Vanity Plates: One Man’s Slur Is Another Man’s Badge
An unprecedented state recall of personalized license plates bearing words considered slurs against Italians has run into sharp opposition from an unexpected quarter: scores of Italian-Americans who display such plates on their cars with pride.
The Department of Motor Vehicles’ recall of 333 vanity plates inscribed with the words wop or dago was initiated at the urging of the Sons of Italy, an 85-year-old fraternal organization that says the terms are deeply offensive to most Italian-Americans.
But DMV officials have been inundated with protests from Italian-Americans who purchased such plates as somewhat tongue-in-cheek tributes to their ethnic heritage.
There is, for example, Annette Lombardi, a Santa Rosa attorney whose Ford Taurus carries a plate reading DAGO ESQ. And Dave Giordano, a Fresno paper distributor whose Cadillac sports a plate saying TOP WOPS. And Patricia Tedeschi, a San Clemente property manager whose plate reads NY DAGO.
The DMV mailed notices last month to holders of the targeted plates, including FOXYWOP, LIL DAGO, BBOPWOP and 14KWOP. Those who refuse to return them will be unable to renew their vehicle registrations, the DMV said.
But as of last week, 162 plate-holders--most of them Italian-Americans--had requested special hearings to contest the recall. Only 13 had given back their plates.
“It’s amazing that there’s such attachment to a license plate,” said DMV spokesman William Gengler in Sacramento.
The recall originally included a number of plates that could be considered offensive to Italians only under the most humorless interpretation. One example is DUWOP39, which is held by a Fresno couple who are ‘50s music aficionados and drive a restored 1939 Ford coupe.
But the DMV recently dropped the DUWOP couple and about 25 other motorists from the recall list after further checking determined that their plate inscriptions had nothing to do with insulting Italians.
The DMV has routinely censored ethnically and sexually offensive words since it began issuing vanity plates in 1970, and has canceled offensive plates that sometimes slip through. But the present effort is the first mass recall the agency has staged for such reasons, Gengler said.
Sons of Italy spokesman Richard Armento, a Palm Springs insurance broker, said his group, which has 14,000 California members, and many other Italian-Americans strongly back the recall.
“I don’t think any Italian who puts these plates on their car does it as a slur to Italians. But they don’t realize what they’re doing. They don’t know how many people are offended by this,” Armento said.
He said that to many older Italian-Americans--especially those from East Coast cities--the words wop and dago are hated reminders of times during their youth when anti-Italian discrimination was strong.
“When they went to the grocery store, they had to fight their way through the Irish part of town or the black part of town, with people calling them wop and dago every step of the way. And then they had to fight their way back,” Armento said.
But Italian-Americans whose license plates are in jeopardy scoff at Armento’s reasoning. They say they put the words on their plates to signify, somewhat humorously, their pride in being Italian.
Ted Muscolo, a Glendora mortgage banker who has a plate reading 4TOPWOP, said it gives him a special identity.
“Everybody I know--family, friends and relatives--refers to me as the top wop. It’s my trademark. They’re trying to take away my trademark,” he said.
Muscolo, 43, accused the Sons of Italy of “living in the past,” saying that anti-Italian discrimination has faded dramatically over the years, especially in California.
The word wop came into common use during the 1920s as a derogatory term for an illiterate Italian immigrant working as a day laborer, according to the Dictionary of American Slang. Some language experts believe the word may have originated as an acronym for “without papers” to describe immigrants who entered the U.S. without passports.
George Lakoff, a linguistics professor at UC Berkeley, said slurs aimed at ethnic or racial minorities tend to lose their sting as the groups become more assimilated and more secure in their social standing.
For Italian-Americans to use wop and dago on their license plates “fits Italian humor very well. It’s a slightly self-deprecating joke that has no threat to it,” said Lakoff, who specializes in semantics, the study of word meanings and how they change.
Conversely, he said, ethnic insults remain very serious matters to groups such as Jews and blacks, who feel their position in the social order is far from secure.
DMV computers came up with 500 California motorists whose plates contain the disputed words or a close variation, said spokesman Gengler. It later dropped some plate-holders from the list after determining that their slogans referred to things other than ethnic slurs.
Among the plates on the original list were at least 10 that are variations on the word doo - wop, a musical style popularized during the ‘50s. DMV spokeswoman Gina McGuiness said the DMV relented on the doo-woppers’ plates after receiving a letter from a group called the Doowop Society, saying members’ plate slogans refer only to ‘50s-era songs.
Another plate the DMV retreated from recalling came up on its computer as 4DEGO. It is registered to Sheldon N. Goldman, who owns a Los Angeles clothing company.
Goldman said the plate, which adorns his Rolls-Royce, is intended as 4 D EGO, meaning “for the ego.”
“What other plate can you put on a Rolls-Royce?” said Goldman, laughing. “I tried to get HUMBLE, but somebody else already had it.”
Nonetheless, the recall has won support from a number of other organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Armento, the Sons of Italy spokesman, said his organization believes that regardless of how plate-holders interpret their plate inscriptions, it is inappropriate for the state to issue license plates carrying words that offend Italian-Americans or any other ethnic group.
“I realize a lot of people think it’s funny, and I know ethnics say these things among themselves,” Armento said. “But you shouldn’t do it in public, because it only furthers an ethnic stereotype.”
