Italian-American Heritage Month with Steve Cerulli

say chow because it's Italian American Heritage Month. The first Italian to be registered as residing in the area corresponding to the current US was Pietro Chesire Alberti, commonly regarded as the first Italian American, a Venetian seaman who in sixteen thirty five settled in the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, which would have become New York City. In the nearly four hundred years since then, more Italians have migrated to

the United States than any other Europeans. Italians have a long history of migrating to foreign countries as a way of coping with poverty and dislocation. During the nineteenth century, more Italians actually migrated to South America than to North America. The earliest Italian immigrants to the United States were Northern Italians, who became prominent as fruit merchants in New York and

wine growers in California. Later, more and more migrants came from the South, and the communities and institutions they formed reflected the region's fragmentation. Italian immigrants established hundreds of mutual aid societies based on kinship and place of birth. Their presence has become part of the American ethos. Still, I bet there's a lot more about Italian Americans than pizza and the mafia. Joining us here again on being frank

as stea even soerui. He is a member of the pretigious John D. Calandra Italian American Institute and a PhD candidate in Modern history at Fordya University, as well as an instructor at Hustos Community College in the South Bronx. He has also traveled extensively to locate and document Italian American communities around the country. Steve, welcome once again, as I said, say, since it's Italian American heritage. Mu's the catch all phrase for Italian greetings.

the City University of New York. And they come out with this eighty page document and what they were able to find out or what they discovered, right, let's let's talk more academic. What they discovered was that the City University of New York has a history of discrimination against Italian Americans in terms of hiring practices, passing over promotions, and lack of resources for Italian American students. So they

had a legal case. They won, and within the City University of New York, Italian Americans are protected as an infirmative action class. And I should explain a little bit what affirmative action is, because there's been a great a push, especially amongst the American right to kind of discredit what it actually how it actually functions. It's not quotas. It hasn't been that case since the nineteen seventies with this case in California, in the Baki case. It's not quotas.

It's not, oh, we need five Italians in this department. It's when you apply for a position or as a student, it's considered right, it's put into consideration, right, your identity as part of the hiring practices, because is a conscious understanding that this institution in the past has discriminated against this particular ethnic group or whatever. Various groups of primitive action covers where and when. Nowadays it's mainly at the

state level because the Supreme Court completely gutted it. The institute was originally founded as the Italian American Institute, part of the Graduate Center, which is Quney's doctoral granting institution. We no longer a part of the Graduate Center now are part of Queen's College. And what the original intention was twofold one the kind of watchdog cuny and two provide student psychology and student services for Italian Americans therapist here.

Unfortunately that's no longer really part of us anymore. But if there's a tiny American students dealing specifically with the Tian American problems, whether that be the parents, talent not to go to school, whatever that may look like, these group of therapists would be there to help them. And of course we kept demographic numbers and watch over aecunity, which we still do this today.

time you were on the program. Also where particularly as I said, Southern Italians who tend to be darker skinned, generally speaking, did experience a level of discrimination that other folks didn't. But so talk to that. What kind of discrimination has or have Italian Americans faced throughout the long history they've had in this country.

This means they're able to go to places like California and Oregon at a time when black folks were not allowed to live there. If they assimilated culturally, at least there was a chance of great social mobility that didn't exist for historical peoples of colors such as African Americans and Indigenous Americans. On the other side, however, that doesn't mean there was a discrimination. Of course, there was discrimination. Every ethnic group, even Germans face discrimination in America, right,

the cultural discrimination is the religious discrimination. And also within this kind of cultures that have to kind of explained is the best. America has lots of hierarchies, despite the fact being land of the free. Right. So there's always been this hierarchy of at least since the sixteen hundreds when racial laws are codified in places like Virginia, North Carolina. White on top, black below. You're a slave because you're black, right, blathly existed before. But if you're a slave in America,

