Who Are You Calling Privileged?
A while back on Columbus Day I wrote this on Twitter:
This is not just a SJW thing -- Columbus's European contemporaries thought he was a horrible person. The problem is that Italian-Americans have adopted it as Italian pride day -- let them have it, and celebrate indigenous people day another day, maybe nov 29. https://t.co/jcrFFVHxvh
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) October 8, 2018
A lot of young SJW's just lump Italians in with white European men and treat them as privileged, but Italians and Irish were ethnic punching bags in this country for decades. They had real reasons to develop a pride day, and for good or for ill this is it.
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) October 8, 2018
I am reminded of this in a WSJ article I saw today about a lynching of Italian immigrants in New Orleans in 1891
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell will officially apologize Friday for the largest mass lynching in U.S. history. On March 14, 1891, the city of New Orleans became a charnel house as a mob of as many as 20,000 wantonly slaughtered 11 Italian-Americans. Some of the victims had been charged in the murder of a police chief, but the trials all ended in acquittal or mistrial. A gang descended on the jail where the men were being held, shot them to death, and displayed their bodies for the savage rabble outside. Southern belles in search of souvenirs dipped their lace handkerchiefs in the blood of the butchered Italians.
And the press cheered. The New York Times editorialized on March 16: “These sneaking and cowardly Sicilians, the descendants of bandits and assassins, who have transported to this country the lawless passions, the cut-throat practices, and the oath-bound societies of their native country, are to us a pest without mitigations.”
The Washington Post even extolled the killers as “cool-headed men, lawyers, doctors, merchants, and political leaders, all person of influence and social standing.”
Theodore Roosevelt, then a member of the U.S. Civil Service Commission, wrote to his sister Anna Roosevelt Cowles on March 21: “Monday we dined at the Camerons; various dago diplomats were present, all much wrought up by the lynching of the Italians in New Orleans. Personally I think it rather a good thing, and said so.”
I don't really have a horse in this race. My family was German, coming to America (thankfully) a bit before WWI.
Postscript: The quote above also serves to illustrate why Teddy Roosevelt has my vote as most overrated President. His treatment of Columbia, for example, is an embarrassment to this nation. I will say that he would be high on my list of ex-Presidents to hang out at dinner, though. He was a fascinating and energetic man -- but also high-handed and racist/nationalist in the same way that many British Victorians were. On a related topic, my kids once asked me which President I would want to be stranded on an island with. If it was a desert island necessitating survival skills, TR would be near the top of the list. If it was a modern island with clubs and resorts I would probably choose Bill Clinton -- he seems to know his way around that scene.
