"But how to reconcile Sicilian history with the American melting-pot concept that had been drummed into every school-child of my generation? Particularly hard to swallow was the arrogant assumption of politicians and some sociologists that American civilization, though still in its adolescence, should take precedence over the older civilizations of its latter-day immigrants. I began to ask myself such questions: Was it in the chemistry of human nature or in the interest of the national welfare for my relatives (and for all other immigrants from Mediterranean and eastern European nations) to become Anglo-Saxonized? Was there any substantial difference between assimilation and extinction? In other words, wasn't the application of the melting-pot concept an insidious kind of genocide?"
(Reprinted from An Ethnic at Large: A Memoir of America in the Thirties and Forties by Jerre Gerlando Mangione, p. 176.)