you're a slave because you're black. Right. That's this unique relationship that has really developed in the American South in the colonial period. Right, It's already have this top and bottom relationship based on identity. Right. As time goes on, that becomes more developed and more complex. So even though Italians are legally considered white right within the strata of whiteness,

there's also this hierarchy where Italians are considered lower. That doesn't now Now again that means you face discriminations, prejudiced, et cetera. But there isn't this large scale systemic exclusion and banning of Italian Americans like there ares of Chinese for example. Like again, you weren't black, you weren't allowed to If you were black, you weren't allowed to go to Oregon in California, and at certain points of history, Italians could always go there. So I think it's important

to kind of parse like systemic racism from prejudices. And then I think, last year, if I remember correctly, stereotypes and stigmas, which which are from those historical experiences that still kind of linger today. But that's not the same as as like systemic racism.

talk about generally come from the New York area. Again, so these association mostly with Southern Italians, so we tend to think of it sometimes as a monolith, but that's far from true. And in my introduction, it brought out the first Italian Americans coming we're actually northern Italians, and culturally, as we well know, even within the country of Italy itself,

there's a big cultural difference between north and south. So talk to a little bit to that how Italian Americans are not this gigantic monolith as we often tend to see them.

sleep is Italian American club called the Club Trentino. It's a group of people from from North Italy that came after World War One, and it's just in New York City and white Stone Queens was a club of people from Friuli. There's another club in Astoria of Italians from Astoria. Now nowadays it's a Mistria. Nowadays it's more Croatian than Italian, but that was a kind of shared multicultural region Istria. It is Italians, Croats, Sloveins and and a Romanians who

are Romanian speaking minority. You notice, you know, you noted Cesarey Alberti, who is the first Italian American, but the first community of people from Italy to live in the US are actually from the valleys of northern Pedamont. That well then seen as they settled in Staten Island, and there's all and Pedamont is the north. What's that, I'm really a bad direction. This is the north west part

of Italy. There's historic communities of Venetian glass blowers coming down to Virginia, much smaller they call the community might be a little bit exaggeration, but it just kind of shows you that it's not just Northerners coming here in January. I mean not just southerner is coming here in January. I went out to Tanti Town, which is in Arkansas, right, You know that that I traveled all over. They're primarily from the Veneto in Friuli area, right, which is northeastern Italy.

You go to California, a lot of those people are from Lombardy and Ligoria. And as you you've talked to me earlier about these posts, I'm making all months. One of the posts I'm gonna make is actually the fact that not all Italians are from Italy. Talking to Istrie earlier, but many of those California Italians are from Italian Switzerland, from the canton Tuccino, or from the Gione or Grissins, which is another Swiss canton that has Ramann speaking but

Italian speaking on the most southern peripheries of it. So it's actually quite quite mixed, quite complex. And during the Great Migration period more Italians left northern Italy than southern Italy. They just went to Brazil and Argentina, right they went to Uruguay, Paraguay, they went to places like Colombia. I was joking with my girlfriend, she's Colombian, that you're just as likely to be in the United States, you're just as likely to be Italian American as you are likely

to be Italian Colombian. They're roughly about four and a half percent of the population. I had two roommates in my first New York City apartment. One was Brazilian, one was Colombian. Both of them had an Italian grandparent from northern Italy. So this history is a lot more layered and nuanced than a lot of us like to tell ourselves.

a little bit about them. They're interesting.

really nineteenth and eighteenth century kind of constructions. In even twentieth century, so people traveling back and forth, moving through regions, you didn't need a passport back. That was much different. So Peter Valdo's preachings particular were particularly popular in the Latin speaking Alps. So this is like what's today, what's this called the Roan Alps region of France, Provence region of France, Turin, pedamnt of Italy in the Valde Aosta,

and then also what was historically Savoy. So people who speak various Neo or Vulgar Latin languages in the Alps. His followers are denounced by the Church and many of them are basically forced to convert. However, there's two kinds of trajectories. Ones deep in the Alps in Pedamont managed to survive, and others are scattered throughout the Mediterranean, and many actually find safe haven in southern Italy, establishing communities

