Good-natured ethnic joking and teasing was also common in my Catholic high school in the late 60s. Being in a fast-growing city in the Sunbelt, we were far from the ethnic neighborhoods of Northern cities. In truth, compared to everyone else, we were as alike as slices of Wonderbread — and, in retrospect, incredibly fortunate to grow up as standard issue, American middle class kids of that era.
Sounds like a nice era :)
My nephews/nieces and my cousins’ kids have no idea that they have an ethnicity pretty much :) That’s as it should be.
Third generation it really starts to die out.
Though I wish the parents had spoken italian in the house when they were young, with English of course being the first language.
Kids at that age can very easily learn two languages.
Specialists say six!!