The Italian Interments and prejudice during WWII
Between 1876 and 1930, a wave of Slavs, Jews, and Italians arrived on American shores. Vociferous arguments were made against these “undesirable immigrants.” Italians during this period were the targets of mass lynchings and subject to slurs like “guinea” (a person of mixed-race ancestry), “dago”(because Italians were paid as a “day goes” rather than salaried), and wop (as in “without papers)..lawmakers, intent on making America white Anglo-Saxon Protestant again, maintained that dark-featured Catholics weren’t welcome.
The Italian immigrants who arrived in the United States were mostly poor laborers fleeing poverty in southern Italy. As they left behind low-wage jobs in mining, textiles, and other areas of manufacturing, their arrival clashed with the burgeoning American labor movement. When American workers went on strike demanding better pay and conditions, business owners replaced them with Italians, who were so desperate that they’d take whatever work they could get. Rather than direct their rage at the true sources of their disenfranchisement — the wealthy factory owners, the government, the very system of American capital itself — the American workers caved to xenophobic impulses and landed on a much easier target: “the other.”
Roughly two months after Italy’s declaration of war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the infamous Executive Order 9066, which enabled the government to claim land for military use, a.k.a. internment camps. The internment of the Japanese is widely known, but less well known is the fact that 10,000 Italians were forced out of their homes, and hundreds interned in camps as well.
More:
https://timeline.com/the-shameful-treatment-of-italian-immigrants-during-wwii-b99a16ee5b43
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