Anti-italian discrimination has been and is a real thing in a lot of the english speaking world, as immigrants who aren't native English speakers, and the forms the mockery takes, targeting accents, food culture and stereotypes of criminality are the same forms real anti-Italian, and most anti-immigrant bigotry in general takes.
I get that the bit started as a way of mocking a few extremely priveleged chuds in positions of power who have Italian heritage that some people were saying were facing discrimination, but the bit's gone well beyond that now. It's become just "ironically" being racist against Italians or xth generation Italian immigrants in general, and that's harmful and extremely alienating to a lot of really cool people.
What part of "these people are and have historically been marginalised and discriminated against because of their ethnicity, but its still okay to mock them for their ethnicity and dismiss and invalidate the discrimination they've experienced because their skins the wrong colour" sounds okay to you?
"It's okay to mock them because they're white" is only relevant if we're talking about "whiteness" as the privelege of being in the economically/ culturally dominant/ accepted/ not discriminated against ethnicity in their societies. If you're talking about literal skin colour it's just fash shit in the other direction.
Mocking people based on national or ethnic characteristics in the first place isn't great, it's straight up reactionary thought, but it is a little different when you're talking about England and the US because they are culturally dominant in most of the English speaking world. That's very much not the case for Italians and xth generation Italian immigrants.
That Mussolini and the fascists defeated the (millions) of Italian communists and entered the second world war on the wrong side has pretty much fucking nothing to do with you being shitty to the Napoli family who lives down the street for talking funny and eating different food.
Whatever horrible fucking thing the bourgeois in control of a nation did 60 years ago should have absolutely no bearing on how you treat, first, second and nth generation immigrants from that country unless they specifically voice support for those things. Where I'm from, there are a whole lot of 60-80 year olds who came here not speaking any real English, were preyed on by gangs and worked shitty jobs where they were payed less and treated worse than their coworkers because they didn't have the language, connections or cultural understanding to fight back. And a whole lot more 40-60 year olds who were those peoples kids, and came home from school the first day thinking everyone was talking gibberish because no-one at home spoke any English .
Those people have had a much harder time in life, and are often in worse material conditions now because of the discrimination and marginalisation they experienced on the basis of their language and culture. Dismissing that on the basis of ????? and mocking them and their children for those same things that have made their lives harder is an incredibly shitty and harmful thing to do.
Italians were racialized until very recently. "Italians are white" is a recent phenomenon, no older than a hundred years. We used to round them up and lynch them.
...why? Why not dunk on people for their actions instead of an immutable component of their biology? I could name 5 anglos who have done more for the left than anyone on this site.
But that aside, don't you see why it's problematic to sort races into "okay to harrass" and "not okay to harrass", regardless of your sorting criteria?
Okay well yeah, but if two people who are clocked as anglos have a kid, that kid is more likely than not going to also get clocked as an anglo, and you seem to be arguing that because of that they're fair game to dunk on.
I'm arguing that biology, race, racialization status, genetics, nationality, and anything else tied uncontrollably to birth, doesn't give you a license to dunk.
I really wish people would stop doing this bit.
Anti-italian discrimination has been and is a real thing in a lot of the english speaking world, as immigrants who aren't native English speakers, and the forms the mockery takes, targeting accents, food culture and stereotypes of criminality are the same forms real anti-Italian, and most anti-immigrant bigotry in general takes.
I get that the bit started as a way of mocking a few extremely priveleged chuds in positions of power who have Italian heritage that some people were saying were facing discrimination, but the bit's gone well beyond that now. It's become just "ironically" being racist against Italians or xth generation Italian immigrants in general, and that's harmful and extremely alienating to a lot of really cool people.
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What part of "these people are and have historically been marginalised and discriminated against because of their ethnicity, but its still okay to mock them for their ethnicity and dismiss and invalidate the discrimination they've experienced because their skins the wrong colour" sounds okay to you?
"It's okay to mock them because they're white" is only relevant if we're talking about "whiteness" as the privelege of being in the economically/ culturally dominant/ accepted/ not discriminated against ethnicity in their societies. If you're talking about literal skin colour it's just fash shit in the other direction.
Mocking people based on national or ethnic characteristics in the first place isn't great, it's straight up reactionary thought, but it is a little different when you're talking about England and the US because they are culturally dominant in most of the English speaking world. That's very much not the case for Italians and xth generation Italian immigrants.
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When I was in school there were kids who were bashed and called slurs for being Italian. Your experience is not universal.
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That's an ignorant and harmful thing to say.
That Mussolini and the fascists defeated the (millions) of Italian communists and entered the second world war on the wrong side has pretty much fucking nothing to do with you being shitty to the Napoli family who lives down the street for talking funny and eating different food.
Whatever horrible fucking thing the bourgeois in control of a nation did 60 years ago should have absolutely no bearing on how you treat, first, second and nth generation immigrants from that country unless they specifically voice support for those things. Where I'm from, there are a whole lot of 60-80 year olds who came here not speaking any real English, were preyed on by gangs and worked shitty jobs where they were payed less and treated worse than their coworkers because they didn't have the language, connections or cultural understanding to fight back. And a whole lot more 40-60 year olds who were those peoples kids, and came home from school the first day thinking everyone was talking gibberish because no-one at home spoke any English .
Those people have had a much harder time in life, and are often in worse material conditions now because of the discrimination and marginalisation they experienced on the basis of their language and culture. Dismissing that on the basis of ????? and mocking them and their children for those same things that have made their lives harder is an incredibly shitty and harmful thing to do.
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:farquaad-point: BRAND NEW ACCOUNT
:ban-hammer: :ban-hammer: :ban-hammer:
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Italians were racialized until very recently. "Italians are white" is a recent phenomenon, no older than a hundred years. We used to round them up and lynch them.
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Is fascism and colonialism tied to their DNA? Should we bully the antifascist freedom fighters in Germany because they're German by blood?
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...why? Why not dunk on people for their actions instead of an immutable component of their biology? I could name 5 anglos who have done more for the left than anyone on this site.
But that aside, don't you see why it's problematic to sort races into "okay to harrass" and "not okay to harrass", regardless of your sorting criteria?
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Okay well yeah, but if two people who are clocked as anglos have a kid, that kid is more likely than not going to also get clocked as an anglo, and you seem to be arguing that because of that they're fair game to dunk on.
I'm arguing that biology, race, racialization status, genetics, nationality, and anything else tied uncontrollably to birth, doesn't give you a license to dunk.
:what-the-hell:
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