Here are some interesting things:
Southern Italians were considered “black” in the South and were subjected to the Jim Crow laws of segregation. They weren’t allowed to marry “whites.” It was difficult, damn near impossible.
They were designated as “black” on census forms if they lived in the South and that is because the majority of them were dark-skinned Sicilians.
Mass lynchings happened to them often.
One of the biggest mass lynchings happened to Italians in New Orleans when they thought that a Italian immigrant had killed a “white” police officer.
The very few Northern Italians that immigrated here perpetuated the myth that Southern Italians and Greeks were of a different race than them in order to save their own asses. This wasn’t true, and there are actually dark-skinned Italians all over Italy, not just in the South, as well as light-skinned Italians all over Italy.
The reason I say very few is because over 80% of Italian immigrants were from Southern Italy (Sicily, Abruzzo, Calabria, Campania, Sardinia, Naples, etc.)
It was highly unlikely (damn near impossible) for a Southern Italian to own a slave because they were seen as the same as blacks, and at the time, they were the second (right behind blacks) most discriminated against group.
The mass immigration for Italians didn’t start until 1880 and even then, they were discriminated against. However, this mass immigration leads into Italian-Americans today:
Italian is the fourth largest ethnic group reported among white Americans.
The great majority of Italians are now middle class to upper middle class and wealthy. They also mostly work white collar jobs.
Their intermarriage rate is around 90%. It was at 80% in the 70’s. So most Italian-Americans also have a white parent of some other descent, especially if they were born after 1980. Exactly like my friend who has a Sicilian father (and he is very dark-skinned) and white Southerner for a mother. We spoke to my friend’s Sicilian grandfather, and he said that one of his brothers was dating a white girl from the South back in the day and that her family considered him “black.” They thought that was weird because by that time, they were living in New York.
They are now considered white
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Comments:
I thought it was interesting looking at back then and looking at them now. I knew they weren’t considered white back then, but I had no idea they actually wrote them down as black on census forms. That shocked me, and when I found that my friend’s ancestor was listed as black on that census form, I thought the ancestor was just a biracial who had a Sicilian father, and so did she. We were just as surprised to find that he was just a teenage Sicilian immigrant. My friend has tanned skin, dark hair, blue eyes, and freckles to boot. So you can see both ethnicities in her. My Greek professor is way darker than her, and he also has a white, WASPY mother.
Italians are still discriminated against. I remember hearing a group of white women referring to them as “Ghetto Whites”. Many whites who feel they have a “true bloodline” dont like them. Anglo Saxonism is a bitch. Pretty much anyone not from England, Gemany (not Jews), Netherlands and so on is not “truly white”. From my experience and when I look at history, this is how white supremacists feel. Spaniards are technically considered Euopean/”white”, but many dont accept them as that. Discrimination among the white race is very prevalent.
Courtesy Lipstickvalley
Funny how times have changed. Today, Italian-Americans are perceived as nothing but white; live in the best and often most affluent neighborhoods, are well educated, highly successful and have moved into white, Anglo-Saxon society in America quite seamlessly.
they are white, and always have been. Italy is the cradle of Western world, how can they not be white? just because they are tanned? white doesn’t mean blond, lol
How can Italy and Greece be the cradle of western civilization if they learned all they knew from Egyptians and Hebrews. Even the alphabet of the Greeks directly stem from the paleo Hebrew and we know Latin came from the Greek. Also the pantheon of gods in Greece and Rome resemble gods of old Egypt and Babylon. Not to mention some of your founders of Greece were Afro asiatics either Phoenician, menoan , hebrew( tribe of dan-dardan) . Even Greek philosophy came out of the Egyptian mystery school system that several important Greek philosophers patroned. But when the know world was Hellenised by Alexander the Greek and his generals after his death the history of the world began to be skewed. His-Story the way we learned it today began.
Here we go again about the Hebrew!!! Can we have a conversation about anything without someone throwing in the Hebrew, the judeand at the time of Augustus were little more than barbarians, the romans learned from Greek and Egyptians but had their own culture, they copied nothing from the Hebrew which they found repulsing from circumsition to other barbaric acts so please don’t infect my culture with your poison.
It is so impirtant to know every little detail of history and live it, there are those that know and there a those that will deny black ancestory to the end they have Klan members that have fallen out with each other because DNA test have shown that the have just as much black in them as the average African American, one thing that is for certain is that DNA doesn’t lie and whites knew the history of Sicily for any one that questions it go he a DNA test done. Believe me you have Africans to thank for the olive complexion
Tammie, you’re correct. These people will never subject themselves to a DNA test out of fear. This thing was interesting as part of history but to put a racial spin on a culture is unattractive. It gets progressively ugly.
