When I met my wife in a night club I had a dark tan and I had Curley hair. She taught I was Puerto Rican

That is disgusting.

Lots of black celebrities trying to look white these days by lightening their skin.

@revis island

Iron Eyes Cody the crying Indian was actually an Italian.

Nah, Sammy and the American celebs who do that are exceptions and they get routinely laughed at/criticized for doing it.


What you will see are retouched photos of Black celebs in mainstream magazines or ads....making them appear lighter..I guess to better appeal to mainstream audience.

Sort of a weird dance that non wasp American celebs have played for decades and think they need to play today

anglicize your name.
convert to Protestant Christian denomination,
have plastic surgery to erase your culturally or ethnically distinct traits,
marry a germanic woman and produce kids with less ethnic features

Yeah. You're probably right.

I have suspicions that a lot of Irish Americans in the South convert to Protestant denominations in a bid to assimilate with the bigots.

Irish faced lot of discrimination when they arrived in waves over here.
Ugly stereotyping, physical violence, "catholics" not being considered real christians by mainstream,etc,etc

just about every large wave of immigrants went through similar experiences ..and then turned around and had a hand in doing it to the next group


Irish Catholics passing or people passing as anything other than what they are......george stone aka guisseppe petri or fair skinned Blacks passing as white....part of the just part of the American story......some hide who they are...but most just fight against the bigotry and press forward

So true. Do unto others what was done unto you .

One of the most interesting parts of the film Goodfellas was some dialogue by Tommy

In first scene he's begging Henry to double date with him and lamenting that "The jew -broad is prejudiced against Italians.Can you believe in this day and age?"


In the other scene he's scolding his girlfriend for admiring Sammy Davis Jr's talent and seeing why his white wife is with him "You don't approve of that type of thing, do you?"


Thought it was interesting screenwriting.

It makes me uncomfortable to admit it, Gets. Because, well, you're Black and I'm White. But it was realistic dialogue for the time frame that the movie was set in. You hope with each generation that we become more tolerant, but it's not realistic to think that things will ever completely change. That said, I think we've come a long way since 1965.

And I'm not even talking about equal rights. I'm talking about living with each other. My father's almost 85. He didn't have any Black friends when he was growing up. I'm 54, and to be honest, I didn't have more than two or three myself (although one of my very best friends is Black). I grew up in a very segregated neighborhood. That's just how things were. But my kids (19, 24 and 27) probably have as many Black friends as they do White. I think that's progress, where some so called White liberals will tell you that it's not enough.

re Jews and Italians and "Goodfellas." Jews and Italians, here in New York City anyway, are very much alike. As for what goes on in Tel Aviv and Rome, you'd have to ask them. But here in New York, Jews and Italians always seem to find each other .

pizza,

agree with you about it being realistic....thought it was interesting that Tommy is a more complex character than what someone viewing film for the first time might notice. Thought it was very honest to have both of those scenes in the film to illustrate the point we talked about...doing unto others.
Nothing uncomfortable about the film or the scenes. film about killers and gangsters .. slurs about italians, irish and blacks are going to be heard...though it rings false that no jewish slur was uttered..not even in scene where maury is killed.....
hollywood's rules

But "Casino" was loaded with Jewish slurs. In the third act of that film, Joe Pesci repeatedly referred to DeNiro as "the little Jew." And not in a nice way. Now I realize it's a different film. But the actors and director were the same.

pizza,

absolutely....was just saying that it didn't ring true in Goodfellas.
Even though Maury uses italian and irish slurs in the film and the entire group of associates throw friendly slurs and jabs at each other, just found it odd that no slurs were used against jews.

I thought otherwise it was pretty honest dialogue. Even the good looking , relatively "good" gangster, Henry is shown using slurs. The guy we are supposed to root for in films are generally completely sanitized and I'm glad that Scorcese didn't do that with Henry....though of course Henry being the protagonist....he is cleaned up a great deal from what the real Henry Hill was...glad Scorcese didn't punk out on that detail.

The real Henry Hill was such a bottom feeding lowlife that had Scorsese portrayed him realistically people would have walked out of the movie before Henry broke his cherry .

I am half italian and half Hungarian. Daddio was a hungarian Jew even though he beat me like a dog. If anyone said anything about that piece of shit I would attack them.

When I was a kid everyone was prejudiced. My mother was prejudiced. My older brother met a pretty puerto Rican girl. She asked for his number to make sure he did not give her a fake name.

I was in the house when she called my brother was in the bathroom. Ma picked up the phone when she heard the girls Spanish accent she said no one by that name lives here and don't call again.

Everyone can't live in Disney land I guess.

Sicilians are a diverse bunch. I've met black curly haired Sicilians with almost Indian-like dark skin, blond- or ginger-haired fair skinned Sicilians, brown-haired olive skinned Sicilians,...or any mixture between this. The list could go on and on.
Calabrians I've met in general tend to have a more predisposed look: dark haired, olive skinned. But again, differences exist.

I have been told by people who are Sicilian or who have a Sicilian heritage that I look Sicilian. But I have dark hair, dark eyes, and I do not have a pale complexion and if I tan or get sun then my complexion does turn darker. I did not really know what my Italian heritage was as I was told it could be Neapolitian, or even Sicilian. I looked up my Italian heritage and it was Calabrian. But I also am told by people who are Hispanic that I look like someone from Spain or who has a Spanish heritage. I did go to certain parts of Spain as a teenager on a vacation trip, and I agree with this as people in certain cities thought I was a native.

it's called rap music or what's perceived to be rap music in todays day in age

Then there's the Black Irish who have dark hair and tan complexions which they favor more the Spanish or Southern Italians. The Black Irish have Spanish blood in them anyway going back to the Spanish Armada when survivors of the ship come upon on the shores of Ireland, and intermarried with the Irish then that's how black Irish came along.

This is when we lived in Italian Harlem early 60s. That's Jefferson park right next to Rao's.

They guy getting beat up was in the French connection played the candy store owners brother. The garbage man that bought the car to slip the heroin into.

The black kid with us is Johnny Bell. He grew up with us. He fought with us against other gangs. Hell, Johnny even spoke Italian pretty good American football player as well.

So if we knew you there was no prejudice.
Check out this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNv5It7VeEc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Lol that's true! I remember that from the sopranos.