At a symposium held at the Milton S. Eisenhower Institute in Washington, D.C. last December, I talked about how uncomfy some black folks get by linking the phrase "middle class" with the word "black." Panelists were supposed to talk about why the media were no longer covering stories about race and poverty, but I challenged the premise.

I told those assembled that I did two different Lexis Nexis searches of news stories. One had the words "black and poor." The other had the words "black and middle class." It turned out the media, far from ignoring stories about race and poverty, had a wealth of them.

There were more stories with the words "black and poor" in a one-year period than there were with the words "black and middle class" in a five-year period.

It's stories about the black middle class the media don't want to cover, not stories about the black poor. Because that's the stereotype: Black folks as poor folks. Never mind that the percentage of blacks in poverty has decreased sharply since the 1960s. And that's largely due to the efforts of black Americans taking advantage of educational and employment opportunities.

We should be proud of that. We should be celebrating that. Instead, it seems we're ashamed of it.

"The Sopranos" made many Italian-Americans embarrassed, and rightly so. Why is a middle-class upbringing so embarrassing to some black folks?

* *

Gregory Kane is an award-winning columnist for the Baltimore Sun. In 1997 he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on slavery in the Sudan. That work won him the 1997 Overseas Press Club Award.

http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/sayitloud/kane621

 

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