Articles by: Jerry Krase

  • Life & People

    Turning Back the Tide: It's Already Too Late Silvio



    Reporting for The New York Times from Rome last week, Elisbetta Povoledo wrote: "The Italian government said Thursday that the return of 227 migrants to Libya before they could land in Italy should be adopted as the new model for dealing with illegal immigration and be extended to the rest of Europe." Commenting on these and related anti-immigrant moves in I-Italy George De Stefano wrote "Not only has Premier Silvio Berlusconi wholeheartedly endorsed the leghista send ‘em back policy; he aligned himself ideologically with the Lega when he recently declared that Italy will not become a multiethnic country."
    He might have also noted that the Italian Right's comically frantic attempts to turn back the clock to a time when non-Italians hadn't polluted (or blessed) Italy's shores is guaranteed to fail (as are face-lifts, liposuction, and hair transplants).
     
    Like it or not, Italy is already the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation that Silvio and his occasional sidekick (accolito) Umberto Bossi both abhor. On the other hand, Italy does have every right, and indeed every obligation, to combat illegal immigration and to also demand that the other members of the European Union contribute to the effort. Equally responsible for the human disasters that take place daily, are the North African countries from which so many of the tired and the poor are cast adrift on hardly sea-worthy craft after having paid hefty prices for their perilous voyage. Unfortunately, the Italian Right seems more comfortable with attacking diversity rather than the problems of migrants before and after they get to the promised land of Italy on their way, they dream, to economically sunnier shores.
     
    As in the United States, scapegoating immigrants and foreigners in general for the mess created by indigenous politicians is a common diversion. When was the last time an African street merchant was caught bribing a government official so he could dump megatons of industrial waste in Campania? How many Egyptian pizza makers (pizzaioli) are selling derivatives on the Milan stock exhange? 
     
    Beginning with the first Africans, who walked to Italy via the Pleistocene land bridge some tens of thousands of years ago, to those who swam ashore just a few minutes ago, Italy (and Italians) have been fashioned and re-fashioned by a motley (variopinto) crew of folks from the south, east, north, and west. I am a proud product of that mongrelization. Last week when I spoke at a memorial service for an old friend and colleague, Rocco Caporale, I noted that he was one of the few people I knew who didn't ask this light-skinned, blue-eyed, six foot, at one time dirty-blond, with "Krase" as a last name why he was interested in things Italian.
     
    And, as to those things Italian, a few weeks ago I made a pilgrimage to visit the land of my mother's people - Sicily - more specifically the hill town of Marineo near Palermo and adjacent to the Plain of the Albanians (Piana degli Albanesi) . There I visited the castle that my grandfather Girolamo Cangelosi told my mother he lived in, and spent a drizzly afternoon walking around, inflicting my terrible Italian language on men in the streets and women in the shops. The castle is now a museum that celebrates the historical contributions of the many groups that settled in the area and left their imprint on the landscape and the people. I also visited the church, St. Ciro's, where my great grandparents (bisnonni) were married, and the nearby town cemetery richly decorated with variants of the names Cangelosi and Trentacosti.
     
     
    This gentleman was kind enough to tell me about his five brothers who migrated to New York
    (At least I think he told me that).
     
     
    Il Cimitero, presso a Marineo.
     
    Wherever we went in Sicily, we found signs of foreigners (stranieri) past and present; -- in the people, in the food, in the architecture, in the language, and the culture. I saw nothing that reminded me of the reactionary intolerance that appears too often on the stage of Italian national and international politics and which threatens the sophisticated, cultured, and cosmopolitan image that Italy has struggled so hard to create. Mafiosi and Fascisti are equal enemies of the people and "no al pizzo" and "no al razismo" should be said within the same breath.
    Greek Ruins in Selinunte
     
    Byzantine Chapel, in Palermo
     
    La Kalsa, Medieval Saracen ( Saraceno mediavale) settlement in Palermo
  • Life & People

    John Marchi, an Italian American Class Act


    Staten Island born and raised, John J. Marchi, died last Saturday, April 25th, 2009 while visiting his family's ancestral hometown of Lucca, Italy. He was 87 and his life is a great example of how places mold people. Lucca is surrounded by imposing walls built to defend itself against an "old enemy" (Florence), and Staten Island is essentially surrounded by a moat that separates it from its historical nemesis "New York City." Win or lose, John Marchi only defended things he felt were worth the effort.

    As a New York State Senator for 50 years (1956 to 2006) Marchi fought in Albany (and at New York City Hall or Washington DC) for the interests of Staten Islanders such as the preservation and expansion of Richmond County's (Staten Island's) cultural and educational institutions. One of his greatest gifts to his fellow Islanders was the creation of the College of Staten Island as part of The City University of New York. Another of his battles fought and won was the closing of the Fresh Kills Landfill that at one time was the largest in the world. For half a century it was a major repository for New York City's garbage, and Islander resentment. Taking his cue from the people of Lucca, he was a also a fierce defender, and promoter, of the best of Italian culture. There was not a worthy Italian or Italian American cultural project that didn't have John Marchi's imprimatur on it.
     
    Some (too) many years ago I was invited with a small group of other "young" Italian American (in my case half Sicilian American) activists to meet with Senator Marchi at his home in Staten Island. I assumed it would not be a meeting of the minds, as he held more or less "conservative" positions on most issues and I was off the scale in the opposite direction. He opposed abortion and supported American involvement in the Vietnam War. I supported a woman's right to choose and participated in more than one antiwar demonstration that he regarded as strikes "against America.”
     
    As I recall, the meeting was the most cordial I had ever had with someone with whom I had so little in common. However, what we shared was large enough to cover all bases -- our common concern for the welfare of the Italian American population of New York City. I saw him off and on over the decades and always felt compelled to go over to him and re-introduce myself; "Senator Marchi, we have met before. My name is Jerry Krase." And he would always politely say "I know. How are you Jerry?" and act as though we were good friends. For the last two years our ever briefer encounters were at the Wagner College DaVinci  Society Scholarship Dinners at the Staten Island Garden Inn. There I would ask his daughter Joan to re-introduce me to her dad and he, of course, would renew our old acquaintance.
     
    John Marchi's gentlemanliness must be something his family brought over to Staten Island from Italy as charm and sophistication is hardly something that easily follows the words "Staten Island" today. In contrast to the dangerous currents that run under the Verrazano Bridge and the pollution lurking under the Goethals, Bayonne, and Outerbridge Crossing bridges, the imposing wall surrounding Lucca is hardly a fearsome barrier. It is actually a lovely elevated park; perfect for lovers. Contained within these walls is a delightful maze of small and even smaller streets leading to people and piazzas of various sizes and characters all of which have something pleasantly "special" to offer. Getting lost in Lucca can be exhilarating. Getting lost in Staten Island can give you a headache. Staten Island has a long way to go before it meets the Marchi standard, but if it ever gets there, he will have deserved most of the credit.
     