I can say this much, Sicilians DO have Black (sub Saharan African) DNA in a large amount (that varies by person). They may not want to admit it- as no “European” would want to- but that doesn’t change the facts of the matter.
Skin color, culture, and race, however, are not exactly the same thing; there are people, particularly in Louisiana, whom have Blonde hair and Blue eyes and are “Creole”- that is, another culture that formed from racial admixture- just as there are people such as Sicilians who claim to be racially White, yet have curly Black hair, swarthy skin, even a different shape of the skull and jaw.
Having one or two percent of DNA from anywhere does not, however, a culture or race make; most Whites, and Blacks, in the South have Native American DNA, to some degree, but their culture (and their race) could hardly qualify as Native American.
Culture often is defined by what a person’s “race” is perceived to be; it is also defined by what is socially acceptable. Before the 1930 census, people were given the option to put mulatto, quatroon, etc, as their race on census forms. After 1930, if they had one Black ancestor, they were considered Black. This is why these “races”– and by extension, cultures- disappeared as distinct entities in the South. The one drop rule, and the educational emphasis on their being two races in the United States learning system, forced people to fall into these boxes.
In modern times (since the 1980’s), with the acceptance and now promotion of the idea of “many races” and “diversity”, suddenly people consider it advantageous to be mixed race. Whereas 100 years ago, if a lighter skinned Black or Creole moved to another region, they would call themselves White, now the opposite is true: media has made it an honor to be anything BUT White, and so modern day Sicilians in the United States, etc, are claiming their African DNA as a foundation of their culture.
Personally, I would qualify Sicilians, Creoles, and peoples such as the Berbers and modern Greeks, etc, as “mixed” races; they have come from different foundation groups, but since they have existed for a long time as a distinct group, they have in turn formed their own culture (and ethnicity). Just as 500 years ago their was no such thing as a Mexican- and 1000 years ago their was no such thing as a Englishman- over time, they have formed their own new identity.
The purest races- the Finns, the Irish, the Japanese, and the Somalians- have remained pure not just because they have so little admixture, but because they have had almost no cultural change. The changing of social customs affects the survival of a culture more than DNA does; a person may carry a drop of West African blood, but that does not make them anymore African than Chinese.
For those who would ask, I am neither Black nor Sicilian, and I would consider marrying /breeding with a Sicilian or Greek the same as I would consider marrying/breeding with an African bushwoman, a Mayan, or a Japanese; it would be an interracial relationship, not because of DNA differences, but because of the distinct differences in culture and social custom.
I consider Sicilians not to be of the same race as myself, because of their culture, and even more glaring is the propagation of the so-called Sicilian American culture; it is defined by stereotypes, that whether they are true or not, are self reinforcing in this era of “diversity.” I personally would only mix with someone of the Anglo Saxon genetic pool that my ancestry- and my culture- is drawn from. Other people can do as they like- I don’t really care- but I prefer for myself to remain as my ancestors have always been.
What about the black irish. My great grandmother always considered them that. She passed at 102 yrs of age
no man, Sicilians don’t have black blood in them it’s just false. Some of them are mixed in very small amount with levantine people, but they can’t be considered mixed. The Sicilian culture is 100% white and European… Sicily was the Magna Graecia, cruddle of Western civilization, what are you even writing?! It’s more likely that white Americans be mixed.
You need to read a book.
White, Black, or Yellow your roots are in Africa BROTHER!
Please don’t try to redefine race. A culture has absolutely nothing to do with race. Look at the so called melting pot in American Culture. There are only Three races. Negroid, Mongaloid, and Caucasian. Unfortunately racist in this world considers a individual pure if he has no negroid or mongaloid blood. What if the individual has no Caucasian or Mongaloid blood or no caucasian or Negroid blood? Would he be pure? They do exist in all races. WAKE UP FROM THE RACIST PROPAGANDA! Diversity is necessary for the existence of mankind from the irradification of deseases and illnesses to sending mankind to other planets in and beyond our solar system. This is God’s will not at all the imperfect human race.
Good dialogue, good information here. The undisputed evidence that Italians have black dna, some more than others.
I can say I am proud Italian of african descent.
