Are Italians White?

Are Italians White? How Race Is Made in America
Edited by Jennifer Guglielmo & Salvatore Salerno

Although the title of the book, Are Italians White?, implies that the essays contained within it will explore that question, the answer to it is provided in the introduction: "Italians were positioned as white in the most critical of ways immediately upon their arrival in the United States" (8). While the editors go on to say that an Italian-American identity as white "took longer to form," they set the premise firmly as exploring the ways that Italian-Americans have related to (and been assigned places on) the color line and to people of other races, rather than literally the question of whether Italians are white, despite the fact that it is still a burning question for many people.

I am…ambivalent…about the book, about the essays, about the authors.

race
color
ethnicity

Everyone "knows" a definition for each of those words, and in the end, as far as I can tell, they only serve two possible purposes. First, we use them to determine who gets to be unmarked. When I tell you about a guy* I talked to while I was in line at the grocery store, was he "this guy in front of me" (white)? Or was he "this black guy" or "this Asian guy" or "this Mexican guy"? Second, we use them to determine who gets to choose to claim a cultural heritage and nationality. See, the black guy or the Asian guy or the Mexican guy doesn't get to choose. He already has one.

It might not be an accurate one. Maybe "this black guy" is African or maybe he's from the Caribbean or maybe he's British or maybe he's straight-out everyone-in-his-family-was-born-in-the-U.S.-as-far-back-as-anyone-remembers American, just like maybe "this Mexican guy" wasn't Mexican at all but is actually Puerto Rican or Colombian or straight-out everyone-in-his-family-was-born-in-the-U.S.-as-far-back-as-anyone-remembers American. None of that matters, though, because once he's marked as "this black guy" or "this Mexican guy," then there is a set of assumptions about his identity that goes along with that marking.

"This guy in front of me," though, he gets to choose. He can be American or white (like those are really different) or he can be Irish-American or Italian-American or German-American, but you wouldn't know about any of those unless he decides to tell you about them…unless he has something that defines him as "not American," by which I mean, he has an accent or he doesn't speak English. That means he might be white, but he's marked anyhow, because he's not American (even if really he is).

That's what a lot of the essays in this book are about: People who were recent enough immigrants to the U.S. from Italy that they were defined as "not American." And, oddly, that's something that, by and large, is not addressed explicitly in these essays. While some make reference to ancestors who did not speak English, e.g., Manifest's comment that his relatives "conveniently [forgot]" about his great-grandfather, who "stubbornly refused to learn, let alone speak, a word of English" (146), none of the authors really explore whether there is or should be any distinction made between "white" and "American" and "citizen," at the same time that the themes of their essays revolve around that question. While several of the essays discuss historical aspects of immigrant citizenship, none of them fully explores the issue of how nationalism and racism interact and affect these definitions, particularly from an Italian-American perspective.

Instead, in discussing whether Italians are or were "white," they debate and consider skin color, as when Louise DeSalvo points out that her grandmother's citizenship documents claimed that her "color" was "white" but her "complexion" was "dark" (25), or Kym Ragusa's discussion of her grandmother's and mother's skin color and hair, or Edvige Giunta's exploration of the differentiation between northern Italians and southern Italians who were considered "dark like the earth" (229), or the poems and short essays by Ronnie Mae Painter and Rosette Capotorto.

And this is the center, if not the source, of my ambivalence.

Consider:

"As anyone could see, [my grandmother's] complexion was fair though the document insists that it was dark" (25).

"My father is black. That's plain by his skin and his pain" (251).

"I attended events where I was one of two or three white women…I am attracted to people of color. The aesthetic…is more pleasing and more comfortable for me and my Italian/Sicilian/American self…'My mother is black'" (256).

Blackness or darkness, they are mostly negatives, in these tales. They are categories assigned by others that these authors reject, because belonging to those categories means being lesser. The exception is Capotorto's claim that her mother is black, but then Capotorto claims whiteness for herself. What does it mean to identify and be identified as white, while occasionally using blackness when convenient? Well, cultural appropriation comes to mind as a term.

I don't think that these authors intended to suggest that blackness/darkness is bad. Indeed, in some cases, they were trying to combat the insistence of others that it is. And yet, when the first step is to identify oneself, or, sometimes, Italians overall, as having light-colored skin—to insist upon it, in fact—then I have to question the motivations behind that. It's the Not That There's Anything Wrong With That defense, and it always makes me ambivalent, because on the one hand, we all want to be identified accurately, don't we?

But on the other hand, the vehemence of the insistence is rather suspect, isn't it?


*Gender doesn't get to be unmarked. Deborah Tannen argues otherwise, making the claim that "being male is the unmarked case," but while in some specific areas, I agree with her, overall, I think her argument is too reductive and specific (or, perhaps, just lacking somewhat in theoretical explanation). For instance, if I say I went on a date with "someone," it is incredibly difficult for me to keep telling you about the date without indicating gender, because we don't have gender-neutral pronouns.