    I have cut and pasted here a piece of a book, The Staten Island Italian American Experience (www.wagner.edu/institutional_advancement/book) that I wrote for the DaVinci Society of Wagner College. Some notes about him can be found in the chapter entitled “The Rise of Italian Politicians and Voters”.  
     
    Despite the success of many, the persistence of anti-Italian bias in the city politics was clearly demonstrated in the mayoral election of 1969. In the following excerpt from Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan’s near classic study of New York City ethnic politics they expound of such prejudice at an incredibly high, academic, level: “Significantly, by the way of illustration, he (Michael Lerner) cited a world-famous Yale professor of government who, at dinner, “on the day an Italian American announced his candidacy for Mayor of New York,” remarked that “If Italians aren’t actually an inferior race, they do the best imitation of one I’ve seen.” It was also said of Mario Procaccino that he was so sure of being elected that he had ordered new linoleum for Gracie Mansion. No one said much of anything about John Marchi, the Republican and Conservative candidate whose Tuscan aristocratic style was surely the equal of Linday’s WASP patrician manner, and who conducted perhaps the most thoughtful campaign of the three. Procaccino was made out the clod, and was beaten.” (Beyond the Melting Pot, 1970: lxxiii-xiv)
     
    In the same text, Glazer and Moynihan’s, few, yet prescient comments about stable Italian neighborhoods and politics clearly establish Staten Island as the future for Italo-American New Yorkers. “The North Bronx Italian sections developed (as did similar areas in Queens) when Italians went to the end of the subway lines and beyond, seeking cheap land on which to build houses and raise vegetables and goats. The sections are still heavily Italians, and helped elect Representative Paul Fino from the Bronx. Staten Island, which was also attractive to Italians forty years ago because it offered a semi rural life, remains heavily Italians. It was the first borough to have an Italian borough president.” (187) What Glazer and Moynihan had no inkling of was the between 1934 and 2006 Italian Americans held the position of Staten Island Borough President for more than three-quarters of the time representing the Conservative, Democrat, and Republican Parties. The following list is impressive:  Joseph A. Palma 1934-45, Albert V. Maniscalco 1955-65, , Anthony R. Gaeta 1977-84, Ralph J. Lamberti 1984-89, Guy V. Molinari 1990-2001, and James P. Molinaro 2002- present.
     
    It is true that Italian Americans from New York City have been successful at many levels of politics. In addition to those already mentioned the additional short list would include Governor Mario V. Cuomo, Vice Presidential Candidate Geraldine Ferraro, New York City Comptroller Mario Procaccino, New York State Senator John Calandra, New York State Supreme Court Justices Anthony Travia, Michael Pesci, and even County Leaders such as one-time Brooklyn “Boss” Meade Esposito. It is in Staten Island however that Italian Americans have shown real political muscle. In the year 2006 Italian Americans held the vast majority of the available elective positions for the borough, again representing all major parties:
     
    • United States Congressional Representative, Republican Vito Fosella
    • Staten Island Borough President, Conservative/Republican James Molinaro
    • New York State Assemblyman, Republican Vincent Ignizio
    • New York State Senate Senators, Republican John Marchi, and Democrats Diane Savino and Vincent Gentile
    • New York City Councilmen, Republicans James Oddo and Andrew Lanza
    • Other Staten Island Italian Americans serve in the elective and appointive judicial systems such as Thomas P. Aliotta, Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, and Eric Vitaliano, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of New York.
     
    For some, like the Molinaris, politics is almost the family business. It began with Italian-born Democratic Party Assemblyman S. Robert Molinari of New Dorp who served briefly in the New York State Assembly (1943-44). His son, Guy Victor Molinari also served in the New York State Assembly, but as a Republican from 1975 to 80 when he ran for an won the post of United States Representative and where he served until 1990. At that point he became Borough President of Staten Island and remained in that capacity until 2001. His position in congress was assumed in 1990 by his daughter Susan Molinari, also a Republican, who was re-elected for four consecutive terms before retiring from office in 1997 to pursue a career as a television hournalist.
     
    Because of their almost legendary status, some of Staten Island’s political icons such as John Marchi and Vito J. Titone, require more than passing notice. Senator John J. Marchi has served in the New York State Senate since 1957 and is recognized as the longest serving legislator--at all levels--in America. Marchi was born in Staten Island, attended local schools. In addition to his undergraduate and law degrees he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Laws from Wagner College. He has been a leader in Italian and Italian American affairs for which, in 1968, he received the highest award Italy bestows on a non-resident: Commander of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy. Then in 1992 he was given the Filippo Mazzei Award for public service and strengthening relations between the United States and Italy. In 1969 and 1973, he was the candidate of the Republican Party for the Office of Mayor of the City of New York. When the New York City Charter revisions reduced the power of boroughs he led the movement for Staten Island’s secession from New York City.
     
    It is this activity that has enshrined him New York’s political pantheon. As Bill Kaufman wrote: 
    “Staten Island's 400,000 citizens had one last, best hope: independence. In 1993, led by the "George Washington of Staten Island," the scholarly Republican-Conservative State Senator John Marchi, islanders voted two-to-one for freedom. (The Times editorial page rebuked the secessionists for their "passions.") State Assembly Democrats, however, insisted that the secession request had to come from the entire city, not just Staten Island. Meanwhile, Republicans, having just elected Rudy Giuliani thanks to the votes of Staten Islanders, were not all that eager to cut loose the island and its GOP voters, either. The free Staten Island movement drifted into limbo.” (www.taemag.com/issues/issueID.143/toc.asp)
     
     In my opinion, John Marchi was among the best brightest and he deserves a place alongside New York City's other unblemished political heroes such as Firello LaGuardia and Mario Cuomo. I'm sure he would agree but would hardly make the claim himself. I offer my deepest sympathies, and gratitude, to his family and his two hometowns.

     

     
  • Op-Eds

    Are you (we) stupid or what?


    Tom Verso's recent piece exalting Italian America's street corner roots made me nostalgic about my pre-college street corner days when I hung around with my mixed ethnic group of friends. As I recall, the Italian American ones were (according to themselves) the best informed, and when I disagreed the usual admonishment was "Are you stupid or what?" Which leads me to wonder about the source of ignorance.


    For me, Will Rogers Jr (1911-1993), epitomized the well-informed American. The Cherokee-American cowboy was a well-known actor, humorist, and especially keen social commentator. Growing up with a crackly radio and a flickering, sometimes rolling, black and white television, I especially enjoyed his monologues focused on current events. He'd start by slowly drawling out "Well, what shall I talk about? I ain't got anything funny to say. All I know is what I read in the papers." Then he would intelligently vivisect one politician, issue, or incident thereby causing millions to nervously laugh at their own expense. Americans had to be well-informed then because you couldn’t get the joke unless you knew what was going on in the world. Otherwise the joke was on you. Today it seems that “All I know is what I read in the papers.” has been replaced with “All I know is what I see on television” and the joke really is on the viewer.