AM
The whole mystery about Sicilians and race has been going on for years and will probably never end. Nobody has any idea what the Sicani, (original inhabitants of Sicily), looked like. We all know that the Moors or Saracens, or Arabs or Africans or whatever they’re calling them these days conquered Sicily in 827 turning it Muslim which was probably not fun but they did do some breeding which is probably what y’all are seeing. My grandfather, a Sicilian-American who immigrated to New York, appears neither white or black in the photos I’ve seen. His mother, also from Sicily, looked similar to an indigenous Mexican women regarding complexion. Neither one of them would have made much progress in the “Jim Crow South” 80 years ago. Add the broken English that they more than likely spoke, and there is no way that any White American in the 1930s would classify them as one of them. What happened in the large cities of the American “North” with Southern Italians and Sicilians explains the dilution of the complexion. First off, Sicilians began to adopt the Italian language (which is similar) instead of the Sicilian dialect. Once they were accepted by their neighborhood Italian folks as Italian, they then assimilated and became Italian-Americans. At this point, they stopped speaking italian all together to gain acceptance amongst the “Medigan” which is Italian slang for non-ethnic white Americans. Once WWII kicked off, America became romantically in love with their soldiers, and approximately 15% of the troops were Americans with Italian surnames (e.g John Basilone- medal of honor recipient). The American soldiers of Italian ancestry were then classified with the white soldiers because most of them were from large cities where neighborhoods were segregated by ethnicity. The New Yorkers, Boston Northsiders, Chicago Southsiders were extremely territorial, and those cities at that time had Italians, Irish, and blacks. The Italians couldn’t stand the Irish because they were progressing faster. If Italian-American troops and Black-American troops were put in the same squadbay it would have been mayhem. They simply would not have volunteered. That is why most Hispanics, mainly Mexican-Americans, were put in the white regiments as well in the military The only challenge left to battle was the organized crime stigma, which was glamorized through Hollywood, but still enough to keep us out of mainstream America. So then the intermarriage began with the “Medigan”. We kept our paternal surnames that all end in vowels, and anglicanized our first names. we kept our food because they love it. We kept our religion (some went Protestant). Some of us still have our traditional complexion, but it has lightened due to admixture.
Europe is just 10 km from Africa. Why the mystery of Sicilian complexian? The entire Europe was inhabited by Africans, who are the indigenous Europeans, for thousands of years. White People immigrated into Europe from Central Asia and have finally dominated Europe. The monarchs of Europe were all Black, then mixed with Whites about 300-200 years ago, then became White just before the colonisation of Africa.
The one disturbing and re-occuring thing i have found from my long (ongoing) study of the story of this world is:
In every land of this earth were black skinned peoples(melanos) who are being displaced by white skin peoples. Every land. I do not say that lightly, do the research yourself and you will come to the same conclusion.
From the time the genetic defective(lack of melanin in all of its forms) albinos started appearing (birthed by melanos) in ancient India/Pakistan(this was one land) and they started to mix with the melanos, the mulattos were produced.
So we have melano, albino and mulatto.
Albinos soon became rarer as they left the area for more suitable climates, encountering more melanos as they travelled.
Mixing and killing took place and by the time they got to their new home in the cooler regions they were now white skinned with enough melanin to protect them somewhat from the sun. Along their trail one can find mulattos due to the mixing.
The whites degenerated further and had a hard life in their new home, but later they were to emerge again and went on their quest to rule the world.
I cannot tell you where the hatred started: some say they were mistreated in their origin, thats why they left (although the sun surely had a part to play in that). Others say that due to the degeneration and lack of melanin they became more savage and blood thirstier than the melanos.
What ever the reason, they went on a rampage across the world, killing melanos every where they could and also completely wiping out melanos in countries they encountered. Of course, due to mixing, whether natural or forced, more mulatos were produced, and in every country today one can see a remnant of the original melanos.
Africa is one of the only places left where many melanos exist, but the albinos(not pure albinos anymore due to mixing)are doing exactly what they did in the other places, albeit by more clever and insidious means today(aids, ebola, manipulated wars, the list goes on).
So people take a look at Tasmania if you want to see what is threatening melanos across the world.
This is not an attempt to cause pain to anyone, this is the research that i found during my long ongoing search. I love to find things out, and it is for my personal interest why i do this.
Of course this will be a little tainted by my own experiences in life, this is how it works when one thinks for themselves.
Lol, We know what you’re doing. Your “research”. I am about to receive my bachelor’s in history, working towards my masters, and have many amazing professor’s, of many different races and none would agree with 75 percent or more of the BS you’re spewing. These agendas people push all the time, all based on simply the amount of melanin in ones skin is incredibly perplexing to me, being a person of mostly Native American (but for full disclosure I do have some Italian and a little Northern African in my ancestry, as well as a little South East Asian, as well as some German and Irish) I really don’t have a dog in this fight. Race is something that is used to put a wedge between us and many of you buy right into it. We are all a member of the same tribe.