like Order Piedamonte in Calabria. I was just talking to someone today because we had an event on Pullia at Calandra, and her family is from this village in Pulia, which is southern Italy that was repopulated by Valdensians, and like the fourteen or fifteen hundreds, so they went all over

the peninsula. The ones that remained in Piedamont were actually not all of them, but many of them were massacred in this event known as the Pedamont Easter, and that's the originions of that Staten Island community is they basically chased out of Piedamont during the Counter Reformation because the Duke of Savoy was like, I need all the people in my in my in my in my domains to be Catholic. And they actually have a really rich stats where they have a heritage society that kind of connects it.

They went to Paraguay. There's a town in North Carolina called Valdez, right with Valdetsa. It's all settled by Waldensians. There's another town in Missouri that I went to called Monette or Monette investinating in French. It was also settled by Waldensians, right, and they were like trilingual. They would speak like a French dialect and like a Piedamonte's Italian dialect and obviously English because they were living in Monett.

And you go to the cemetery there, it's really fascinating because some of the gravestones, I would say about fifty percent of them were French, twenty five percent of them or Italian, and then you can see there were some Anglos or whatever buried in the mix as well, so

they really complicate this history in places like Texas. They were actually the first people to establish as Italian communities of Galvelson I'm thinking about right now, where there's I was reading stories of you have this long term Waldensian Northern Italians who were then having these Southern Italians work for them in Galveston, Texas. So they demonstrate that this history is a lot more complex, layered and nuanced than

many of us like to think. It's basically, you know, grandma and Grandpa left Italy, they came to America, they were good Catholics, they learned in language, and they assimilate it. When in reality it's it's much more and more complicated than what people want to really engage with. Not everyone, of course, but there are some people you know specifically, and you know, positions of power want to kind of simplify the story, you know, well.

the early Italian mindset. They were going to come here, they were going to make some money, They're going to send them back because it was needed, and then when they were well off, they were going to go back too. So it's not so different. And again that's kind of used as a cudgel by right wingers today against migrants as well. They don't want to assimilate to this country, they just want to take from it. And early on that that kind of changed as Italian Americans really contributed.

But in the beginning they were just interested in kind of taking true.

an enclave. Everyone spoken languages, don't need to learn it. Of the in the the the rotational aspect of the diaspora amongst Italians is much more higher. Fifty one percent went back between eighteen eighty and nineteen twenty four. Fifty percent. That's the majority of them, right, and in many ways they were much less. The newer immigrants coming in now are much more assimilatory, right, despite the fact that there's language, there's late help with language and stuff. They're much more

assimilatory than what Italians were. There was way more. There's something like one hundred and something Italian newspapers in the country. There's very few Spanish speaking newspapers, and you had but two major medior television networks. The thing with the remittances, right, So the point I'm trying saying is not everyone came here to assimilate, and it's it's not just became we learned English and that was it. Some people did thata.

Of course, it's true. If there's different people, they have different experiences. There's no one thing sets all, but there are these general trends that we can find. That's the thing is remittance is one of my one of the most fascinating characters in the town of Marriican history. Is this guy named Giovanni Scabo, who is I posted about him yesterday if you saw who's really checkered in in how I feel about him. But I generally speaking, I

like him. Problematic guy. But one of his jobs was in nineteen twenties or nineteen thirties, is he worked for this bank and he went all all over the country and he was basically trying to get Italians in these various communities South America to use this bank to send the remittances back to Italy. And I'll tell a personal story about that. My great grandfather, right, and talking about some tropes. Right, my great grandfather who came from Abruzzo.