    To understand why Americans were so easily taken by the likes of world champion Ponzi schemers Bernie Madoff, and Citigroup, one need only watch a few hours of CNBC’s financial “news” and “information” programming. For example, CNBC’s “dough-eyed” financial analyst Maria Bartiromo had to be defended by her employer about her relationship with a former Citigroup boss. www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16830375/. Then there is the lunacy of anyone taking Jim Cramer’s investment advice on his “Mad Money” www.youtube.com/watch that can only be matched by another CNBC stalwart, Rick Santelli’s, foaming at the mouth about Obama’s plan to bail out what amounts to CNBC’s Fan Club members www.youtube.com/watch . One can’t help but believe that cable television’s vast array of financial news and information programs amounts to 24/7 infomercials.


    As to the reliability of other "competing" venerable television news sources, I note that after leaving CNN, Glen Beck was found crying about his passion to "save America" on his Fox News “The Glen Beck Show” where it is alleged viewers can find “The Fusion of entertainment and enlightenment.” www.youtube.com/watch As was true of Will Rogers Jr., millions are attracted to Glen’s homey, self-deprecation. But, his "dis"- and "mis"-information leaves the likes of fellow dissemblers Sean Hannity, and, "ditto" I assume, Rush Limbaugh -- the other studs in the Fox stable of horse’s ….s -- to wonder if they should start showing more of their mare sides. It’s still true that it's not what you say but how you say it that convinces audiences of reliability and validity of television “news and information.”


    Speaking of the news, from Left to the Right and everywhere in between, the Mass Media are scrutinizing every one of Barack Hussein Obama’s utterances (not to mention Michelle’s uncovered arms) as if they were the difference between life and death for America and the rest of the world. Obama goes to the G-20 in London and NATO in Prague where everyone (except Hillary Clinton) holds their breath waiting for the pearls of wisdom to fall from his lips. The media makes it appear as though everything depends on him alone. It may make good copy but little sense.


    For my friends on the Left, allow me to deconstruct this Obama fascination which afflicts everyone, including the Right. Post-George “W,” I think there has been too much intellectual, emotional, and other investment in the idea of "Obama-ism" which is a logical outcome of Obamania. Obamaism is a belief that Barack H. has, as an individual, some special qualities that are more powerful than even Pre-Post-Modern structures such as International Capitalism and International Socialism. A case in point is that the current version of "the” Global Financial Crisis is herded over by 20 instead of the previous 8 masters (and mistresses) of the universe. And, at least one of them (maitre de l’univers French President Nicolas Sarkozy) threatened to make it 19 if Obama has his way with the rest, which Obama did and Sarkozy didn't.


    Then there are the closely related international conclaves that are simultaneously divining solutions to “the” Global Terrorism Crisis and “the” Global Poverty Crisis. Frankly speaking, as was true of the "expert" analyses leading up to the current Great Depression that served little purpose other than postpone the today of reckoning, no one (not even Richard Holbrooke Obama’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan) really has a clue as to how to effectively deal with the organized and disorganized violence that is the result of ignoring the legitimate aspirations of ordinary people all around the globe. For the global crises experts social “justice” is, like a “derivative” something about which you speak without knowing what it is. In my opinion it is not that there are no answers to vexing problems but that we are asking the wrong questions about them. Most of the questions asked are constrained by the desire to maintain the status quo (status quo ante perhaps) in which "we" (the wealthy, powerful, superior, etc) are comfortable in our sense of entitlement.


    To be fair, I really should offer at least one or two concrete (more or less) examples of this common sense (Krasian) approach to problem-solving-by-better-question-asking. Italy is faced with a "crisis" because thousands of Africans who are seeking work and minimal comfort are flooding their enticing shores. What makes them want to come is not what they find in Italy but what they can’t find at home. If Italy and the rest of Europe returned to Africa only a tiny portion of the wealth that they harvested from Africa thereby impoverishing Africans, migrants would have little reason, or incentive, to risk their lives in rickety boats such as the two-hundred who recently drowned off the coast of Libya. www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/03/31/libya.boat.sinks/index.html


    In the United States of America, it is the swarming of Latinos across the borders that fuels the rise of American Fascism. Their for search work and economic opportunity has set off the alarms and raised the barriers to “free movement of capital and labor” as envisioned by NAFTA. In all these cases of allegedly “unwanted” but necessary migrations, it would make better sense for the invaded countries to guarantee decent wages for their global migrant workforce. This would not only help increase the remittances to home countries (indirect foreign aid) it would also eventually reduce reliance on exploitive labor importation by increasing the influence of local workers and unions whose labor would be more in demand.


    Asking and answering better questions about the plethora of Global Crises we have today might not keep baby-faced Glen Beck from prime time crying, or Karl Rove from drooling on the editorial pages of the Fox News version of The Wall Street Journal for that matter. But Will Rogers Jr. would’ve loved it, and not inconsequentially the joke would stop being on us all the time.


    Allow me here to liberally excerpt from George de Stefano's recent I-Italy Magazine report on Paul Ginsborg analysis of opposition to  Berlusconi "Denuncia: Speaking Up in Modern Italy" where Ginsborg observed that “A regime and its opposition are intimately linked.”


    "In a generally dismal political environment, there are social forces and actors who could present an effective opposition. These include those Italians who make up what Ginsborg called 'i ceti medi riflessivi,' progressive, civic-minded members of the educated, urban middle class. ...The other source of opposition, Ginsborg said, can be found in Italian civil society associations that operate “between the family and the state.” ....'Is there any hope?' Ginsborg rhetorically asked near the conclusion of his talk. 'The simple answer is that given the nature of the regime it’s very tough to organize” an effective opposition. But there are “many forces, among the middle and working classes, that are just crying out for coordination and movement.' But who will provide that coordination, that mobilization of unorganized opposition into a movement, and how? That’s a question Paul Ginsborg, modestly and wisely, did not attempt to answer. "


    In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi's state and private control of television helps to keep the opposition in the shadows, if not the dark. Ironically, it is being challenged by none other than America's own (by naturalization) Fox and Sky owner Rupert Murdoch. Come si dice in italiano "out of the frying pan and into the fire?"


     
  • Op-Eds

    Sharks and Mobsters: 2 Oft-told Tales


    On weekends, instead of joining my weekday early morning coffee klatsch at Dizzy’s “A Finer Diner,” I amble over to Connecticut Muffin, a coffee shop that has nothing to do with “The Nutmeg State.” My daily newspaper reading pattern also varies on weekends. On Saturdays I either read Nowy Dziennik (slownikiem) or America Oggi and La Repubblica (con il mio dizionario). On Sunday it is vice versa (viceversa). Today, I was intrigued by a front page OGGI special “La Lettera di Castellaneta al Washington Post: Plauso degli italiani d’America” that noted in conclusion “Il blog Foreign Policy Association, raccontando ieri la vicenda, sottolinea che all’ambasciata d’Italia sono giunti “numerosi” messaggi congratulazioni di italoamericani stufi di vedere sui media americani I soliti stereotipi del coinvolgimento degli italiani nelle attivita mafiose.” (the Foreign Policy Association blog related the incident yesterday and noted that the Italian Ambassador had received numerous congratulatory messages from Italo-Americans angry at seeing in the American media the usual stereotype of Italians involved in mafia activitiies.).  Naturally, I assumed that I-Italy.org would have the story on its own Front Page, which of course it did. I-Italy.org is now one of my most dependable sources for media things Italian and Italian American. There is no need to reprint here Giovanni Castellaneta. Ambassador of Italy to the United States’ Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post,  but it is extremely important to emphasize the time dishonored pattern of ethnic insult found in this otherwise honorable press. The Ambassador was responding to the Post’s one sided (and ethnically enhanced) March 1 front-page article, “As Italy’s Banks Tighten Lending, Desperate Firms Call on the Mafia.”

