Eth/125 Ethnic Groups and Discrimination

Ethnic Groups and Discrimination

ETH/125

November 14, 2010

Jeanette Carney

Ethnic Groups and Discrimination

The ethnic groups in which I belong are Italian and German. I decided to use Italian because my mother has so much family history to tell about it, whereas on my German side most of my family is deceased and I don’t really have that much insight into it. I know that from the stories from my childhood that my grandparents emigrated over here from northern Italy due to some conflicts my grandparents faced over there. My grandfather was a big part of the prohibition mafia over there and wanted to get away. So my family came to America and settled down in Iron Mountain, Michigan.

“At the turn of the 20th century, between 1876 to 1924, over four and a half million Italians arrived in the United States, out of a population of only approximately 14 million in Italy. As large numbers of Italians began to settle in America they began to establish enclaves where they felt they would be safe from the prejudice and fears of the largely Irish and German communities that surrounded them.” (The American Immigration Law Foundation, 2004)

One of the push factors for Italians coming to America was because “Southern and Northern Italy unified during the 1860’s. The unification was disastrous for the south since the new constitution favored the North.” (The Advocates for Human Rights, 2010) This just shows me that there is prejudice everywhere.

In Italy during this time they were struggling economically and it wasn’t helping that the population was skyrocketing. In 1861 the population there was 25 million, and by 1901 it grew to 33 million. By 1911 it had soared to 35 million even though a lot of Italians had already immigrated over to America.

The Italians were persecuted because of their religion. Many of the Italians were Catholic, and when they arrived in America they soon found out that the Catholic Church had an Irish...