Latinos Can Look to an Italian Legacy

Pepperdine University researcher Gregory Rodriguez is getting a lot of well-deserved attention for his recent study titled “The Emerging Latino Middle Class,” which uses 1990 census data to counter many of the myths that have come to surround Southern California’s largest ethnic group. Like me, Rodriguez thinks Los Angeles has a lot less to worry about in its fast-growing Latino population than political Cassandras on both the rabid right and the radical left would have us believe.

Among other things, Rodriguez found that nearly half of the households headed by U.S.-born Latinos in the five-county Los Angeles area are solidly middle-class, with annual incomes above the regional median of $35,000. More than half of these same Latino families also own their own homes, long the quintessential symbol of American middle-class stability.

But I won’t rehash Rodriguez’s work. It should be studied firsthand by everyone who cares about the long-term future of California and other states with large Latino populations. I’d rather focus on an intriguing parallel that Rodriguez had in mind while doing his research.

As we discussed his findings before publication, at one point we got to talking about New York City’s history as the United States’ chief port of entry for immigrants in the late 19th century, and how Los Angeles is in the same position today.

I remarked that if Los Angeles really is the Ellis Island of the 20th century, as one cliche puts it, then there is one ethnic group whose progress in America offers a hopeful scenario for today’s Latino immigrants. But even before I got the words out of my mouth, Rodriguez had already uttered them:

“The Italians, “ he said with a broad smile as I nodded my assent.

Indeed, there are many similarities between today’s Latino newcomers and the Italians who stepped ashore in New York around the turn of the century.

Both are from deeply religious, principally Roman Catholic cultures.

Both tend to have very strong family ties and very large extended families that provide a network of personal support.

Both cultures tend to be highly patriarchal and male-dominated. But women who choose to break out of the macho culture have their own special form of social mobility. They are considered attractive wives and thus widely marry outside the culture, speeding the process of assimilation and acceptance.

Both groups first came to the United States as rural peasants and maintained strong ties to their home areas. Mexicans from Jalisco or Zacatecas remain loyal to their home states, much as Italians from Sicily or Calabria once did.

Both groups experienced a steady return migration. Scholars estimate that fully half of the 4 million Italians who migrated to the United States between 1880 and 1920 eventually returned to Italy, using their American earnings to live more comfortable lives in their homeland. Many Latin Americans have done the same, a point often overlooked in our overheated political debates about immigration.

Despite being of largely peasant stock, both communities became more economically sophisticated in this country, either by finding jobs as skilled blue-collar workers or by building up small retail businesses like restaurants, bakeries and, yes, in a few cases, organized crime.

Finally, like today’s Latinos, the Italian immigrants of the late 19th century faced virulent prejudice from native-born Americans who feared that the newcomers were not the same “quality” as previous immigrants and would have preferred to see most of them deported.

In fact, just as a derogatory terms applied to Latinos (the hateful term “wetback”) can be traced to their immigrant history, so can a common derogatory term applied to Italian Americans. The awful word “wop” originated as an abbreviation used by immigration inspectors at Ellis Island, who applied it to anyone who arrived “without papers.”

The most hopeful part of this scenario, of course, is that in spite of the prejudice and other problems Italian immigrants faced, the great majority became upstanding citizens. They not only built solid middle-class communities in and around New York, but also have given that city two mayors, Fiorello La Guardia and Rudolph Giuliani. They also have given us a respected governor in Mario Cuomo, a Supreme Court justice in Antonin Scalia, a legendary business tycoon in Lee Iacocca, great ahtletes like Joe DiMaggio and countless artists, from Frank Sinatra to Martin Scorsese.

Who is to say that, a hundred years from now, Latinos in Los Angeles and other cities won’t be able to look back on a similarly proud history of progress? It’s at least as likely as the nightmare scenarios that anti-immigration extremists use to whip up hysteria over the Latinization of the United States.