They were ten in farmers, right, They were landless, Contentini. They came to America. They went to a dry county upstate Pennsylvania, and you can look on a map, Dray County con point exactly wherever it is by bull of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He worked in the mind and then he bootlegged Grappa because the dry county and liquor was a commodity. What did he do He sent it back to his father in Italy. Who was able to buy a farm, which

was the original attempt for many. Of course, some people came and wanted to become American, want to assimilate, et cetera. But there's not one size fit all. And this is not an uncommon an uncommon trend. You go to any southern Italian village and you will hear a story. My grandfather went there and came back from broughtland. My uncle went there, went back and came along and bought land.

A big reason why a lot of Italians able to come here post war, after after nineteen forty five, it's because they've had their parents were born in America and then they went back and therefore their kids have American citizenship. My barber in my neighborhood was raised in Italy, born in Italy. His father was an American citizen. He was able to easily get here in nineteen sixty eight, ninety sixty nine. But back to my great grandfather, he's able to buy a farm in Italy and then he raised

his family and Italy right. He didn't come to America. Who lived in American dream. He came to America because wages were better and the opportunity was presented here, allowed him to buy land over there, and what did he do? He raises eleven kids in Italy, not in the United States. Right. My grandmother her American citizenship right, The quote like what we call it an anchor baby right was used in

her arranged marriage. Right for her husband to come here and get a better opportunity than what was available in great Depression Italy. Kind of gives you an ideal that the fascists actually managed a great depression must work than the Americans did. But it just shows you how complex, right, And there isn't a single story. And again, of course there are people who came here and wanted to learn the language and assimily, but that's not everyone. And that

was even the majority. That fifty one percent went back, and many made multiple trips and.

It was English first, in the Italian as the second language. So right there, just between you and I, it's a dissimilar some similarities, but also dissimilar. But I think you also brought up another great point. There are many many famous Italians internationally famous you know, Columbus being one. We've debated that we'll save that for another day. But people like Leia PoCA, Enrico Fermi, the great physicist, These are

certainly more commonly known internationally. But who are some of the other Italians and particularly Italian Americans of note that we should know about.

leading organizer and radical of Italian Americans. If there was any strike evolving Italian Americans in the nineteeneens, you bet he was there. What he did. And I'll give you two stories quick because we only have so much time. One is there's this textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, one of my favorite stories to put the share where primarily it's a multi racial, multi ethnic workforce, when Italian Americans

are or component of this. They win this strike, right, but the state punishes these three leaders Joseph attour Our Tour Driven, Givonetti, and Angelo Bruno. The state wants to punish the three main Italian American organizers of this strike, and the strike wins by the way, the workers that want to strike in a tax thousand lords, they win one of the few cases of a massive strike winning at that time period because it was so rare. Then,

so the state punishes the leaders, right. They basically try to pin a murder that the police killed this woman in a lo pizzo and they said, oh, he's basically

necessary for the crime. So what happens is the International Workers of the World at IWW who are organizing to strike called in Tresca, right, And what Tresca is able to do is basically reorganize the workers after they just want to strike, and got them to go on strike again after all the demands we already met, in order to release those three men that were basically being punished by the state because they organized a strike. We should think the state in the industrial class often not all

them at every moment, but often work together. Great story of Tresco. It's in Butte Montana, right, one of those I think, either Butte Montana or the Massabi Iron Range, one of those places. It's up in that area in the deeper mid parts of the Midwest, when he's organizing Italian workers there and these strike breakers are following them in the truck doctor in so Tresca gets out of the truck and he goes, they're here from me, So I'll walk beside the truck and you guys will be

all right. And someone saw this and they go Corraggio, Courage, courage, because this is the type of guy that is. And as the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, goes on when the American labor movement is really squashed by the Red Scare of nineteen eighteen nineteen ninety. He ends up becoming history of the whole other story. He ends up becoming the leading Italian American anti fascist, especially in New York City, and he leads the fight against Mussolini's attempt to fascisticize

Italian Americans completely forgotten from the Italian American cultures. Like guys to me that if you're gonna be, you to pick one person this moment that needs to be re champion fast him. There's many other fantastic people as well, but we have some. We only have so much, so much time on our hands.

