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Where Is That Voice? Comment on IA Socialists-Miller-Panofsky
I found the Introduction to Eugene Miller and Gianna Sommi Panofsky's "Struggling in Chicago: Italian Immigrants with a Socialist Agenda 1880-1990" fascinating.
I was struck by certain similarities between the then Italian American "Economic" struggle against exploitive Employers (varying hierarchal degrees of Robber Barons) and today's Italian American "Pride/Dignity" struggle against exploitive Mass Media (who also worship at the alter of money, and have no social conscience, in their use of sex, violence, and defamation for profit).
To put matters in perspective, in the historical and continuing saga of "Man's Inhumanity to Man", one group/tribe/nation has too often used the propaganda of "inferiority" of another group, as one of the justifications for treating that "lesser" group in an "inhumane" way.
Whether it be Genocide, Slavery, Subjugation, Exploitation, or merely rendering the "lessers" Politically Impotent.
I'll not go into the most recognized examples of any of the above, and not even mention examples of the above that were perpetuated on inhabitants of the Italic Peninsula, but merely focus on the Italian American Experience.
I have found no widespread evidence of I-A Genocide, although there was palpable loathing and revulsion toward I-As that resulted in innumerable examples of killings of I-As merely because they were I-As.
Slavery, and Subjection is a different story. For what else is being an "Indentured Servant", with or without the "padrone" system. Whether it be in the Carolinas where I-As toiled as stoop laborers, guarded by black overseers with shotguns, or the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania in company towns where the "company" store charged I-As more for the "basics", than I-As were able to earn in twelve + hour days, and were therefore "indentured" in perpetuity, to cite just a few examples. (I am NOT saying that I-As were the only one's, but perhaps the more numerous, because of their great immigrant numbers)
Economic Exploitation of I-As, the basis of the subject Book is indisputable.
Social Exploitation of I-As, defined as the demeaning of a group, to "keep them in their place", or to give the powerful, privileged, protected, or politically correct, some vulnerable "target" to treat unfairly, or "feel" superior to, should be obvious even to those "assimilated" or "in denial".
The Rendering of I-As as Politically Impotent, by the use of propaganda (Mass Media use of Torrential Negative Stereotyping) to continually remind I-As of their "inferiority" as a group, (Mafioso, Brutes, Buffoons, Illiterates, Racists), which in turn is justification for treating that "lesser" group in an "inhumane" way, achieves a desired result of discouraging I-As to organize, or even speak up.
On an Individual basis, the use of "tying these tin cans to an I-As tail" when used by a political opponent, competing coworker, or business competitor can have devastating results.
The enormous detrimental effects, of all these "economic", "social", and "political" consequences seems to escape the majority of Italian Americans.
Even many I-A academics, many of whom "shy" away from "reformist/activists" actions, actions that allowed their grand parents and parents to provide them with a "better life" seem oblivious. Other I-A academics, even those who justifiably admire, appreciate and write about the I-A "reformist/activist" (more modern terms for radical) movement, appear to be strangely silent (or worse, virulently opposed) regarding the I-A "Pride/Dignity" struggle.
If it was not clearly the "academics", but merely the "educated" that led the valiant effort for "I-A economic" reform, perhaps it is asking for too much to expect the "I-A academics" to be writing, and speaking about " I-A pride/dignity" reform.
Yet, in every other community, it has been the academic, that has provided the written and spoken inspiration for that communities' activists.
Curiously in 1978, "Ethnic Images in American Film and Television", published by the Balch Institute, included a Chapter on Italian Americans, with each of three segments written by Joseph Papaleo, Richard N. Juliani, and Michael Parenti, all who wrote persuasively about the damage the Negative I-A Stereotyping was inflicting on the I-A Community.
The complaints were very similar back then, but in those two decades, matters have since gotten even worse.
What struck me as being very ironic is that Joseph Papaleo expressed a great misplaced optimism, when he stated, " The American Italian Historical Association may signal the beginning of a voice".
Aside from a very few ''special" exceptions, who I dare not mention by name, for concern of their being "associated" with me, and therefore "sullied"......
Where Is That Voice??????
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