On this Independence Day, as Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of These United States, I have found myself reflecting upon a meme I recently came across online and how much truth it actually contains.
Like most memes, it simplifies a more complicated history. Italians did not arrive in an undeveloped wilderness. By the time the great wave of Italian immigration began in the late nineteenth century, the United States was already becoming a major industrial power, with growing cities, expanding railroads, and a dynamic economy, even as parts of the West were still being settled. Italians entered a society whose institutions, customs, and public life had largely been shaped by the nation’s longstanding Majority population.
Still, the meme captures something important that is often forgotten. Immigration is not only a story of opportunity received but of contribution offered. Millions of Italians came seeking a better life. They brought skills, labor, traditions, faith, and a strong sense of family. They did not merely benefit from America; they helped shape it.
Many Italian immigrants labored on roads, railways, tunnels, docks, farms, factories, and construction projects. They helped expand neighborhoods, churches, businesses, and civic institutions that remain part of the American landscape today. In cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and countless others, Italians left a visible mark upon the nation’s physical and cultural fabric. Like countless other Americans, Italians and their descendants answered the nation’s call in times of war and peace alike.
Yet the story is more complicated than either celebration or condemnation. America did not always treat Italians justly. Many faced discrimination, poverty, suspicion, and, in some cases, violence. The lynching of Italian immigrants remains one of the darkest and least remembered chapters of American history.
More broadly, the United States itself has never been free of faults. Like all countries, its history contains episodes worthy of admiration alongside those worthy of criticism, and the present day is no exception. Acknowledging what is noble in the American experiment does not require ignoring its failures or remaining silent about the misguided causes, conflicts, and policies in which the nation remains involved.That said, it is worth remembering that our ancestors did not cross an ocean without reason. The Italy many left behind was often poorer and offered fewer opportunities than the America in which they hoped to make a life. For many Southern Italians, the promises of unification quickly gave way to disappointment. In the decades that followed, economic hardship, political neglect, heavy taxation, military repression, and persistent regional inequalities convinced millions that their future lay elsewhere. For all of its shortcomings, the United States represented possibilities that many could not find at home.At the same time, Italians were not always good to America. No people are without faults, and Italians were no exception. Odious criminal organizations such as the Mafia brought dishonor to communities that otherwise sought only honest work and stability. A small number also embraced radical political movements that stood at odds with the country’s institutions and traditions.While we did not endure the trials of America’s earliest settlers, neither did we have it as easy as many who followed. Ours is a unique chapter in the American story, shaped by hardship, perseverance, and the determination to build a better future for our children.
The greatest challenge facing Italian Americans today is not the prejudice of the past but the forgetfulness of the present. The pressures of modernity have accomplished what neither discrimination nor poverty could. Secularism has weakened the religious life that once stood at the center of many communities. Materialism has encouraged comfort over duty and sacrifice. Assimilation and globalization have loosened ties to place, family, faith, and tradition.
Today, too many of our own have embraced ideological currents that have contributed to America's cultural and moral decline. The descendants of immigrants who crossed an ocean to preserve their way of life often struggle to remember what that way of life was.
Corruption, rootlessness, and the homogenizing tendencies of modern American life have only accelerated this process. In many respects, deracination rather than exclusion has become the defining challenge of our age. The danger today is not that we will be prevented from being Italian Americans, but that we will forget what being Italian American once meant.
~ By Giovanni di Napoli, July 3rd, Feast of San Leone II