American citizen who repatriated back to Italy. He was cutting my hair, and I'm multi generational on one side, on fifth generation, and on my mother's side, I'm like third fourth because my grandmother was born here though she was raised in Italy and then she came back instead. That make her first or second I don't really know, but

I'm multi generational. I'm definitely not first generation, and I'm certainly not second generation, and my third generation is questionable, and at most fifth I have one great grandparent that was born here. So I'm really this on my augulation of Italian in American, my first language English. I grew up Blue Geen, CD's rock and roll, that kind of stuff, disco, So he was cutting my hair one day and he

goes and he's off the boat. He came here in nineteen sixty, sixty and nine, one of those years, sixty seven, late sixties. He's cutting my hair and he's born and raised in Italy. Accent, makes his own wine, that kind of guy. And he goes, you sees a lot of guys coming in because already heard gentrifying. He goes, a lot of guys are coming into the neighborhood. Now you

know that? And I go, yeah, isn't it a great you know, because we live in a neighborhood that's most of the Italians is eighty years old plus, right, they're older, and they go, yeah, it's it's nice, right, you know, we have more people to talk Italian with whatever. And he goes, not like us. I look over, what do you mean? He goes, you and I were different type of Italian, not like them. And I go, what do you mean? Not like them? You're born you were raising Italy.

They're born and raised in Italy. He goes, they're different, they're different. So you know, even this guy, he it shows you how later layered it is and how and how how Tinian Americans relate to each other. Where you have this guy who's an immigrant from Italy, who's guys are from southern Italy too. They're not from like Veniczaueligoria,

once from Realme, once from Naples. I know them. I don't wonder to listen to this, right, but he's associating himself, this long term Italian immigrant sees more of himself and someone like me than these recently arrived Italian immigrants. To me, that's the Italian American right there.

leaving his neighborhood right Baybridge. Think John Travoltas had a night fever, but those of you at a certain age, my dad's My dad's of an age where that movie matters, so that means it matter to me growing up. And he started documenting Italians leaving these New York City neighborhoods and he's like, you know, obviously we can't stop it,

but the least we can do is document it. And he then had the foresight to say, you know what, those other places they're leaving too, so let's document that as well, and he created this historical Society's a couple of members. It's me on the board, it's him from New York. There's this woman Jenna from Colorado, this guy dominic from Detroit, this other woman Dominique from Maryland, right, So we try to capture different parts of the country.

So that's how I kind of got into it because I was talking to him and he's like, you know, we need to document this stuff, and I was like, absolutely, I love the historian documents. Something designed, something there hasn't been something that I don't want to document. So that's how I originally got into this documentation of these Italian localities. And my girlfriend at the time, and to this question,

you're asking me. Why I did this past winter. My girlfriend at that time is doing her PhD at University of Kansas. Now she's doing it abroad. Story from the day and when I went to visit her, I was like, we're right by Kansas City. There's a lot of Italians in Kansas City. And that kind of started my interest of Italian Americans in the heartland what I call it.

So I ended up going to Italian settlements and Missouri all over Kansas, the huge that the south, the southeastern part, Nebraska, Oklahoma, in Arkansas. You want to make sure some specifics about each of.

Some of the nicest people who haven't met right Midwestern nicest plus plus the Italian Italian American hospitality A great combination I think something like seventy five or sixty five percent of them are from the same few towns in Sicily, one of them being Carlatini. They just sistered it this year they celebrated through one hundredth anniversary of their local feasts Santa Lucia. And it's really a community there there there. It's really cool if if anyone that ever goes to Omaha,

check out little Italy. And they used to own a bunch of steakhouses. Wow, only ones left. They still have two bakeries, they still have a hall, they still have a national parish. Right, it's still there's still a sense of it being in a community. Another one I went to was Kansas City. That one's really big and a

