Thursday, October 25, 2007

White Ethnic Politics: Italians, Irish & Jews and the Shaping of NY Politics--NY Times

The ANNOTICO Report

 

I expected a more insightful analysis, but was disappointed, and probably because the discussion seemed more to promote a book:

 "White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics and the Shaping of Postwar Politics," J. M. Zeitz, than clarify the issue. 

 

I first question the "easy" reference to "WHITE" Politics in referring to Italians and Jews, neither were considered white until recently.

Ed. Koch stated the obvious,  that people generally vote for political candidates similar to them - unless their person is clearly wanting.

Pete  Hamill provided an amusing story of the most important intercultural exchange of his early years:  The most important factor in my childhood might have been when Mr. Caputo came into the hall of my mothers kitchen and taught her how to make the sauce. We didnt want to eat anything else for the rest of our lives. Part of this discussion is how the Italians taught the Irish how to eat. The Irish had the worst food in the history of the world. I didnt realize until I was 17 that roast beef could be pink. They thought you could get trichinosis from hamburgers. Everything was charred and cremated because, who did they learn it from? The British.

Dr. Zeitz summarized his books thesis:  Jews, as they fought for political power, placed disputativeness and radicalism and liberalism at the heart of their identity. In coming to politics from this viewpoint, they tended to clash with Italian and Irish Catholics who emphasized order, social hierarchy and an allegiance to an organic sense of community

 

White Ethnic Politics: Irish and Italian Catholics and Jews, Oh, My!

New York Times

 By Sewell Chan

October 25, 2007 

An Irishman, an Italian and a Jew walked into the grand auditorium of the New York Academy of Medicine on Wednesday evening - not to tell jokes (or be part of one), but to engage an audience of some 400 people in a discussion about white ethnic groups and their evolving roles in the politics and culture of New York City.

The panelists - Edward I. Koch, mayor from 1978 to 1989; Pete Hamill, the journalist and author; and Frank J. Macchiarola, schools chancellor from 1978 to 1983  had been invited by the Museum of the City of New York to reflect on a new book, "White Ethnic New York: Jews, Catholics and the Shaping of Postwar Politics," by the historian Joshua M. Zeitz.

Dr. Zeitz gave a brief overview of his books thesis by telling two stories about how a Jew and a Catholic growing up in postwar New York recalled learning very different lessons from the same Biblical story about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Jew learned from a rabbi the value of dissent and resistance from Abrahams questioning of God about the decision to obliterate the two cities. The Catholic learned from a schoolteacher about the fate of those, like Lots wife, who defy Gods instructions.

Irish and Italian Catholics and Jews shared the same city streets, they shared the same institutions, to lots of people they looked the same," Dr. Zeitz said. "But they came at culture and politics from fundamentally different viewpoints."

At their height in the mid-century decades, the three groups numbered, it is estimated, about four million - accounting for two-thirds of the citys white population and perhaps half of the total population.

And yet these groups often spent their lives apart. Two-thirds of Catholic children in New York City from the 1940s through the 60s attended parish schools, while about 95 percent of Jewish children attended public ones. Separate youth organizations, professional clubs and even veterans groups highlighted the uniqueness of each group.

Dr. Zeitz summarized his books thesis:

Many second- and third-generation Jews, throughout the 20th century, as they fought for political power, placed disputativeness and radicalism and liberalism at the heart of their identity. In coming to politics from this viewpoint, they tended to clash with Italian and Irish Catholics who emphasized order, social hierarchy and an allegiance to an organic sense of community.

The political and social struggles of the era were, about "not just power, passion and privilege," Dr. Zeitz argued, but ideology. For instance, when Mayor John V. Lindsay, a white Protestant and a Republican, faced a re-election challenge in 1969 from Mario J. Procaccino, an Italian Catholic, Mr. Lindsay tried to court voters by highlighting the theme of his own dissent on the Vietnam War - and "the right and obligation of people to protest against an unjust war."