     

    Al Capone sits in the italian Market on Arthur Avenue in The Bronx and greets those looking for an authentic Italian American neighborhood.

     

    To demonstrate the “pattern”of which I write, Ambassador Castellaneta’s well phrased complaint must be conjoined with that of Anthony Julian Tamburri’s slightly less recent I-Italy.org offering “Just when we thought it was safe to go back into the water...” that cited another example of simple-minded stereotyping by Michael Kinsley’s opinion editorial in the Washington Post “Bailing Out Organized Crime, The Treasury Has a Gun to Its Head” that featured a photograph of James Gandolfini in a Sopranoseque pose and a bigoted ethnic parody of the federal bailout of an unfortunately (for Italian Americans) mostly non-Italian industry.

    See what is offered a few steps away from the Italian American Museum on Mulberry Street in Manhattan.

     

    Five years ago, as some readers may already know, I was deeply engaged with prominent Italian American leaders in The Coalition Against Racial, Religious and Ethnic Stereotyping (CARRES), in the battle over ethnic stereotyping in Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks production of Shark Tale. I did lots or research and wrote lots of words, some of which were actually read by other people all over the world, but the piece below never met the light of day until now. It was a letter to the New York Times in response to the idiotic rating of, "PG. Parental guidance Suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children. Some mild language and Crude Humor" given to Shark Tale and the equally malformed movie review by A.O. Scott who gave it his own rating of "PG (Parental guidance suggested). It has some mildly scary situations and one death." Note this was a production intended to be viewed mostly by impressionable young children with only slightly less impressionable parents, or hired care givers, in tow.

     

    October 1, 2004

     

    Letters to the Editor New York Times

     

    To the Editors: I was surprised to read in A.O. Scott’s review of “Shark Tale” (Fish With Stars' Voices in a Pop-Culture Sea, October 1, 2004) about “cheerful quasi-ethnic stereotypes… that are technically insulated against offensiveness because, well, they’re all fish.” The fact is that for young children they are real characters, and they are made more real by negative ethnic and racial stereotypes. For instance, and in particular, the frighteningly ignorant and violent sharks have Italian last names or first names commonly heard in Italian-American communities (Luca, Frankie) and speak in a stereotypical lower class Italian vernacular. Promoting negative ethnic and racial stereotypes can make children wary of strangers who share the surface characteristics of media stereotypes. There is also nothing cheerful about inserting into the beautiful minds of children the idea that people who have Italian names, or use colloquial speech are also organized criminals. The other ethnic, racial, and gender stereotypes in the film are equally disturbing. As a social scientist who has spent a considerable amount of my professional life dealing with the consequences of bigotry I am amazed that someone writing for The New York Times would dismiss negative ethnic stereotyping in a children’s feature as either “cheerful” or harmless.

     

    The pattern is clear, from ordinary reporters to media moguls, as well as Italian American ethnic entrepreneurs when there is need for ethnic content to infuse into real and imagined bullies and beasts, one need only to reach into the hat of racial and ethnic stereotypes and pull out a …….. (fill in the blank).

    In my next blog entry I will replicate the longer press release of my comments on Shark Tale in both English and Italian (Dichiarazione in merito a Shark Tale ) so readers can see the logic of my argument about the terrible damage done by negative ethnic stereotyping in general and the Italian version in particular.
  • Op-Eds

    Remembrance of Jews past, but never lost


    This special focus on i-Italy reminded me of times past, so I visited the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on line and found this there about INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY:

     

    In 2005, the United Nations General Assembly designated January 27 as an annual international day of commemoration to honor the victims of the Nazi era. This date marks the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. Every member nation of the U.N. has an obligation to honor the memory of Holocaust victims and develop educational programs as part of the resolve to help prevent future acts of genocide. The U.N. resolution rejects denial of the Holocaust, and condemns discrimination and violence based on religion or ethnicity. To commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Museum hosts a candle-lighting ceremony attended by the Washington, D.C. diplomatic community, Holocaust survivors, and the general public. It had this place to reflect and write. This is what I wrote:

     

    Read the online issue
    Download the print issue in pdf

    "As many other children who grew up in Brooklyn after World War II the Holocaust (Shoah) was recounted to us, unuttered, in sights and scenes such as the blue tattoos that inexplicably appeared on the arms of people, and the overcrowded apartments of friends who were sharing their everything with newly arrived relatives (I supposed) who spoke with “funny accents.” As children we didn’t know the meanings of it, but we knew enough not to ask. As an adult I know, and wish I didn’t."

     

    In Brooklyn we lived the Holocaust everyday as matter of course. Many parts of the borough especially Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Borough Park, Bensonhurst, and Brownsville were peopled with those who had escaped before it began or those coming to the United States after it ended from numerous D.P. (Displaced Persons) camps. Those who hardly "survived" concentration camps such as Buchenwald, Bergen/Belson, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, or  whole cities such as Warsaw, Budapest, or Vilna, came to live, work and sometimes even start new families here. Almost all of the newcomers had families in Brooklyn and if not, they found others, or each other, to begin new lives. That is why being "Brooklyn" is also being not a little bit Jewish, and why before there was a New York State mandated Holocaust Curriculum, we learned about it in school as well as out of it.

     

    I could spend the rest of life writing about Jews to whom I am in one sense of another "connected," beginning with the family of one of my first best friends - Ikey (I assume Isaac) August - who lived, like me, in the Red Hook (low income) Housing Project. Ikey's father worked in a bakery and, therefore, gave my family of seven children, and two occasionally employed adults, bagels, onion rolls, and bialys to eat. Having Jews as good friends and neighbors was multigenerational. My Sicilian American mother told me she was spat upon by her Gentile Greenpoint neighbors because her father was a landlord there. There were few Sicilians around then and her best friend and Public School-mate was a Jewish girl whose dad owned a beer garden. My dad, however, was never so open minded. I think he believed that Jews wore hats to cover the horns on their heads, and he also thought they were especially "lucky." He never understood the Yiddish phrase - "Nil sine magno labore."

     

    I wrote the following for The Brooklyn Free Press in 1997, and it should now be placed here with the image it refers to.
     