little bit more dispersed. They still literally though shrinking, but they have some fantastic red sauce joints and some of the best Italian American food I've ever had, and I've been every Italian American food up and down the East coast. Right Kansas City. This is a place called Cascon. There's another place called Gaspers, just really fantastic. They're also primarily Sicilian, and what you find is a lot of those communities along the kind of Mississippi River came up through New Orleans,

which was this huge port of entry for Sicilians. Again, these places aren't exclusively Sicilian, but the majority Sicilian. As I mentioned already, there's the Tanti town in Arkansas, primarily

from northern Italy. Their community has this fascinating history where they originally came over as cotton farmers and they had horrible condition and this pre Spectro Bandini leads them out of this plantation called the Sunny Time Plantation to found county Town named after the Tonti brothers, who were the founders of Detroit in the French colonial period. But there's so much players it is amazing. I love it. I see your face right now right. And they're really famous

wine growers and they still grow wine today. They still have Italian American restaurants there today, and they have a specialty of spaghetti and fried chicken. I loved it, they said already. I went to Monette, which was this which is community founded by Waldensians. They were from the Vallet Police in Piedmont. They first went to Uruguay. I think it was Uruguay. It was South America. They didn't like it and they ended up in Missouri. Unfortunately, there's not

much of a tangible feeling of them left anymore. Contra to a place like Valves, which was settled by Valdensians in nineteen the eighteen nineties, which still felt very much and Monette not so much. I also went to Creb's, Oklahoma, which is is Oklahoma's literally right. There's a lot of Italians working in the minds there. There's actually several cities, little tiny cities two three, five, you know, two to five thousand people that had a lot of Italians as crabs.

There's I don't know many of their names right now, but there's multiple communities down there that were settled by Italians. But Crebs is really the hub. Still has several red sauce restaurants, and they have this local Italian American delicacy called lamb Fritz, which is fried sheep testicles. It's fantastic. And what's great is there's this history of Italian and indigenous cooperation there where Italians and chalk tall Native Americans

brewed beer together. And this Italian American restaurant called Pete's Place sells this thing called chalk Bear.

to the north and the in the south there. I've also went to South yeah, my southeastern Kansas, to a couple of communities there frontinac where Gammon and it's one of those places where it's definitely receding, but there's still some Italian presidence left. I went to a restaurant called a Napoli, but they call it Napoli. The food there was really good. There's a really cool deli called Pelucas

that's this fantastic Neon sign. And I went to a fried chicken restaurant called Bartos, which was established by Italian Americans there were The history is interesting because it was the most Eugene Debs was the Socialist Party candidate supporting

part of the country. It was like Ierentific. It was mostly Italians, right, It's a mixed but mostly Italians and places like Frontinac, but it was the most like Eugene Debs supporting localities in the country and all the mayors in the early nineteen hundreds and these heavily Italian American towns with all socialists. So it kind of gives you ideal that the history could be super layered. Right, we have a religious community, right, we have this like really

super left wing community of minors. We have this time American community open in the steakhouses. So it's all, you know, it just shows you the kind of uh, what are they? What are those things called with the quilts, the mosaic American mosaic.

so far, so interesting. It's Italian American Heritage Month, and my guest is a scholar and Italian American historian, Steve Ceruli. And we'll be back with more Being Frank right after these commercial messages. Remember're going to talk pizza and the mafia gotta do it, so don't go away. Much more coming up on Being Frank right after this don't go away.

up there as well. But remember you can catch any Being Frank anywhere you get your favorite podcasts, and because every Being Frank is archived, you can listen to any program anytime you like. Find the link to Being Frank on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page or at our website Hudsonriverradio dot com. Just click and you're there. My guest is Italian American scholar Steve Ceruli. We've talked and

generally avoided the stereotypes is often associated with Italians. But as I mentioned before the break, some things become stereotypes because they have a certain commonality within a culture, and that includes for most people, if certainly, if they think of Italians, it's fair enough to think of pizza. And because of the proliferation of gangster movies, it seems like almost every movie about an Italian American is about the mafia or a gangster. And we know there's so much

more to it than that. But let's let's let's take them both apart a little bit, have some fun talking about it. Steve, I'll give you your choice. Which one do you want to talk about first? Pizza or or the mafia and the history of it and how it came about and how it became so ingrained in Italian culture.

