Murder in a Small Town “Europe ends at Naples and ends badly,” said French poet August Creuzé de Lesser in 1806. “Calabria, Sicily, and all the rest belong to Africa.”
Antonio Gramsci, in 1926, was even more forthright in his declaration:
“Southerners are biologically inferior beings, either semi-barbarians or out-and-out barbarians by natural destiny; if the South is underdeveloped, it is not the fault of the capitalist system, or any other historical cause, but of the nature that has made Southerners lazy, incapable, criminal and barbaric.”
They were looked upon as terroni. dirt people.
In at least one part of Pennsylvania, the confirmation of this racialization occurs as thousands of Italian immigrants move into the area between 1889 and 1914. They are part of the over 4 million who migrate to America seeking work, with most men working as miners to harvest the anthracite coal that sprouts everywhere in the Wyoming Valley and hinterland.
Entire story on:
https://gangstersinc.org/blog/murder-in-a-small-town
