Ay, paison, let’s dismantle white supremacy
You might need to hear this: Italian-Americans need to recognize our internalized white supremacy and anti-Blackness and dismantle these structures within our community and ourselves.
The recent controversy over the Christopher Columbus statues, fueled by the rage of Black Americans within the Black Lives Matter movement, made me analyze Columbus in a way I never had before.
Over the last few years, I had attempted to rebuke the attachment Italian-Americans have to Columbus by detailing the atrocities he committed against Native Americans. We should not want to celebrate someone who: introduced Native Americans to diseases that spread and killed thousands, raped the women who survived, used the children who survived as currency, stole their land, destroyed their homes, erased their culture, and executed all of these crimes without having even stepped foot here. His men had arrived to where they thought was “India” and declared it their own, while slaughtering the Natives whose home they invaded and pillaged. Yet, we learn the whitewashed story that the mighty Italian Christopher Columbus discovered America.
Why are we taught such a blatant lie? Why do Native Americans who have been shouting the truth about Columbus for hundreds of years continue to be ignored? Why do Black Americans who have been shouting the truth about America for hundreds of years continue to be ignored?
Because the truth isn’t easy for white people to digest.
Truth shows white people in our true light. We stole this land from the Native Americans and we stole the wealth and expansion of this land through the slave labor of Black Americans. With enough historical evidence about this to read for eternity, we still scream that no, we did not steal this land, it has always been ours. Manifest Destiny. U.S. history is written by white people who claimed everything, for white people to claim everything.
Our whitewashed version of Columbus is celebrated to this day. On June 11 2020, when asked about the removal of the Columbus statues, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo answered, “I understand the feelings about Christopher Columbus and some of his acts, which nobody would support…But the statue has come to represent and signify appreciation for the Italian American contribution to New York. For that reason, I support it.” As Italian-Americans, we need to ask ourselves: why do we continue to celebrate our culture in conjunction with a pillar of genocide?
One answer is that we have internalized white supremacy. Whether or not we know it on a conscious level, it is ingrained in us that whiteness equals safety. Part of this originates from the American response to the first wave of Italians immigrating to the U.S. Italians eventually became the new “ethnic whites,” being given this label by WASPs, who had previously given this label to the Irish.
Irish immigrants came to the U.S. and were denied housing and job opportunities for years, i.e. “Irish Need Not Apply,” while being treated as less-than-white for having accents and Irish surnames. They were slandered, painted as alcoholics, and awarded a handful of racial slurs by American white people. They were abused and dehumanized by Americans after seeking freedom from being abused and dehumanized by the English. They were denied refuge and safety after famine, disease, and the English themselves tortured them and murdered their families. Now it was the Americans’ turn. After suffering years of American racism and forced assimilation, the Irish were bumped up the white-hierarchy ladder when the Italians arrived.
Unlike the Irish before them, Italians had not had their native land and language colonized by the English, thereby having little to no grasp of the English language. This alone pushed the Irish much further out of the “ethnic whites” category and pulled Italians in. Many Italians were designated racial slurs by WASPs, white Americans in government, and the Irish immigrants and their children who had begun to feel safe in their whiteness. Some of the slurs alluded to Italians not arriving here legally, as they could not advocate for themselves in fluent English. One such slur is “wop,” which is an acronym for “without papers.”
Another, more obvious reason Italians were declared “ethnic whites” is due to their appearance. Many Italians have black or brown hair—which is often curly or coiled—black or brown eyes, and olive-tan skin. Italians, especially Southern Italians, were darker and therefore phenotypically “less white” than many white Americans. Their dark features became the focus of a slew of new racial slurs, the most harmful of which is “guinea.” This particular slur was created as a reference to the Guinea Coast of Africa, in an attempt by American whites to dehumanize Italians by comparing them to Africans. This aided Italians’ own anti-Blackness in denouncing some of our African roots, as many Italians are descended from Africans, and our African ancestry is responsible for some of our physical attributes.