because I consider class as well. So obviously the mafia is organized crime right as simple as its organized crime ran by Italians and Italian Americans. There's different families who have different geographical territories. There's there's different mafias depending on what region vidally you're from. I'm not a I'm not particularly an expert on this history, and I know the

basics of it. I understand it emerges out of East Harlem the way we think of like the the Mafia and the Godfather sense, and it emerges out of the relegating in East Harlem, and there's a war between your politans and the Sicilian. But I want to provide little any wants to take. So Carlo Tresca, who I mentioned earlier, had this term. It was something along the lines of like Camora Frominale, which he considered the mafia, the church and the Italian embassy. Right as is, three kind of

oppressive forces within the Italian American community. And something we need to think about is the first people to exploit Italian Americans were usually other Italian Americans. And in the case of the mafia, that rings very true. But on the flip side, right, that's one thing we have to

reckon with. But on the flip side, this is a group of uneducated immigrants who lack social mobility, and joining a mafia family or a mafia crew in many ways provided them, right, these young Italian American men specifically access to social mobility which they would have been gate kept from in twentieth century and late nineteenth century American society.

So it is kind of double edged sword where it does provide social mobility in an avenue that doesn't exist for these people, but at the same time, especially in the early decades, right, it becomes a little bit more complicated in the fifties and sixties, when it becomes more the thirties, forties and fifties when it become really more professional. But in the early era, right, the eighteen nineties, early nineteen hundreds, it very much is about exploitating and oppressing

other Italian Americans. Then it turns into with prohibition. Mainly it's kind of trade of liquors and alcohol. So I just think we should think about that when we talk about the mafia, and of course they're just exploited group of people, But at the same time, it was one of the few avenues available for working class Italian American men in a culture, right, in a culture that doesn't

particularly provide access to education. In a society though that's not oppressing them completely, is hostile to their ethnicity, right in some places, their religion and certainly their language and cultural customs. What's available to you other than a life of crime? And we see this throughout history, right, really modern history, all over the place. Why is someone in a cartel, right, why is someone in the Russian mafia?

Why is someone in whatever particularly crime group? You know, so you know before denouncing you know, of course we should say yeah, mafia is bad, but before before kind of having the simplistic understanding it's just bad guys doing bad things. Right, we should consider the positionality of the people.

And then again, I'm not saying when you celebrate these things, I'm just being honest about understand what it is. Right. It provided social mobility for a lot of people, and for many Italian Americans they felt and in some cases very much true, that this was the only avenue that they could provide for themselves and their families. And I'm not saying that as a defense, right, but I'm saying we should be honest about that, and I find it kind of irkresome when you have a lot of these.

American artists. So and again this is not to celebrate the Mafia, but this is to be honest about the actual function of it.

a family drama as well. And I think in a sense it's kind of almost the perversion and your thoughts of it, where the mafia, an organized crime uses something very sacred in a way to cement their strength and power. And I think that provides fascination often to other people who see it as as I said, like a Tony Soprano's he's despicable in some ways and he's admirable in others. So there is that kind of balance. I think that's

what you're trying to hint at. It strike there, there is that balance between good and evil, and again, depending on what situation you're in, you could choose one or the other.

have any kind of strong alternatives, right. And this is also a failure in our part to provide Italian American alternatives. Where are those people that are complaining about the Mafia movies? Where's their counter movie?

committee or about the larger criminals in our society. It's like, again, it's not like a defense, but it's just like it feels like a very selective kind of punch down in some ways. And this is not to defend them because you know, again, the first people to exploit Italian Americans are the Tynan Americans, and the black can certainly exploit it. But I just find this kind of this kind of hypocrisy and the people that are so outraged, uh, who

are so outraged by that? I just find it, Like, you know, I personally don't want to be represented by the mafia, but I certainly understand why a working class Italian American from a place like the South Bronx already East Harlem or choose to go to that life.

