YSU Italian culture speaker enlightens

Let's re-examine part of America's cultural melting pot, a speaker says.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Americans should study Italian-American culture to get beyond misleading stereotypes, a visiting scholar told a Youngstown State University audience.
"It enables you to find new ways of being American," said Dr. Fred Gardaphe, director of the Italian-American studies program at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
Organized crime
He noted facetiously that the FBI invested millions of dollars in such studies in the 1950s and 60s as it investigated organized crime. "Unfortunately, the only result of that experience is that people see Italian-Americans as equated to organized crime," he observed.
"We need to study Italian-American culture to get beyond that -- to get deeper into the stories, not only of all Italians, but all Americans," said Gardaphe, adding that he would lend any assistance he can as YSU develops an Italian-American studies program.
"It's the story of immigration, of assimilation, of what happens when one culture comes to another culture, and it teaches us a lot about ourselves," he added.
Program sponsors
Gardaphe's appearance Monday was sponsored by YSU's Working Class Studies and American Studies programs. His most recent book, "Leaving Little Italy: Essaying Italian-American Culture," was published this year by SUNY Press.
"Typically, we look at Italian-Americans as kind of a subject of ethnicity, but also, there's an element of social class we have to look at," he said. Italian-Americans are often portrayed in the media only as blue collar, he said. Understanding how Italian-Americans moved from working class to middle class and upper class is part of such a university program, he said. "It's an American story. It's class mobility," he said.
There are consequences when one shifts social classes, he said. For Italian-Americans, the primary consequence was the loss of their ethnicity, said Gardaphe, who is president of the American Italian Historical Association.
"To make it to a higher level of social class, they had to kind of erase their ethnic identity," by ceasing to speak Italian, by not publicly identifying themselves as Italian-Americans, or by changing their names, he observed. "That was easy for Italian-Americans because of the stigma of World War II," in which Italy was America's enemy.
Erasing one's Italian-American identity is no longer necessary today, he said. "Italians are being accepted. Italy is a completely different country," he noted. "The key to understanding Italian-American culture right now is that it's OK in this country to be Italian now in ways that it wasn't OK for my grandfather, even my father," he said. "Go beyond the media presentations of Italian-Americans and find the deeper story," Gardaphe told his audience.