     
    Shoes! by Jerry Krase
     
         It's Rosh Hashana and Brooklyn College is closed so I don't have to teach classes today, so I can catch up on my writing, so I'm reading Newsday and looking for little bits for my Free Press piece on the dismal New York City mayoral elections and simultaneously listening to the replacement liberal talk-show host for Brian Lehrer (who's also taking the day off) on WNYC interview a general who just published a book on the danger of nuclear weapons for the future of world peace answer a question from a caller about why the United States dropped an atomic bomb on two targets in Japan even though they knew they were in the middle of a neighborhood filled with "innocent" civilians.
     
         While the general is talking about the problem of "ancillary" damage the caller says there must have been some place where THE BOMB could have been dropped without slaughtering civilians and still have made the point and the general mumbled about "American" casualties.
     
         Good thing that the caller didn't ask the general why, in contrast, during the same World War II in Europe the Allies said they didn't bomb near the German concentration camps because of the problem of potential "ancillary" damage, which incidentally made it possible for me and two of my daughters to experience a "perfectly preserved" Auschwitiz when they came to visit me in Poland last Spring. I waited for Kristin and Karen to get to Krakow because I was afraid to go alone. We went to pay respects to the families of too many of our friends who lost a piece of themselves in the Holocaust.
     
         My connection to the Holocaust is Growing up Gentile in Brooklyn and I remember things like when I was very little asking my mother to explain "it" after coming across photographs of concentration camp victims in a magazine, and as a teenager delivering orders to people with blue tattoos on their wrists or forearms. In Brooklyn you can't avoid "it" and "its" repercussions; like Max and Helen, survivors of Buchenwald, who owned a coffee shop I used to frequent who always kwelled over my children when I brought them in with me to share my "Breakfast Special".
     
         Well the point is that when we got to Auschwitz and passed through the Arbeit Macht Frei portal I tried to find something small enough to comprehend. A one-piece-at-a-time-kind-of-thing that could be slowly added up to millions allowing me to remember without being totally overwhelmed by grief and shame for being a member of the human race.
     
         I found "it" in a mound of shoes behind the glass of an exhibit of the "personal effects" taken from people before they were gassed and their bodies incinerated. I took out my memo pad and quickly drew a picture of one shoe which caught my eye. It was tiny; a young girl's red and white leather open-toed shoe with a slightly elevated wedged heel. It was the kind of shoe my wife and I might have bought for our daughters to wear for their high school graduation and about which they would complain as not being "in style". I imagined that this barefoot child and her mother spent their last moments together in the same room that later I also entered- and then walked out of- with my own children. Shoes!
     
     

    PS: I don't have the time right now, or the patience ever,  to comment, without rage and profanity, on Pope Benedict XVI's reinstatement of an excommunicated Bishop (Richard Williamson) who seems to take pleasure in the notoriety he is receiving, again, for denying what we in Brooklyn have known since we were kids. I have never been a very good Catholic and such actions on the part of someone who claims infalliblity of one sort or another makes it increasingly unlikely that I ever will be. Shalom (Pace)
  • Op-Eds

    My Best Wishes to Mr. President Barack Hussein Obama


    Now that BHO has become the new tenant at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW it seems that everybody wants to get into the act with offering advice and guidance (guida e consiglio) The assumption is that not only does he have a mind, it is also a more open one. One of the first of these offerings was made by Thomas Friedman in his regular The New York Times opinion column, "Radical in the White House."  

     

    Firstly, Tom makes it known, as though in reassuring relief, that Barack isn't really a radical (radicale) at least in the sense of the leftist kind as was feared during the nasty Presidential Election Campaign or the rightist kind he equivocates. For him, to be a radical is to be merely different. For me, and most dictionaries, it is to be a "revolutionary" (rivoluzionario). In any case I assume that Tom went to DC to attend the Inauguration and cut a rug at one or another of the post-inauguration glittering galas (galà patinati).

     

     

    I, on the other hand, spent the first of my January 20, 2009 waking hours (7-9 AM) as usual at Dizzy's "A Finer Diner"  where I had one slice of 8 to 12 grain dry toast and a bottomless cup of coffee (una tazza di caffè smisurata) scanning all the newspapers that were delivered that day. A venerable tradition at Dizzy's is the offering of a "Quote for the Day" on the other side from the "Daily Specials" on the sandwich board which sits on the sidewalk at 8th Avenue and 9th Street creating a pedestrian hazard. My favorite, newish, waitperson, Cecile, has managed to provide patrons and passersby with some respite from the depressing quotes (le citazioni deprimenti) by the famous or the anonymous borrowed from Bartlett's "Familiar Quotations."

     

    On Inauguration Day she was searching for an especially meaningful missive for which I offered, and she approved, "No more Misunderestimation (Non piu' sottovalutazioni)" - two little, and one big, words that need no further explanation. After making sure that everyone who came into the establishment had perused the sandwich board and offered me left-wing praise or right-wing puzzlement for my phrasing, I took the subway (la Metro) this morning to Manhattan to do some business and hoped to get back in time to watch the inauguration on television with my wife. Across from me on the usually yuppy-packed "F" train was what appeared to me to be a middle-aged African American homeless (senza tetto) woman bundled up in an odd collection of winter and summer outerwear.

     

    She was fast asleep and next to her sat the usual collection of black plastic garbage bags containing all that she felt worthy of trudging along with her as she travelled on her way to nowhere (in nessun posto) on a cold and Historic Inauguration Day. She gave off such a foul odor (odore ripugnante) that she had half the car to herself. A long line of persons of no-color, previously residing in the White House, have found other things too important to consider than her obvious plight. My wish is that Barack Hussein not only remembers the people his predecessors left behind in America, but also comes back to visit them (ritorni per visitarli). Now that would be really radical! (Ora questo sarebbe veramente radicale!)

     
  • Op-Eds

    From Luigi Barzini to Karl Rove (Oh, Vergogna America!)


    Because I own two of Luigi Barzini's books, I had considered writing a short blog about my experience with Barzini but decided against it after reading the report on the Casa Italialia at Columbia University symposium here on i-italy.org. However when I read Karl Rove's pandering presidential paean in The Wall Street Journal I felt obliged to at least mention Barzini as part of my continuing critique of journalism in America today. Most journalists today have no problem writing about things of which they know very little as they confidently assume their readers, who get most of their information from them, know even less. At the Casa Italiana symposium, Barzini's son Andrea was quoted as saying, " He has always been an outsider, in Italy and in America,”...“From this condition of outsider comes the ambition of giving explanations about the Italian and the American national characters.”

     

    It is hard to find writers of any sort today who are "outsiders" and those who are, struggle to get inside or otherwise to find their niche. Writers write in anticipation of audiences and not because they have an idea, something to say, or just a way of saying something. In other words the writing is "for" something as opposed to "from" something. I did not know Barzini but well understood that one might take offense at his "truths" about "them" or "us." He seemed not to pander to his readers, but did soften his blows at their vanity and self-indulgences by phrases such as this when he visited an "old American" family "Their manners were, technically speaking, no manners at all, but a gentle and benevolent disposition of the spirit." I can't imagine what Barzini would have written about about Sarah Palin.

