ABSTRACT
This dazzling collection of original essays from some of the country's leading thinkers asks the rather intriguing question - Are Italians White? Each piece carefully explores how, when and why whiteness became important to Italian Americans, and the significance of gender, class and nation to racial identity.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|62 pages
Learning The U.S. Color Line
chapter 3|16 pages
Race, Nation, Hyphen
Italian-Americans and American Multiculturalism in Comparative Perspective
part II|82 pages
Radicalism and Race
chapter 5|19 pages
Making The Italian Other
Blacks, Whites, and the Inbetween in the 1895 Spring Valley, Illinois, Race Riot
chapter 6|13 pages
“It is Providential That There are Foreigners Here”
Whiteness and Masculinity in the Making of Italian American Syndicalist Identity
chapter 7|13 pages
I Delitti Della Razza Bianca (Crimes of the White Race)
Italian Anarchists' Racial Discourse as Crime
chapter 8|20 pages
Surrealist, Anarchist, Afrocentrist
Philip Lamantia Before and After the “Beat Generation”
part III|51 pages
Whiteness,Violence, and the Urban Crisis
chapter 10|16 pages
When Frank Sinatra Came to Italian Harlem
The 1945 “Race Riot” at Benjamin Franklin High School
chapter 12|18 pages
“Italians Against Racism”
The Murder of Yusuf Hawkins (R. I. P.) and My March on Bensonhurst
part IV|48 pages
Toward a Black Italian Imaginary