DARE TO ASK: It's a matter of race: What are Italians?

By PHILLIP MILANO, The Times-Union

Question

Why do some people insist Italians are not Caucasian? I'm largely Sicilian and am frequently asked if Sicilians are part black.

A. Alioto, 19, male, Pittsburgh

Replies

So what if someone thinks Sicilians have African blood? What is so wrong with that? (Actor) John Turturro is a handsome man.

Nichole, 31, black, St. Louis

There are black Italians. Several years ago they crowned an Italian woman who was black Miss Italy. Some people love their olive skin tone. Where do you think it came from? The first people were from Africa.

Adele, 42, black female, Philadelphia

At some point an African tribe called the Moors raided Sicily. The usual things happened: looting, conquering and, of course, rape. So, many Sicilians have "black blood" from just over 1,000 years ago. This is why we Italians get a great tan, and why we have curly hair.

Andy, 32, Columbus, Ohio

Experts say

Adele from Philly makes a good point: Miss Italy 1996 was none other than Denny Mendez, who is black. Sure, she was born in the Dominican Republic, but why get picky about her Italian heritage?

True, the Moors, who were Muslim and from North and West Africa, conquered Sicily in the ninth century. However, recent DNA studies have found that Italians have no more African ancestry than any other Western Europeans. (Perhaps a re-edit of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing is in order?)

But racism is a powerful thing, we hear. For centuries some northern Italians have looked down on their countrymen to the south, calling them barbarians . . . and "African," says professor Nelson Moe, who teaches southern Italian culture at Columbia University and wrote The View from Vesuvius: Italian Culture and the Southern Question.

"In the 1800s and 1900s, in a culture of colonialism and the 'Dark Continent,' the worst thing you could say to mark someone as uncivil was that they were black," he said. "Even in soccer now, if a Sicilian team goes to the north, some crowd members hold up banners talking about how the opposing team is from Africa. It's a very intense prejudice."

In America, during the great immigration of southern Europeans in the late 1800s, the established white community feared Italians taking their jobs, housing and more - the same way they feared recently freed slaves, said Jane Schneider, professor of anthropology at City University of New York and author of Italy's "Southern Question."

Everybody new and "darker" got lumped together and was subjected to racism, she said. In fact, the largest lynching in U.S. history, in New Orleans in 1891, was of 11 Italian-Americans.

"It has to do overall with the way people think about 'others.' The privileged define who belongs and who doesn't . . . and in that process, some groups make themselves feel better by looking down on other groups."

Phillip Milano, author of I Can't Believe You Asked That! (Perigee), moderates cross-cultural dialogue at Y? The National Forum on People's Differences. Visit www.yforum.com to submit questions and answers, or mail to Phillip Milano, c/o The Florida Times-Union, P.O. Box 1949, Jacksonville, FL 32231. Include contact information. For Dare to Ask podcasts, go to Jacksonville.com keyword: milano.