     

    As anyone who has taken a look at some of my posts here or on ww.brooklynsoc.org knows all too well, I believe that one of the keys to an effective democracy is a vigilant, intelligent, and multi-partisan free press. Until a few decades ago I think America had something approaching that ideal. Unfortunately, since then, we have lost many intelligent competing voices as newspapers folded or were consolidated with radio and television stations. Those that are left seem to have become almost pure vehicles for conveying advertising. Even the promise of the Internet as a great Electronic Highway for freedom of expression has been lost as the big guys and gals have moved in on the rest of us humble "bloggers." An especially big disappointment for me has been the newspaper scene in The Big Apple. It is not just those broad sheets on my Left which has lost so much luster but also those on the Right. Below is my response to the most recent of Karl Rove's political pablum being dished out in The Wall Street Journal. It doesn't instill confidence in the future of the American (and therefore the World's) economy when the sacred paper of investors has Karl as a "regular." Then again, they also couldn't tell the difference between a derivative and a Madoff.

     

    If one wishes to understand how we in the US have been dumbed down, one need only take an occasional peek at the Wall Street Journal which at one time (B.M. as in "Before Murdoch") was at least a literate bastion of the allegedly Free (and mythical) Market System. It is a daily newspaper that I peruse among many others in order to fathom how the Other,"Other Half" thinks. Today on its most esteemed pages you can be treated by another hopelessly non-tongue in cheek "Ode" to the ungracefully exiting ex-non-elected President George W. Bush by none other than Karl Rove (the man who single-handedly gave agitprop a better name). One will also find smack in the middle of WSJ's editorial page "Review and Outlook" which has been regularly bashing anything and anybody left of Attila, a note about "The Journal Editorial Report on FOX News Channel." In comparison with FOX, CNN seems almost centrist.

     

    From The Wall Street Journal, December 26, 2008 page A11

    "Bush Is a Book Lover" A glimpse of what the president has been reading. By Karl Rove

     

    With only five days left, my lead is insurmountable. The competition can't catch up. And for the third year in a row, I'll triumph. In second place will be the president of the United States. Our contest is not about sports or politics. It's about books. It all started on New Year's Eve in 2005. President Bush asked what my New Year's resolutions were. I told him that as a regular reader who'd gotten out of the habit, my goal was to read a book a week in 2006. Three days later, we were in the Oval Office when he fixed me in his sights and said, "I'm on my second. Where are you?" Mr. Bush had turned my resolution into a contest.

     

    To find the whole thing go to: http://sec.online.wsj.com/article/SB123025595706634689.html where I posted this comment: K's piece should have been titled "Look! Look! Look at "W" Read." With all that reading going on, I guess he didn't have enough time to find the WMD's or noti ce the economic meltdown. Syntax has hardly been the forte of either the mouth or the piece thereof.

     

    I also added this disclaimer below:

    for ID purposes only: Jerome Krase, Ph.D.

    Emeritus and Murray Koppelman Professor

    Sociology

    Brooklyn College

    The City University of New York
  • Op-Eds

    Italicity: Who, What, Where, When and How's Italian


    In "Italici” Piero Bassetti" asks, and answers rhetorically: "Who are the Italici? Yes, they are also Italians, of course. Better still; post-Italians. of Italian extraction, but also Italian-speaking nations and regions: Italian Switzerland, Dalmatia, Istria, San Marino, Malta. And then there are those men and women who, though they do not have a single drop of Italian blood in them, share the same values and style of life, the unmistakable models of that Italian way of life that the expansion of the Italian economy has, over the past few years spread around the world. The young and not so young who have chosen that particular style amongst the many put on offer by the wares of international industry. And let us not forget the managers and entrepreneurs who base their professional activities on the products and initiatives linked to Italy of to products of an Italian flavor. So the figures and numbers change. Or rather explode. One can count on about two hundred million people spread over five continents." Bassetti is a very intelligent man. I know because some of his most brilliant ideas about Italians parallel my own musings, and complaints, about Italian-Americans.

     

    As to Who's Italian/American? the number of Italian Americans depends on how they are identified. A century ago they were simply Americans born in Italy. At that time, nationality and race were virtually synonymous. Later they were Americans born in Italy or who had at least one parent born in Italy. Then in 1990 they became Americans who identified themselves as such. Using self definitions in both the 1990 and 2000 Census over 16,000,000 people in the United States identified themselves as Italian American. In combination with other demographic indicators some estimate the population at closer to twenty million souls. Other than by self-identification, how do we ascertain membership in an ethnic group? As other American-ethnic groups, Italian Americans are collections of people who share a varying number of socially relevant demographic attributes such as: national origins, cultural values, practices, language uses, and religion. In many cases they have more in common with non-Italian Americans than with each other. "Culturally Italian" people have migrated to the US from places other than Italy. As the number of Italian immigrants and the foreign born Italians have been decreasing the definition of Italian American has been expanding. Another way of defining a group is by a shared common culture.

     

    Decades ago, a Giovanni Agnelli Foundation study identified Italian cultural values as: “the importance attached to intermediate groups: the family, the neighborhood, and the community.” Germane to the quality of domestic life was “the importance of the home, the dinner table, and holidays.” Relating to interpersonal supportiveness Italians exhibit “religious faith understood as love of neighbor, and as for actions in this world they show “a feeling for group and village ties, hospitality, and the importance of personal relationships.” Italians also have “a realistic view of life as indicated by anti-dogmatic skepticism, political realism and higher education choices made pragmatically.” Most of these qualities are shared by Is and IAs but unfortunately also share the absence of another important quality; inclusiveness (inclusivita).

     

    Some personal examples of being included and not included in the fold might be helpful in this regard. I have noticed over the decades that many, if not most, Italians don't hold Italian Americans of any generation too highly in their esteem. For example, Italian scholars often seemed disappointed when I tell them “I'm Italian-American” instead of the co-ethnic embrace I expect. Strange, because I don't get the same response from my Slavic counterparts. Maybe that’s because there are fewer Slavic wannabees. Most people, not only Italians and Italo-Americans, find it hard to believe that I'm even part-Italian. I occasionally paint, and like “real” Italians, I don't like criticism of my work so I don’t tell people that some of the artwork hanging on my walls was created by me. That is until they make a positive comment about it. Some years ago a colleague (collega) from the Brooklyn College Sociology Department was admiring one of my paintings so I said took credit for it. At first he seemed puzzled. Then he smiled and said: “Aha ... now I remember, your mother was Italian.” He didn't realize they were studies of French Impressionists (see below) After that, he wanted to know everything I knew about the mafia. Sometimes, being included is not all it’s cracked up to be.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    On the other hand, I recently and gratefully received an invitation (in inglese) from the Italian Consulate General in New York to attend a free public concert billed as “an introduction to the U.S. of the music of Fabrizio De Andrè as interpreted by Mauro Pagani.” I thought it was a good opportunity to bring my non-Italian-speaking but all-Italian American wife to an Italian event that she could understand. I should have known better. By the time we got to the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Avenue from one of the “Outer Boroughs,” where most Italians and Italo-Americans live, it was packed (as usual/come solito). Luckily, an Italian-speaking all Italo-American friend who is a “regular” at the Institute, and his all-Italian American non-Italian speaking wife were holding seats for us. We uncomfortably settled in and when the program started late (also come solito) the first speaker welcomed the (mostly all-Italian, Italian-speaking) crowd in English making us feel “at home.” However, not long after those English words of welcome, he unabashedly (imperturbatamente) asked, if the crowd preferred Italian. The not quite unanimous response was a chorus of "Italiano!" Hardly an invitation to inclusiveness.