Mr. Koch was first to speak. Born in the Bronx, he lived there until age 7, and "thought everybody was Jewish," he said. It was during the Depression, and his family moved to Newark, where Mr. Kochs father found a job. Their neighborhood was half Jewish and half black; neither group socialized with the other, in school or out. It was only when Mr. Koch moved back to New York and entered the City College of New York "that the people I met all races, all ethnic groups, and that we actually socialized and met friends who were other than Jewish."

Mr. Koch has never been particularly religious, but said:

I was always very conscious that I was Jewish. And it wasnt anti-Semitism that caused that. I was conscious that I was Jewish and very proud of it. And then when I became politically active it all changed. When I became politically active it was in the Village and the Village was overwhelmingly Italian, the constituency. And if I was going to succeed, if I was going to win the races that were going to be waged against Carmine De Sapio and others, it would be necessary  youd have to be a fool not to understand that it was imperative that I become as involved with the Italian community as I possibly could. And I did. I formed the local organization called the MacDougal Area Neighborhood Association to clean up the street. One thousand Italians joined it. I mean, they were so angry at everybody else ruining the neighborhood. And they appointed me the leader, they voted for me. And it wasnt like it was a sharp lesson that you had to learn  that if you helped people, if th ey thought you were honest with them  that they would actually vote for you even though you were not, in this case, Italian....

To loud applause, Mr. Koch said: "I think people have to understand, reach out, join - but dont forget who you are. Dont be ashamed of it. Thats all."

Mr. Hamill - whose novel "North River" was recently published, spoke next. "I grew up in Brooklyn, in a neighborhood in which I can no longer afford to live," he said. The neighborhood was predominantly Irish and Italian, and about 15 percent Jewish.

I became the Shabbos goy at the synagogue," he said. "So every Saturday morning, I would go in, on my way to Holy Name Church, with my surplice on my arm and I would do whatever the rabbi would ask me to do " turn on the gas stove, whatever - and there would be a dime on the shelf at the front door, which he wouldnt touch, and off Id go."

Mr. Hamill cited other "Shabbos goys": Colin L. Powell, Martin Scorsese, even Elvis Presley. Then he shared the story of the most important intercultural exchange of his early years:

The most important factor in my childhood might have been when Mr. Caputo came into the hall of my mothers kitchen and taught her how to make the sauce. We didnt want to eat anything else for the rest of our lives. Part of this discussion is how the Italians taught the Irish how to eat. The Irish had the worst food in the history of the world. I didnt realize until I was 17 that roast beef could be pink. They thought you could get trichinosis from hamburgers. Everything was charred and cremated because, who did they learn it from? The British.

Mr. Hamill is famous for his storytelling abilities, and he did not disappoint. He recalled guys from the neighborhood, looking for movie listings in "The Tablet", a diocesan newspaper in Brooklyn, and making jokes about Cardinal Francis J. Spellman, whom Mr. Hamill called, rather irreverently, a "strike-busting fat boy."

Mr. Hamill was equally irreverent about the Catholic schools he attended:

They had a kind of madrassa in the morning: "Hail Mary, full of grace." Its like these kids you see in Pakistan learning things by rote. But I ended up in a Jesuit high school and the Jesuits have one thing they gave to everybody whos ever gone to one of these schools: doubt. Theyve probably created more atheists than communism ever did, and standards of excellence that none of us can ever approach.

Mr. Hamills parents came from Belfast, Northern Island. "Both of them, particularly my mother, were determined never to do to anybody in this country what had been done to them in Northern Island, so bigotry was a worse sin to them than self-pity," he said. They were not bleeding-heart liberals, he added. The only pictures in their house were of Jesus - his hands bleeding - and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Unlike many white ethnics of the period, the Hamills did not flee to the suburbs. "They never wanted to flee, blacks, Latinos or anything," Mr. Hamill said. "They had none of that."

He started reading Dorothy Schiffs New York Post as a teenagers and aspired to be a newspaperman. Mr. Hamill summed up his talk by saying: "There were different ways to be Irish, just as there were different ways to be Jewish and Italian. It was the luck of the draw. Thats about being part of an alloy, not being separate."

Dr. Macchiarola remarked that he, too, was a Shabbos goy, working with Abraham Wallach, the father of the actor Eli Wallach, on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn.

