Still figuring myself out racially. Part 1: Being of pan-Mediterranean heritage

[johanna_hypatia]

When I think about how to understand my racial identity, it gets so complicated as to defy definition.

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, I'm classified as "white," because they define that category to include people from North Africa and the Middle East. As a Sicilian, I look to my North African Berber and Arab heritage as much as I do to

Comments

A picture is worth a thousand Sopranos episodes

[johanna_hypatia]

One hundred years ago, Sicilians in America were classified as nonwhite. At some point (probably after the United States allied with Italy in World War I) they decided to have us be white.

I'm guessing this resulted from the famous photo of the Allied leaders at the Versailles conference--



--which shows the Sicilian Vittorio Orlando (second from left) on equal terms with the Great White Fathers, Woodrow Wilson and David Lloyd George. It became untenable to relegate Sicilians to a lower racial status after this. Officially, anyway. Now in America you cannot mention being "Sicilian" any more without everyone else giving the knee-jerk response about the Mafia, or else they start talking about their favorite Sopranos episodes. So they stopped seeing us as n*****s and instead they see us all as criminals. The racism against Sicilians hasn't ceased, it's only changed form.