     

    A major point of Bassetti’s transnational glocal theory is how one can be included among the Italici with even the slightest connection to Italy and Italianita. However, trying to make a point about being “only” half-Italian-American is not easy when whole ones surround you. Either “they” don’t get it, or they don’t care to. At the panel presentation of Bassetti’s book at The Zerilli Marimo Italian House at NYU (La Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo NYU) I stood up in the audience and tried to make a point about the paradoxical nature of identities; that having one identity doesn't exclude, even what appears to be contradictory and mutually exclusive others. I tried, come solito, to make the point by self-reference. People who know that my mother's family came from Sicily say that I am “half-Italian.” My response is to point at my waist and say: "Sono meta-siciliano, qua e giu" (I am half Sicilian, from here down). The lack of response to my comment made me think that everyone thought I made a crude remark. What I meant was that a person can't be half anything. Even with complex combinations we are whole things, just like Italians and Italy. The What?, Where?, When? and How? of Italianita has always been in question. I had suggested more than a decade ago that its meaning was contested by the “dark-skinned” beauty of Denny Mendez (Miss Italy 1996). She was a naturalized Italian citizen from the Dominican Republic where her mother had married an Italian. Two contest judges had been suspended for (incorrectly) saying, that a black woman could not represent Italian beauty. Despite some forms of cultural myopia, Italians do have an eye for beauty and one-third of the million Italians who voted in the pageant gave their nod to Mendez. At the time, Prime Minister Romano Prodi commented on the results by saying “Italy is changing.” If he was an historian rather than an economist he would have noted that half a millennium ago a quasi-Italian Cristobal Colon (Cristoforo Colombo) discovered Santo Domingo (on the island of Hispaniola) and may have left some of his DNA behind. His brother Bartolomé Colón (Bartolomeo Colombo) founded the settlement and Santo Domingo was also the hometown of Don Diego Colón, Chistopopher’s son who was the viceroy of the colony. Maybe Ms Mendez’ Italy roots come from her mother’s and not her father’s side.

     

    If we think about how the rest of the world contributed to making Italy Italian and not just how Italy contributed to the rest of the world, we might realize that a lot of “Italian” things aren’t really all that Italian. For example, the most iconic of Italian foods pasta (pasta) , tomatoes (pomodori), and for northerners - polenta (polenta) have foreign origins. If Italians are what they eat, then most are indigenous Americans and Asians. If we add the cultural and genetic exchanges from Imperially German and culturally Greek Romans to the lavishly “Oriental” Venetians, as well as the light and dark contributions of the Normans and the Saracens, not to mention the unanticipated 20th century consequences of 19th century Italian adventures in Africa, one could suggest that maybe Italy never was (really isn’t) Italian at all. In that case Italicita isn’t local, global or glocal, it’s cosmic (cosmico). With this understanding Silvio Berlusconi and even Umberto Bossi might solve the foreigner problem in Italy by re-defining the immigrant invaders and the “G2s” (Seconde Generazioni) as the return of long lost tribes of italici.

     

    As Piero Bassetti well understands, Italians may want (or perhaps “need”) to stretch the limits of Italicity but closer to home, they have real problems with dealing with their neighbors. Italy is divided, north south, dark, light, rich, poor, g1, g2, g3, etcetera, etcetera... Maybe first they (we) should learn to get along at home before spreading out into the global village. As I have argued, even though Italian Americans are well integrated in America, they are still distinct. And despite their disunity, they are united by positive and negative stereotypes about who they are. The fact that representations of Italian Americans are contradictory is expected because Italian America, is extremely diverse and increasingly so. Italy is also changing rapidly and struggling to reach consensus on who is, and is not, Italian. Italy has always been diverse, even if unrecognized as multicultural with its newest mixture. Italians and Italian Americans must reach out to everyone who can be tied to Italy while simultaneously opening themselves to others who share their basic values. As both become more diverse, old outmoded and narrowly circumscribed notions of Italianita must also change. If not Italian Americans, Italians and even the mighty Italici, like the dinosaurs, will become extinct.

     

     

     
  • Op-Eds

    Obamania or Obamaphobia: Italians in a Post-Bush America


          Come si dice in italiano “yes we could”. Si, potremmo? In any case, we did it (lo abbiamo fatto). I begin this post-election reflection by quoting myself from i-italy when I recalled being asked by visiting European journalists if America was ready to elect a Black President, to which I replied that “America wasn’t ready but America doesn’t elect the President -- the electorate (a much smaller group) does. For example in 2004 about 60% of eligible voters voted and George W. Bush got half of that or about 30% of eligible voters; only 62 millions votes from a population of about 300 million; about 20% of the total population. So if only a fifth of America wasn’t racist, Obama could win.” Lucky for Barack, America is only 5.5% Italian.

          On the other hand, election returns showed that New York City’s Italian American politicians had “the luck of the Irish” (McCain-wise). According to the most recent estimates by the John Calandra Italian American Institute, Italian Americans make up 5.54% of la Grande Mela’s population. As might be expected, things were especially sad (tristi) in Staten Island (almost 40% Italian). The Sunday (after the election) New York Times dissected the “Changing Electorate” finding among other things that White Protestants went 65% for McCain vs 34% for Obama. 54% of Catholics voted for Obama and 45% for McCain, but that figure included Hispanics who voted 67% to 31% in favor of Obama so I would estimate that the majority of white Catholics voted for the loser. 55 % of Whites voted for all-white McCain and (surprise, surprise) 95% of Blacks voted for half-white Obama.

          From The Times data, I created some electoral stereotypes: The perfect Obamaniac was a young (18-29) black Jewish unmarried lesbian urbanite with a Ph. D. who thought her financial situation worsened during W’s tenure and the perfect McCainiac was an old (60+) white Protestant, rural husband, with a Bachelor’s Degree who thought his financial situation improved during W’s tenure. How’s that for polarized??

