• iagomago
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    10 hours ago

    I’m from Italy as well. I always like to remember a quote from Charles Mingus, who at some point in his career had an entire black band with the exception of his sax player, Charlie Mariano. When asked about it, he answered something along of the lines of “He’s not white, he’s Italian.”

    • SparrowHawk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      22
      ·
      10 hours ago

      Maybe the social meaning of ethnicity is really relative to the racist empires they’re situated in and not on some sort of inherent value

      • AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        4 hours ago

        yea, its because the Italians (and Irish, Chinese, etc as well) generally came to America later and were poorer than the British/French/Germans etc were, so they were often discriminated against (plus the mafia thing, but that also generally comes from being poorer)