Memo to Dr. Mary Graber: Some of Us of Italiano Descent Know the Code Words Also
In a column for Townhall.com Mary Grabar has an excellent response to Obama for what he had to say about the so-called bitter gun & religious clingers in Pennsylvania. While she speaks for those who came from Eastern Europe under communistic rule, much of what she says also applies to my ancestors who came over from Italia looking for a better life. I've added a few comments of my own where the similarities occur.
1 of life's little ironies is that when my maternal grandparents, their friends & relatives came over from Southern Italia, they were labeled as colored. Now their grandchildren are lumped in with those that Obama & his ilk call "priviledged".
By Mary Grabar
We know who you’re talking about, Barack Obama, when you talk about Pennsylvania and the Midwest, about small towns where the jobs have left. We know who you’re talking about when you talk about those who “get bitter” and “cling to guns or religion.”
You’re talking about “those people.”
You’re talking about “those people.”
You’re talking about white people who have neither the family connections nor the racial credentials to gain entrance to the world that you inhabit. Many of the people you’re talking about are those whose parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe who came to these places to work in steel mills, coal mines, and factories. (& railroads) We know the code words.
You’re talking about people whose culture is little known. We have been pretty quiet. We never tried to impose our culture on everyone. We never insisted on putting pictures of ourselves in our native dress into schoolbooks or mandating that our stories and songs be part of the curriculums. (OK mine is better known, but now it isn't PC to be proud of it.)
We tried to maintain our culture without government aid, by forming our own churches and groups, and building Polish, Ukrainian, and Slovenian halls. (ditto for the Italianos)
We never wore buttons declaring “Slav Power” or grouped together for purposes of intimidation or violence.
The power we asked for was the power of the paycheck which we earned in factories, steel mills, coal mines, or by cleaning houses. Yet, we were taken aside and told that because of affirmative action it was no use trying to advance off the assembly line; we were told in “diversity workshops” that people of color had to be promoted over more qualified white people. I know this, Barack, because I have family members and friends who worked in factories.
We used to trudge in to work and change into work clothes, like my father did. He began by knowing only one word of English, “Okay,” which he found to be the most useful one in the language. (Her ancestors & mine also knew they needed to learn how to properly speak English, it was & still IS the language of this country.) When the boss man handed him a broom or pointed to a piece to be welded, he fairly leapt to the task. My uncles were injured in construction and mining accidents, and went back to work. (& back injuries from working on the railroad.)
But what did we get for that, Barack? We paid cash for our houses and kept impeccable yards, yet saw the value of our homes plummet after marauding hoodlums came into our neighborhoods in riots that were celebrated by the intelligentsia in Manhattan penthouses, who saw such violence as justified expressions of outrage over past discrimination. (Interesting fact about job & pay discrimination from 1912. Obama, who was more discriminated against when it came to pay, your ancestors or mine? "In 1912 the average income for a native white American was $14.37 per week, while a Negro earned about $10.66 a week. . . . the southern Italian a meager $9.61. So does that mean I can go to your neighborhood & riot Obama?)
We went to public schools in those same neighborhoods only to be accosted for our skin color and the presumed “privilege” that teachers said we had. Rather than teach us what was good and beautiful about Western Civilization and the country to which our parents had fled, teachers gave us Marxist nonsense, if they bothered to teach at all. Our schoolmates saw the evening news, mimicked their elders by wearing “Black Power” buttons and felt justified in roughing the white kid who didn’t seem tough. Because we were “privileged”—despite washing our fathers’ sooty work clothes while our mothers went off to clean offices and houses in the suburbs—we were not eligible for scholarships, not even to the Catholic schools. Teachers never cut us any slack. Guidance counselors told us to be secretaries or work in the factory, despite our volunteering and demonstration of academic abilities. Our brothers, cousins, and uncles went off to fight in Vietnam, while those from your class took up arms against their campus administrators.
True, we had our problems, as all people do, with such things as alcoholism and family violence, but we handled those ourselves, and never blamed “society” or a history of oppression. Still, many of us did carry legacies from the old country, of hunger and persecution, of watching family members and villagers murdered by atheistic regimes. So we were grateful for the opportunity to work and buy our own little patches of the American Dream. (My ancestors may not have had to deal with atheistic regimes. But they did deal with invaders who persecuted them. They did deal with a legacy of hunger. & the American dream was just as important to them.)
We were happy to use a welding torch, shovel, or broom to get them. We didn’t insist that we should all get college degrees. We didn’t have our documents translated for us or get bilingual instruction. (Ditto!) If we didn’t know English we made sure our children did and we relied on them. (Like I said above!)
Your white friends in San Francisco, Barack, probably had cleaning women like my mother (and me when I accompanied her and then had my own cleaning jobs from age 12). As white people from a certain class and with certain connections, your donors knew that their futures would be secure because of their inheritances and the connections they could make in the media, politics, and business. In fact, it would benefit them in the world of “radical chic” to hang around those like you and support your policies. (Great opportunity to be photographed next to a black person!)