          Just like “Obama,” “tsunami” ends in a vowel and they swamped New York’s Italian American politicos (politici). With what was left of the luck of the “really Irish,” Democrat Mike McMahon defeated Republican Bob Straniere by a 2 to 1 margin in the13th Congressional District and ended 28 years of GOP (and Italian American) control of the Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst, Dyker Heights, and Staten Island district. Losing Staten Island means that when 2009 begins no Republican will represent New York City in Congress. Similarly, Janele Hyer-Spencer (D) defeated Joe Cammarata (R) 55 - 45% in Assembly District 60 that covers Bay Ridge and Staten Island. Alec Brook-Krasny (D) 70% defeated Bob Capano (R) 70 - 30% in the 46th AD that includes Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, Bensonhurst, Coney Island, and Brighton Beach. In Queens, State Senator Serphim Maltese (R) (in office for 2 decades) lost to co-ethnic Joseph Addabbo (D). It was predicted that the vote would be close but Obama’s coattails gave Addabbo a 57.5% to 42.5% semi-landslide (semi-frana).

          As I have written in my non-best selling book* Staten Island is the present and future of New York City’s Italian Americans. Therefore it is important to point out that while Obama got 88 % of Bronx votes, 85 % of Manhattan’s, 79 % of Brooklyn’s and 74 % of Queens’, only la bella isola di Staten carried for John McCain (52%) according to The Associated Press. In addition, my friend and City University colleague, John Mollenkopf was quoted in The Times as saying that: “Of the white Democrats who in the past have shown a propensity to vote for republicans in mayoral elections, in preference over black, or even white candidates who have strong black support – the Jewish neighborhoods were least likely to fall away from Obama, and the Italian neighborhoods the most.” My own analysis would suggest that the two groups in this election, especially more Orthodox Jewish voters, were actually much closer in anti-Obama voting. I also suggest that the Italian American politics of the past on Staten Island, and elsewhere, that have based on narrow cultural and ideological appeals and simple demographic dominance, has to broaden as the population and sentiments of the borough, city, state, and nation as well as the Italian American electorate itself has changed.

          Not to be outdone by Italian Americans in not jumping on the Obama band wagon, in Moscow (Mosca) Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, told President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia that President-elect Barack Obama “has all the qualities to get along well with you: he’s young, handsome and suntanned, so I think you can develop a good working relationship.” Italians saw this as a gaff (gaffe). La repubblica reported: Berlusconi, prima gaffe su Obama_"E' giovane, bello e abbronzato." We all, Italians and Italian Americans alike, should be grateful that il Cavaliere didn’t take the opportunity to also reflect on the religion of Obama’s Kenyan dad.

     

    *The Staten Island Italian American Experience, Staten Island: The DaVinci Society of Wagner College, 2007.
  • Op-Eds

    "Obama" Ends in a Vowel


    With the United States Presidential Election Campaign about to end, I am sure that we will be barraged in the mass and not so mass media by last minute appeals to ethnic, religious, and racial prejudices. This is my own personal appeal to the ethnic consciousness of Italian Americans to vote for their closest co-ethnic in the Presidential race. Barack Obama is the only candidate whose last name ends in a vowel.

     

    As is obvious to anyone who knows me, I will be voting for Barack H. Obama next Tuesday, November 4, 2008. There are many good reasons for casting my vote for him, the least of which is the fact that (like many Italian-Americans) his name ends in a vowel. Ethnic codes have long played an important role in American political campaigns. A few evenings ago I confronted the coding in the form of my ninety-five year old mother-in-law who, along with my wife, her brother and his wife were having dinner at my home. My wife’s mother’s family had been involved in Brooklyn Democratic Party politics since the turn of the 20th Century, so getting a read on Nana’s take on the election seemed appropriate. Forget about party affiliation, the best indicators of political leanings are the talk show radio hosts one listens to. Nana likes Mike Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannerty, (and Bob Grant), so her children tried to convince her that Obama wasn’t a Moslem (not that he shouldn’t be a Moslem), and wasn’t a socialist (ditto). I emphasized the vowel-ending name. Nothing worked. Luckily, she is no longer registered to vote and we live in New York State where if Obama loses, I will move to Europe. Speaking of which, I was in Berlin for an international meeting on “Migration and Museums” last week.

     

    There I was told by informed sources that Europeans, if they lived in the US would vote for Obama, but if Obama was running for office in Europe, they wouldn’t. I have been reasonably active in American electoral politics for a long, long time. In fact, when I was running for a Community School Board that oversaw public education in a racially, ethnically, and religiously contested area in the 1970s, my mother-in-law was working for the NYC Board of Elections at a voting station in the district. She related to me that when people asked her about my “background” (because my name was not an announcement of such) she told the Jewish voters that I was Jewish and the Italians that my mother was Italian. The Irish didn't vote because they sent their kids to Catholic school to avoid the Italians and Jews, I suppose. Nana was way ahead of her time. Yesterday I picked this off Irish National News (RTE) from the internet: “Obama's Heritage Traced to Ireland”, (15 March 2007) “US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama can now count himself as one of the millions of Americans with Irish heritage. Research by the genealogy website ancestry.co.uk reveals that Mr Obama's great great great grandfather was born in Ireland, although it is not yet known where. Falmouth Kearney sailed from Ireland to New York in 1850 at the age of 19 on the S.S. Marmion arriving on the 20th of March. He initially settled in Ohio, got married, had eight children, and later moved to Indiana, right next door to the state Obama currently represents in the US Senate. Mr Keaney was part of the great American migration to escape the 1840s potato famine in Ireland.”

     

    Someone told me in Berlin that there is now a Dublin watering hole called “O’Bama’s.” Not to be outdone by the Irish in stretching the boundaries of ethnic inclusiveness, in addition to my emphasis on Obama’s Italian name-ending-vowel roots, Bob Blancato, the national Chair of the Italian American Democratic Leadership Council (IADLC) proclaimed in grand ethnic harmony that “The son of an immigrant himself, Barack Obama shares the values of Italian Americans -- family, work, education.” It seems that without my knowledge, or consultation, the week before Columbus Day, the national organization of ItalianAmerican Democrats had enthusiastically endorsed Obama and Biden and pledged to work hard to elect them. Their press release claims that the “15-year old IADLC ([email protected]) is a membership organization of community leaders from across the country who work to promote Italian Americans to high elected and appointed office and promote the interests of Italian Americans in the Democratic Party. Its advisory committee includes all the Italian American Democratic members of Congress and the three Italian American Democratic governors.” Is a Little Italy "Ristorante Obama" far behind? The outcome of the racially-tinted 2008 US Presidential contest is important to me because in the sixties I was a community organizer who tried to work with black and white ethnics in the deteriorating cores of American cities.

     

    They both were facing similar problems but couldn’t get beyond issues that were only skin deep. Barack Obama's election will prove to me that decades of difficult, professionally unrewarding, and occasionally dangerous work have been worth the effort. In my “Italian American” work, I have attempted to show similarities between the historical experiences of Italian- and African-Americans. As I wrote in “do the Correct Thing” here on I-italy, I don't expect Obama to get a majority of Italian American votes but I hope that, if they vote for "the other non-Italian guy," they do it for the correct reasons. And, by the way, "McCain" doesn’t end in a vowel.

     

     

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