As the new “ethnic whites,” Italians became the “dirty, lazy, stupid” immigrants who didn’t deserve to live in the great land of America. They were white in the eyes of the law, but were still denied housing, job opportunities, educational opportunities, and encountered a litany of propaganda describing them as suspicious because of their darkness. They quickly became targets of the Ku Klux Klan, who often highlighted Italians’ Black ancestry. Italians were lynched and convicted of crimes they didn’t commit. They faced similar obstacles and abuse that the Irish had faced for decades, and in some especially racist parts of America, Italians are still seen as less-than-white. However, today and for the last few decades, Italians and especially Italian-Americans have white privilege, so our cultural identity is no longer a threat to our safety.
How did Italians make the transition from the bottom of the hierarchy ladder to the haven of white privilege? They, like those before them, internalized white supremacy as a means of self-preservation. Assimilation was (and in many cases, still is) the path to becoming American. Italians socially and legally changed their names to Anglican names, dyed their hair lighter colors, desperately learned to speak broken English, and kept their culture and language confined to their home, as many Irish immigrants had done. They were discriminated against for decades, and over that time, the myth of Christopher Columbus discovering America grew more and more.
After an infamous lynching of 11 Italians in 1892, Columbus Day was created as a one-time celebration to pacify Italians in America. The lie that Italians had helped found America made them seem like they helped build America to what it was. Italians, having spent time establishing themselves as “Americans” while simultaneously facing constant hardship, saw this as a similar opportunity the Irish had seen when the Italians had immigrated. Italians shifted the negative racial lens off of themselves and onto new immigrants, in alignment with the other “white” Americans. With the blueprint of being accepted in America by shedding your ethnic identity and assimilating into whiteness, Italians had claimed their part in the cycle of racial injustice.
As the descendants of these immigrants, Italian-Americans continue to play our part in the cycle of racial injustice by continuing to internalize white supremacy. Choosing to keep finding safety in whiteness is what allows us to excuse the horrors committed by Christopher Columbus and his men. We must acknowledge and understand the connection between our own history with America and America’s history with whiteness. We need to recognize our role in order to have the proper dialogue of dismantling our internalized White Supremacy and that will free us to dismantle the White Supremacy plaguing the U.S. Sonya Renee Taylor, author of The Body Is Not An Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love, states in [one of] her online videos the significance of white people divulging and speaking about our relationship with whiteness:
…White people need to be talking about whiteness. Stop talking about how hard Black people are suffering, like that is happening in a vacuum,
like Black people are suffering at the hands of some amorphous blob we call the system. Black people are not suffering from an amorphous blob
called the system. Black people are suffering at the hands of whiteness and white people who live inside the delusions of white supremacy and
construct systems and structures to enact the delusions of white supremacy.
This belief that Christopher Columbus is an Italian hero is one of the countless delusions Italian-Americans experience and enact living inside the construct of white supremacy. We benefit from white supremacy, we play an active role in white supremacy, and so we must discuss what we must do to dismantle white supremacy. It is not the responsibility of Native and Black Americans who are outraged at the celebration of Columbus to snap us out of our delusion of whiteness. It should not have taken their outrage and Sonya Renee Taylor’s words to snap me out of my delusion of whiteness. We, as white Americans, and specifically as Italian-Americans, are responsible for dismantling our internalized white supremacy and for dismantling the structures of white supremacy that have plagued America since 1492.
Updated 10/14/21
Stefania D'Andrea is a prose and comedy writer from Queens, NY. She is one of the original staff readers for the literary magazine Cagibi, where she edits and reviews works of fiction and non-fiction. Her first short story, In Her Head, is published in the 12th issue of Newtown Literary. Many of her comedy sketches have been performed at the People's Improv Theatre (PIT) in New York City in 2018 and 2019. Stefania received her B.A. in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing, from the Macaulay Honors College at CUNY Hunter in 2017.
