You’re not dumb as fuck.
It’s a common misconception. Wasn’t even really until around the time of Queen Isabella (Might have the wrong queen as it’s pretty late here) that fair skin was considered preferable and a sign of religious purity.
Humans are a weird species.
TechLich@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Even relatively recently, Italians weren’t really considered “white”, especially by Americans. The KKK considered them “coloured” people with their olive skin and dangerous Catholicism. There was a big wave of “italiapobia” in the late 19th/early 20th century.
The governer of Louisiana in 1911 described Italians as “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous”.
People can be pretty terrible when it comes to race and ethnicity.
MothmanDelorian@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sicilians weren’t seen as Italians by other Italians because Arabs had held Sicily for centuries. This is also why some did not see the Spanish as white.
BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 2 months ago
Got any further readings for this? Thank you for sharing that knowledge. Yeah racists are going to racist
TechLich@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sure! I stole the quote from the wiki article: Anti-Italianism
This article was also pretty interesting: https://accenti.ca/jim-crow-and-italian-immigrants-in-the-american-west/
There’s also an interesting series of short US LIbrary of Congress sources for history classrooms on immigration that has a section on Italians too: https://www.loc.gov/classroom-materials/immigration/italian/under-attack/
I can’t vouch for the veracity of any of these since it’s not really my field but it’s interesting to see how how stuff like this has shifted over time and where the parallels to modern racism and xenophobia are.