Originally Posted By: pizzaboy
The face of organized crime in America (however disorganized it has become) has to change. As far as "full blooded" Italians remaining the driving force? That's not going to happen. Where are they going to come from?

The overwhelming majority of Italian families came here in between the years 1880 and 1920. That's a fact. Most Italian-Americans are now in their 3rd, 4th, 5th and even 6th generations in this country.

Italian-Americans have not only become one of the most upwardly mobile ethnic groups in the entire country---a fact that we should take much more pride in than emulating a bunch of fucking criminals mad---the Italians here have continually married into other ethnic groups, "watering down" their blood line, and giving birth to more "American" children.

So unless they re-open Ellis Island and start shipping in poor Italian immigrants by the boatload (who are hardly as poor today as my 4 grandparents were when they came here from Southern Italy), and only let them "breed" with themselves rolleyes, then where is this "new blood" going to come from?

It's only natural that the other, more recently arrived ethnic groups, take to running the streets. They'll never be as powerful as the Italian mob was 50 or 60 years ago, not for lack of ambition or ruthlessness, but for many of the reasons that Turnbull, Lilo and some of our other more well informed members have already posted (RICO, eavesdropping technology, etc...).


What you're saying is largely true. It's called general attrition and has been a bigger catalyst of the demise of Mafia Families in the U.S. than all the indictments and turncoats combined. It is why the remaining Families are anywhere from 50% to 10% of their peak sizes in the 1950's and 1960's.

That said, the effect of this general attrition varies from region to region, city to city. In the areas that have always been the Mafia's main powerbase, it is natuarally much slower. Families like Dallas and Denver are gone. Others like Los Angeles and Tampa are nearly so. But others like Chicago, New England, and Philadelphia are still there. And the five New York Families will be around for a long time to come.