How important is it in Italian culture? And Italians kind of look at it a little bit differently than Americans and Italian Americans do I'll throw the ball in your court with all of that.

like that. I think it's Aristotle, like the form, like this is the perfect ideal of a chair, right, the perfect ideal of like the pizza is how we know it emerges out of Naples, right, and there's the legend of the queen coming down and the birth of the margarity the pizza. But really it's his street food of the working class of Naples. And the way we think of it today is Neopolitan immigrants in a place like New York recreating this Neopolitan street food that they had

in Naples. Now that's kind of like the very general gist official of pizza's Neopolitan dish, right, But other places have made flatbreads and pizzas that were different all throughout of the league. For many, many centuries and for a long time. But the pizza as we know it today is also in many ways of product of the asparas. So something like tomatoes aren't just in Italy, right, they

were part of the Colombian exchange. If the year was nineteen fifty, you were much more people in America knew about pizza percentage wives than Italy because it was such a regional Neapolitan Neopolitan dish, right. It's the reason why you don't go to a place like Milan or other large cities like Biscara, for example, even in the South, and you don't have pizzerias from like eighteen ninety or

nineteen ten, nineteen fifteen, right, a lot of them. It becomes more popular in Italy nationally after the Second World War.

And there's a really good historian and I can't remember his name now, he's a great podcast and he talks a lot about kind of debunking these kind of mysts of like a national Italian cuisine, and that Italians going back and forth between the US and Italy are really what helps set national cuisines with things like pizza, but it has this Neopolitan origin and in places like New

York and New Haven. Right, it kind of transforms into our modern sense from this kind of nice and fork eating squishy street food through like crispy, charred, really cheesy. You know, you go to Italy, they don't have that much cheese under pizza.

dish with bread crumbs on it. It's like a pizza, right, It's like a Sicilian type of pizza. But in Omaha they had omahas all this pizza that I never saw anywhere else, and it was taste like with Spincione, had the eration like the since Fione, but instead of having bread crumbs on top, which is what Sincione has, it had chopped meat.

a monolith. One last question before we closed, Steve, why is it important to have heritage heritage months? Why is it important to continue? I mean, we all want to be we're all Americans and et cetera. But every month we honor another another group. Is it important? And if so, why is it important that we continue these things?

for nineteen twenty four. But for me, I look at it as a month to critically reflect, right and to really deeply think about this history and cultural and the process is behind that, not as like a blind celebration though we should celebrate, right. I'm certainly not afraid to celebrate. But I'm not like, oh, we need to be dot or and sour, right, but a critical celebration. Right, What does it actually mean to be an Italian American? Why did my family actually Italy? What type of experiences did

they have? Why did we move to this place over that place? Why did we eat this and not that? Why did we go into those jobs? So for me, I I'm for this. I like having heritage months. I like having months where we can reflect, right, because America is very multicultural and we should celebrate that multicultures and Italy very multicultural. So for me, it's I look as an opportunity to critically reflect on a group that is

very much part of the American fabric. You go anywhere in the country, you're going to find pizza.

you with two last little things. A kind of a quote that I think is appropriate in some music, and the quote I'm going to give it to you an Italian and I'm going to try to do it slowly. It's a beautiful language and pronunciation is key melio solo, ke maale a campagnato, which means better alone than in bad company. Okay, And I think hopefully we're not a

bad company for you today. And to enjoyed our program, we got some closing music again from one of my friends and another Italian American, Bobby Deblasio, and it's called Hidden Virtues Engineer the Mailman near Neil Richter. I'm your host, Frank Lebonna. We hope to have you join us on the next being Frank. We're the only way to be is frank.

Longa by heading straight to the line. You refre wishes my command. There is no Drea to be up.