Honor those who mattered

Late last spring after the killing of George Floyd triggered protests in the streets, people started casting around for useful targets in their crusade against white supremacy. One such ready target presented itself in the person of a guy who died six centuries ago, Christopher Columbus. Across the country, Black Lives Matter activists started pushing for statutes to be pulled down, holidays to be renamed and history books to be rewritten.

As I wrote at the time, it was Orwellian. However, if the attacks had been limited to statues, calendars and history books, we might have been able to have a civil discussion about the meaning of Columbus and his impact on western civilization.

Sadly, we soon saw that Columbus and his history was just a proxy in the social justice crusade against people notof-color, the “PNOC” of society. The PNOC are not limited to one particular ethnicity or demographic, but encompass every group that hasn’t suffered sufficient victimization according to the canons of woke orthodoxy. And that includes, apparently, Italians and more specifically Italian Americans.

Recently, a coalition of groups representing diverse parts of the Italian-American community in Philadelphia filed suit against the city. The federal complaint prepared by legendary Philadelphia attorney George Bocchetto cited numerous instances of discrimination against a community to which I belong.

The complaint mentions that in addition to the attempted removal of the Columbus statue from South Philly’s Marconi Plaza, Mayor Jim Kenney ordered the removal “under cover of darkness” of Frank Rizzo’s statue. The complaint also makes the interesting observation that a historically Italian-American neighborhood of the city, the 19148 zip code, was excluded from priority consideration for COVID vaccines even though it had one of the highest concentrations of infection in Philadelphia.

And finally, Bocchetto raised the specter of the “Guido,” a term that has been used for generations as a veiled slur with connotations of “stupid,” “greasy,” “hulking,” “crude” or “Mafia.” When defending his decision to make Philadelphia a sanctuary city a few years ago, Kenney said this about his critics: “This is undocumented brown and Black people and that’s what drives the underlying source of anger ... If this were Cousin Emilio or Cousin Guido we wouldn’t have this problem because they’re white.”

That’s basically what a local columnist wrote when she made fun of Bocchetto, the lawsuit and the Italian Americans who support it. She mocked the idea that Italians suffer discrimination. She was offended that we would even claim discrimination when Asian Americans were being attacked in the streets and brown and Black folk were being killed. How dare these white folk complain? How dare they say, we matter?

That’s when I saw red (and green, and white). That’s when I wrote this on Facebook:

“Someone wrote a column mocking the idea that Italian Americans had a right to be hurt at the actions of Jim Kenney. It was a mocking piece, not a critique.

“And I took out a photo I carry in my handbag or, as my grandmother Mamie called it, my ‘pockabook.’ My little mom mom, as wide as she was tall, dressed in those stylish house dresses from K-Mart that grazed her knee. Chubby feet encased in daily-washed hose.

“My grandfather Mike was in the photo too, sitting next to her. Face drawn, eyes ravaged by the emphysema eating him up from within. Still, though, smiling. His girl Mamie and his other girl ‘Guddina,’ nearby on the couch.

And I started crying. I cried because my grandmom and grandpop did not deserve to be mocked.

“Mamie left school in the third grade to go to work and help bring money home. Her father, handsome and dashing but weak with misplaced honor, committed suicide in the basement when a daughter became pregnant out of wedlock. Mamie had thrown a child’s jump rope down the steps when she was cleaning earlier in the day. It was the rope he used. She never forgave herself.

All of us have Mikes and Mamies, and they might be Polish or German or Irish or Swedish or Ukranian or Ashkenazi or Sephardic. We have loved these people. And they have been mistreated and attacked, the subject of slurs, discriminated against, kicked down, laughed at. Diminished.

They are people of color. The color of humanity. And in mocking their dignity, their right to feel as if their history is being ripped away to placate someone else, this Philadelphia journalist said their lives didn’t matter.

Well you know what? Mike and Mamie mattered. And until people like that journalist get that, we will continue to fight for their honor. And no amount of mocking will make us do anything but fight harder.