As corporations and media organizations across the nation peer inward in order to carve a path forward on diversity and inclusivity, the question must be asked: why are Italian American stereotypes still so widely accepted in popular culture?

For instance, the Buffalo Bills tout the “Bills Mafia” as a collection of players, fans and tailgaters who represent the face and spirit of the franchise.

The Bills organization recently gushed over the group on its website, where the word “community” was used repeatedly to prop up the controversial name and describe the sometimes heartful, sometimes irreverent group.

Instead, what if the fanbase were called the Bills Taliban? The Afghan military outfit and La Cosa Nostra are both associated with widespread violence and corruption, but we can’t imagine that Middle Eastern people would embrace, let alone tolerate, the garish moniker.

Meanwhile, the entertainment industry has turned the mafia into a highly fictionalized and packageable product that too often appears on screens big and small and is too often embraced by audiences of all ages.

Last November, comedian John Mulaney hosted Saturday Night Live and said this about the Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, and his daily Covid TV press conferences:

(Fast forward to the 2:49 mark in the monologue below, as Mulaney imagines a situation in which Gov. Cuomo calls his sister-in-law a “gavone bitch” and threatens to kill and bury her.)

The language and delivery are jarring, yet the audience — indifferent to the prevailing trope of Italians being murdering goons — roars in laughter.

It’s no wonder crowds are so desensitized, as you see the Italian gangster references everywhere.

Here’s a poorly produced commercial that aired in front of millions of movie-goers:

The 2016 children’s film, “Zootopia,” parodies a scene from “The Godfather.” In 2004’s “Shark Tale,” the villains are “mobster sharks” with names like Don Lino and Frankie. They’re fumbling and devious characters who speak with exaggerated Italian accents.

“Fat Tony” and “Jimmy Tightlips” who appeared several times on “The Simpsons” are dim-witted, armed and prone to violence.

Will these media companies and sports franchises rethink and pull this material? It’s unlikely, because these are all cheap depictions that attract either easy laughs or the false allure of coolness.

Is it any wonder why children and adults will inevitably ask their Italian American friends whether they know anyone in the mafia?

In the wake of last spring’s racial equality protests, Christopher Columbus statues were unlawfully torn down, but many were quick to shrug their shoulders and clumsily position Columbus’s world-changing discovery as the folly of colonialism — all in an attempt to take the moral high ground in the midst of the rioting and destruction.

The argument goes that the depictions and lawlessness are all “clean hits” because Italian Americans are just like all other privileged folks who never really encountered much of a struggle in America.

The opposite is true. Italian immigrants faced intense discrimination and crushing economic inequality during The Great Arrival and The Great Depression, which spanned from the late 19^th century to the 1930s.

Consider the following:

• 11 Sicilian immigrants were clubbed, shot and hanged in the streets of New Orleans on March 14, 1891 in front of more than 5,000 people for a murder they all had been acquitted of.
• Scores of Italian immigrant women and girls were trapped and burned to death during the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in Greenwich Village on March 25, 1911. The sweat shop owners weren’t held accountable, even though it was company policy to lock the workers in the NYC factory during their shifts.
• 600,000 Italians were declared “enemy aliens” by President Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, with 10,000 Italians alone losing homes and businesses. Some of whom were held captive in secret internment camps.

In response Columbus Day was created and monuments were built to help Italians assimilate to this hostile and discriminatory American culture; the labor movement was jumpstarted and safer work conditions were established; and after WWII, when more than 1 million Italian Americans bravely served, we were finally seen as trustful and equal to other cultures in the U.S.

Today, minority groups are still fighting for equality in our nation, and ISDA supports those peaceful causes that don’t attempt to undermine or erase Italian American history.

We should all work together and turn the page on widespread and false stereotypes that seek to marginalize and oversimplify today’s cultures.

If we do that, then we can collectively move in one direction — forward.

 

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