Your black friends there, like your wife, see no end to the amount that this country owes them because of what happened to their ancestors. It makes no difference that many of the whites in previous generations also had experienced persecution and hunger and worked in dangerous, dirty, and degrading jobs. (Like my Grandpa & Great Grandpa.) Or that blacks and Native Americans were among the slave owners. (& I have been judged more than once by blacks because of my skin color. I guess it is OK for them to treat me in a way that is the exact opposite of the "Golden Rule".)
In fact, you and those wealthy donors sneer at white people who have had to do manual labor and who have paid for tuition at community colleges with the money earned that way, while our classmates received special scholarships and government grants—from our taxes. (Where were my special scholarships when I was in college? Yes I got financial aid, based on true need, scholarships based on ability.)
You sneer at those like us who put our faith in God and not in those like you who would presume to know what’s good for us and tell us what to do with our money and our children, and leave us with no ability to defend ourselves.
Well, Barack, coming from your Ivy League world, you would not know much about us. You would not have learned that because we come from people who, rather than letting their communist benefactors redistribute the food, burned the crops in their little fields before they were forcibly “collectivized.” In Slovenia, they fought Tito’s Partisans from the woods and held mass at night when the Communists banned church services. They remember what it’s like to be hungry, ill, and living in little more than huts, while Marshall Tito and his communist cronies lived in villas. Now you live in a Chicago mansion and sneer at those like us who simply want to keep and defend our little three-bedroom ranches. You don’t know what it’s like to have family members die for the right to attend mass. (Dr. Grabar, I suspect you realize that if Obama's Ivy League buddies had their way, Slovenia would still be under Communist rule.)
I know your liberal cronies, Barack; they make me check off my skin color on job applications and ask me during job interviews of how I teach multiculturalism, yet don’t know where Slovenia is on the world map. They couldn’t care less about my culture, nor about Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, or Lithuanian culture. Your supporters often feel free to mock my Slovenian heritage in letters and comments on the Internet when they disagree with me. I guess it’s like being called a “dumb Polack”—something that has never gained quite the opprobrium of other ethnic epithets.
See, Barack, we know the system: Some are more “equal” than others.
And we know how you really feel about the “proletariat.” We know this from our experience either directly or as an inheritance from our parents and grandparents. And that is why we came to America.
Addendum: Many of my non-European correspondents, like those who came from Cuba, agree—as their letters to me indicate.
You’re talking about people whose culture is little known. We have been pretty quiet. We never tried to impose our culture on everyone. We never insisted on putting pictures of ourselves in our native dress into schoolbooks or mandating that our stories and songs be part of the curriculums. (OK mine is better known, but now it isn't PC to be proud of it.)
We tried to maintain our culture without government aid, by forming our own churches and groups, and building Polish, Ukrainian, and Slovenian halls. (ditto for the Italianos)
We never wore buttons declaring “Slav Power” or grouped together for purposes of intimidation or violence.
The power we asked for was the power of the paycheck which we earned in factories, steel mills, coal mines, or by cleaning houses. Yet, we were taken aside and told that because of affirmative action it was no use trying to advance off the assembly line; we were told in “diversity workshops” that people of color had to be promoted over more qualified white people. I know this, Barack, because I have family members and friends who worked in factories.
We used to trudge in to work and change into work clothes, like my father did. He began by knowing only one word of English, “Okay,” which he found to be the most useful one in the language. (Her ancestors & mine also knew they needed to learn how to properly speak English, it was & still IS the language of this country.) When the boss man handed him a broom or pointed to a piece to be welded, he fairly leapt to the task. My uncles were injured in construction and mining accidents, and went back to work. (& back injuries from working on the railroad.)
But what did we get for that, Barack? We paid cash for our houses and kept impeccable yards, yet saw the value of our homes plummet after marauding hoodlums came into our neighborhoods in riots that were celebrated by the intelligentsia in Manhattan penthouses, who saw such violence as justified expressions of outrage over past discrimination. (Interesting fact about job & pay discrimination from 1912. Obama, who was more discriminated against when it came to pay, your ancestors or mine? "In 1912 the average income for a native white American was $14.37 per week, while a Negro earned about $10.66 a week. . . . the southern Italian a meager $9.61. So does that mean I can go to your neighborhood & riot Obama?)
We went to public schools in those same neighborhoods only to be accosted for our skin color and the presumed “privilege” that teachers said we had. Rather than teach us what was good and beautiful about Western Civilization and the country to which our parents had fled, teachers gave us Marxist nonsense, if they bothered to teach at all. Our schoolmates saw the evening news, mimicked their elders by wearing “Black Power” buttons and felt justified in roughing the white kid who didn’t seem tough. Because we were “privileged”—despite washing our fathers’ sooty work clothes while our mothers went off to clean offices and houses in the suburbs—we were not eligible for scholarships, not even to the Catholic schools. Teachers never cut us any slack. Guidance counselors told us to be secretaries or work in the factory, despite our volunteering and demonstration of academic abilities. Our brothers, cousins, and uncles went off to fight in Vietnam, while those from your class took up arms against their campus administrators.
