My grandparents were all Italian immigrants and from what I’ve heard faced the same discrimination and suspicion as every other group of newcomers. They didn’t whine about it, they worked at the jobs they could to feed their families. The discrimination and suspicion goes away when people see your groups values and work ethic are like everyone elses. If they’re not,...
I agree with your take, having myself lived in the Italian Market in Philly among hard-working, enterprising Italian-Americans. The insular Italian culture may have contributed in part—there is a word in Italian campanilismo—meaning "never stray farther away than the bell tower in your home neighborhood." In Philly, each ethnicity could name the four streets that enclosed "their" neighborhood. It's true of most immigrant groups. In the past century, there were churches all over the country that specialized in the many languages of the "old country."
Some of the ethnic friction between the Dutch and English Protestants who settled New York City against the incoming Catholic Irish in the half-century preceding The Godfather was well depicted in Scorcese's Gangs of New York. The major Italian influx shown in The Godfather came after, and was subjected to the same tensions over religion, language and culture, certainly in part by the freshly-assimilated Irish who were, by then, in the top spots in Catholic seminaries and parishes.
As for this article, the well-respected author Michael Anton's disbelief that there was significant prejudice against Italians is surprisingly naïve, especially since he is of Italian and Lebanese extraction himself. Anton was born in 1969, so he missed the earlier era depicted in The Godfather. He grew up and was educated mainly on the West Coast, where ethnic attitudes have long been more liberal than on the East Coast.
Yo, Michael. Sad but true.