Dr. Macchiarola grew up in an Italian family, married an Irish-American and spent much of his life affiliated with Jewish institutions. He spoke of those three identities as a crucial part of his life. He recalled attending Catholic schools that dominated by the Irish - a third-grade teacher called him Murphy because he couldnt pronounce Dr. Macchiarolas last name. Dr. Macchiarola, now the president of St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, recalled:

My father was really convinced that education was important. He had not gone to high school. He was a sanitation man. My mother didnt graduate from high school. And I was the first in an extended family to graduate high school. My grandfather came to this country 100 years ago. We had a big family celebration [recently]. There are about 75 direct descendants - we had it at the college - and every single one of them successful, every marriage except one still intact, and nobody in the witness protection program.

After the applause subsided, he added: "It is something that we Italians are very defensive about, that somehow because our names end in vowels, that were suspect. And I would say it goes all the way through the culture."

With Mayor Kochs support, Dr. Macchiarola became the first Italian-American to lead the citys school system. Later in his career, he was dean of the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University for about five years. "From that position, I saw the enormous strength and capacity of fidelity to the book, because it was an Orthodox school; adherence to the law; tolerance, respect for others," he said.

At the college he leads, Dr. Macchiarola keeps a mezuzah outside his office door. He also put crucifixes in all of the colleges classrooms, telling the faculty members: "This is not intended in any way to suggest anything other than who we were. We of the faith have to be reminded of who we are." The school is tremendously diverse: a student Dr. Macchiarola brought with him to the talk is a Muslim with a Puerto Rican mother and an Egyptian father; the student body president is an Arab-American, and the vice president is Italian-American.

We grew up with certain understandings and stereotypes, in a world of intolerance," Dr. Macchiarola said. "That world, hopefully - I believe it has changed.-

During the question-and-answer session, Dr. Zeitz asked why white ethnic politicians have been largely dominant in the postwar era - made up of eight of the last 10 mayors, all but David N. Dinkins and Mr. Lindsay - while ethnic political clubs have weakened.

Mr. Koch said that people generally vote for political candidates similar to them - unless the adversary is clearly head and shoulders above that person....

Dr. Macchiarola - like many historians, in contrast to Dr. Zeitz - argued that ethnicitys hold in New York and American society has greatly weakened. When he was chairman of a commission that redrew City Council district boundaries, the process resulted in a reduction in the number of Italian-Americans, and pretty much no one noticed, he said.

He predicted that ethnicity would not play an important role in the 2008 national elections, as it did in 1960, when John F. Kennedy became president, and 1989, when Mr. Dinkins became mayor.

Mr. Hamill said that the "defensiveness of the Irish" declined after 1960. He credited City College for the upward mobility that allowed the children of poor immigrants to get ahead.

By the time I got out of the Navy there were two kids on my block going to university, and one of them was my brother," he said.

At one point, Mr. Hamill quipped that ethnic enclaves have largely shriveled. "If you go to Little Italy now, its two and half blocks long and its a Sopranos theme park," he joked. Italian-Americans who moved to the suburbs "come back for nostalgia reasons and, most of all, to buy the bread."

Dr. Macchiarola recalled campaigning for city comptroller once in the Bronx. An aide insisted that he speak before a social club, and the aide tried to egg on the crowd, saying: "Youve got to vote for him. Hes one of us!" Dr. Macchiarola later pointed out that the crowd was Albanian, not Italian; that Albanians tended not to vote in high numbers; and that when they did vote, they tended not to like Italians. The crowd laughed.

In city politics, a balanced ticket used to consist of a Jew, an Irishman and an Italian. Now, Mr. Koch said, it might include a white, a black and a Hispanic - and women.

All three men seemed to share a belief in the American ideal of meritocracy, however incompletely that ideal is realized.

Today, there is nothing that limits you if you have the talent to reach for and convince others that, in fact, that talent is yours," Mr. Koch said.

This is a town where you can overcome everything if you look for the prize and go for it," Mr. Hamill said.

Dr. Macchiarola, paraphrasing the writer Richard Gambino, said: "Italians came to America because they were told the streets were paved with gold. When they got here they discovered the streets were not paved with gold. In fact, the streets were not paved. And they were going to pave the streets."

 

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