True, we had our problems, as all people do, with such things as alcoholism and family violence, but we handled those ourselves, and never blamed “society” or a history of oppression. Still, many of us did carry legacies from the old country, of hunger and persecution, of watching family members and villagers murdered by atheistic regimes. So we were grateful for the opportunity to work and buy our own little patches of the American Dream. (My ancestors may not have had to deal with atheistic regimes. But they did deal with invaders who persecuted them. They did deal with a legacy of hunger. & the American dream was just as important to them.)
We were happy to use a welding torch, shovel, or broom to get them. We didn’t insist that we should all get college degrees. We didn’t have our documents translated for us or get bilingual instruction. (Ditto!) If we didn’t know English we made sure our children did and we relied on them. (Like I said above!)
Your white friends in San Francisco, Barack, probably had cleaning women like my mother (and me when I accompanied her and then had my own cleaning jobs from age 12). As white people from a certain class and with certain connections, your donors knew that their futures would be secure because of their inheritances and the connections they could make in the media, politics, and business. In fact, it would benefit them in the world of “radical chic” to hang around those like you and support your policies. (Great opportunity to be photographed next to a black person!)
Your black friends there, like your wife, see no end to the amount that this country owes them because of what happened to their ancestors. It makes no difference that many of the whites in previous generations also had experienced persecution and hunger and worked in dangerous, dirty, and degrading jobs. (Like my Grandpa & Great Grandpa.) Or that blacks and Native Americans were among the slave owners. (& I have been judged more than once by blacks because of my skin color. I guess it is OK for them to treat me in a way that is the exact opposite of the "Golden Rule".)
In fact, you and those wealthy donors sneer at white people who have had to do manual labor and who have paid for tuition at community colleges with the money earned that way, while our classmates received special scholarships and government grants—from our taxes. (Where were my special scholarships when I was in college? Yes I got financial aid, based on true need, scholarships based on ability.)
You sneer at those like us who put our faith in God and not in those like you who would presume to know what’s good for us and tell us what to do with our money and our children, and leave us with no ability to defend ourselves.
Well, Barack, coming from your Ivy League world, you would not know much about us. You would not have learned that because we come from people who, rather than letting their communist benefactors redistribute the food, burned the crops in their little fields before they were forcibly “collectivized.” In Slovenia, they fought Tito’s Partisans from the woods and held mass at night when the Communists banned church services. They remember what it’s like to be hungry, ill, and living in little more than huts, while Marshall Tito and his communist cronies lived in villas. Now you live in a Chicago mansion and sneer at those like us who simply want to keep and defend our little three-bedroom ranches. You don’t know what it’s like to have family members die for the right to attend mass. (Dr. Grabar, I suspect you realize that if Obama's Ivy League buddies had their way, Slovenia would still be under Communist rule.)
I know your liberal cronies, Barack; they make me check off my skin color on job applications and ask me during job interviews of how I teach multiculturalism, yet don’t know where Slovenia is on the world map. They couldn’t care less about my culture, nor about Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, or Lithuanian culture. Your supporters often feel free to mock my Slovenian heritage in letters and comments on the Internet when they disagree with me. I guess it’s like being called a “dumb Polack”—something that has never gained quite the opprobrium of other ethnic epithets.
See, Barack, we know the system: Some are more “equal” than others.
And we know how you really feel about the “proletariat.” We know this from our experience either directly or as an inheritance from our parents and grandparents. And that is why we came to America.
Addendum: Many of my non-European correspondents, like those who came from Cuba, agree—as their letters to me indicate.
Sadly, many of my fellow Americans of Southern Italian descent have forgotten their history & joined the liberal elite, the "radical chic". They forget the hard work their grandparents did so that their parents could get a good education & better jobs that enabled them to have the inheritances they have. They are betraying their grandparents & the reasons came over here for in the 1st place. (This could also be said about people like the Kennedys as well, do they remember their Irish ancestors weren't exactly welcomed here either?)
Something I learned a long time ago is that there is only 1 race, the human race. We may have different heritages, but we are all human beings. I grew up in a mostly Italiano neighborhood. I grew up with Mexican friends. I have had friends whose ancestors came from Europe, Asia, Africa as well as the Americas. I didn't chose a single 1 of them based on skin color, but on who they were as a person.
My ancestors appreciated what America had to offer. America offered them freedom, hope a better life, if they were willing to work for it. & they did. They didn't ask for special treatment, just equal opportunity & they didn't always get that.
Like I said, they didn't ask for special treatment. & even though life hasn't always treated me fairly, neither do I.
posted by Al @ 1:08 AM
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