“How Italians Became ‘White’ – Vicious bigotry, reluctant acceptance: an American story” (by Brent Staples, The New York Times)

"Racist dogma about Southern Italians found fertile soil in the United States. As the historian Jennifer Guglielmo writes, the newcomers encountered waves of books, magazines and newspapers that 'bombarded Americans with images of Italians as racially suspect.' They were sometimes shut out of schools, movie houses and labor unions, or consigned to church pews set aside for black people. They were described in the press as 'swarthy,' 'kinky haired members of a criminal race and derided in the streets with epithets like 'dago,' 'guinea' — a term of derision applied to enslaved Africans and their descendants — and more familiarly racist insults like 'white nigger' and 'nigger wop'.”

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