Do you feel when Italians talk down on NY Italian Americans and the accent and cuisine, it’s based on Italian North vs South classism?

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Suitable_Tomorrow_71@reddit

I view it as Europeans thinking they're better than Americans for completely arbitrary reasons.

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SilenceDobad76@reddit

British people feeling superior for not having AC or a garbage disposal is the weirdest cope you commonly see.

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UnfairHoneydew6690@reddit

Yet they complain about how hot it is when it reaches 80 degrees.

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And they will continue to do so, because they will never, ever, utter the real reason they don't use it to an American:

They can't afford it.

Heatwaves in Europe will kill tens of thousands of people and its not like Phoenix or Las Vegas where that sort of weather will be the norm between April and November.

Summer 2003, a heatwave in Europe killed 70,000 people. They love picking on us for our mass shootings as being some sort of widespread systematic social failure, even though on a bad year mass shootings only kill a few hundred people. The lack of air conditioning kills.

Yes. Europeans blame mass shootings on a blind spot in American society which allows people to own firearms which causes a loss of life. I would argue that they have their own blind spot, a lack of air conditioning, which causes a far larger loss of life. Air conditioning is far more common in the US that it is in Europe and our summers, which are far more severe, do not result in mass casualty events where tens of thousands of lives are lost.

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hx87@reddit

They could easily live without AC even during heat waves by making a couple of changes:

Paint walls and roofs white
Install awnings, exterior shutters, and heat blocking low-E film on windows

Tbf, when I was 18 I took the Amtrak from STL to Flagstaff, AZ to look at a college. It was my first trip by myself. It was mid-April. I wore flipflops. I got off the station to 4 inches of fresh snow. 🫣

My brain heard ‘ARIZONA’ and pictured cactus’ and dry reddish brown land. I forgot I would be in the literal mountains. It’s easy to forget our terrain can be so vast and varied.

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Profleroy@reddit

Oh boy! Flip flops! That's true, the high desert can be really cold. What on earth did you do? I hope you had other shoes!

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FMLwtfDoID@reddit

The taxi driver was super nice and took me to a 24 hour Walmart so I could get some boots and socks haha

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mostie2016@reddit

Laughs in gulf coast Texan. But in all seriousness Europeans need to start investing in AC due to climate change.

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FMLwtfDoID@reddit

For real. I googled their number of heat related deaths* last year and it’s like in the hundreds each year, comparatively to the US where each state might have a few dozen or less. Still awful, but Europe, for all they like to talk about having better systems in place to negate global warming, sure are ignoring their summer temps consistently killing a lot of people every summer.

(there isn’t a number for Europe, but the EU and specific countries do keep records, but I wasn’t going to look up every European country)

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eugenesbluegenes@reddit

See, shit like that keeps me willing to pay local housing prices.

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SteelRail88@reddit

Oh, hell no. 80 is almost warm enough

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UnfairHoneydew6690@reddit

I go on 7 mile hikes in 80 degree weather. That’s about as cool as Alabama gets in the summer.

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ServoWHU42@reddit

"it's just a few days a year"

"it's just a couple weeks a year"

"it's just a month or so a year"

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mostie2016@reddit

Again I ask Northern Europeans to please just buy a window ac unit or something. Because with climate change it’s gonna get fucking worse.

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Gyvon@reddit

Again I ask Northern Europeans to please just buy a window ac unit or something

New England gets hotter/more humid summers and colder/snowier winters than England, and I've had Brits tell me I just don't get how bad their weather is.

Dawg, I lived in Wales for half a year. I first got there in January and the whole winter everyone would talk non stop about wishing for it to be warm. The first nice day finally rolls around and everyone retreated into the darkest pubs they could find because it was “too hot”

It was 74°!

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Crimsonfangknight@reddit

“What do you mean you americans dont have to buy a full kitchen of appliances and remodel a kitchen of a rented apartment! Thats normal!”

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Snirbs@reddit

People even take the floor!!! 🤣 wild

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Crimsonfangknight@reddit

These people are really out here being grateful they can rent 4 walls and flexing they got a “flat” with a roof

mprhusker@reddit

Usually the people you see online making statements like that are performatively introverted neckbeards who haven't left their house since food delivery services became ubiquitous.

Your average real life European is just as talkitive and friendly as the average American. They just don't shitpost on reddit all day.

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Sonoma_Cyclist@reddit

This right here. People are people. Even in Paris where everyone is supposed to be so standoffish with a little bit of politeness and friendliness people love to talk.

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sadthrow104@reddit

I did not find people in Paris to be rude at all. They’re generally very nice people who try to help, reminds me of home. Especially that nice girl on the little neighborhood market who offered to help us weigh our tomatoes on the digital scale (not all their stores have a scale at the checkout like ours)

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einsteinGO@reddit

lmao it’s such a funny thing

80% of the people I’ve met spending time in Europe were friendly (just not American), which feels like an average amount of friendliness for being in the world

I think I’m friendly… 85% of the time

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Spam_Tempura@reddit

My favorite is how some of them try to say that their food is superior to ours because they “don’t need to season it because their raw ingredients are better quality.”

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SilenceDobad76@reddit

"Beer is meant to be warm"

Then there’s the sort of historic/institutionalized stuff that has impacted folks, especially Black people, but other racial minorities as well, as a legacy of generations of slavery and Jim Crowe, and perception and geographic isolation into poor and crime ridden areas, etc. It’s a complicated mess and it’s bad on both sides of the Atlantic from my POV.

I had the same question but I dont think they cared, there were plenty of times where they would have heard me speak first and knew I was an American but still chose to say what they said. I think those types of people just dont like non-whites

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Rich-Contribution-84@reddit

Yeah. At the end of the day, the Venn diagram among Alabama/Sweden/South African racists probably has a lot of overlap. “We just hate those [epithet of choice] because they’re goddamned [epithet of choice].”

It’s that simple. That doesn’t mean it’s simple to solve or cure.

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NotTravisKelce@reddit

Not even remotely.

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SpacemanSpears@reddit

I mean, I've heard from a few recent Northern Italian immigrants that they specifically dislike Italian-Americans for representing the worst parts of Italy. The subtext is clearly that they're not the "right kind" of Italian. When that segues into the issues they have with people from Southern Italy, it's really hard for me to interpret that as anything other than geography-based classism. On the flipside, the Southern Italians and Neapolitans (since apparently they're their own thing) I've met usually have much fonder relations. They'll recognize Italian-Americans as part of the family, even if the Americans don't get it quite right, but are generally pretty appreciative and even proud of the connection.

That said, Europeans will always find a reason to think they're better than us. The North/South dichotomy is just one of many. I'm sure if our immigrants were primarily from the North, they'd view them as uppity people who thought they were too good for the "real" Italy.

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-Boston-Terrier-@reddit

I think all of that is clearly just insecurity on their part.

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Minimum-Mention-3673@reddit

Basically this

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LukasJackson67@reddit

Which is a common theme here.

A typical day wouldn’t be a typical day on reddit if we weren’t be lectured by our Europeans “betters”. 😉

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OodalollyOodalolly@reddit

They think they are better than other Europeans as well. I think it’s just how they are.

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Illustrious_Land699@reddit

But why would you think so? It is not that Italians see differently Europeans or South Americans who call themselves Italians because their grandparents or great-grandparents were.

The main reason is simply that the cultures of the Italian diasporas have never embraced the national culture and Italian language that to date determines the Italian identity, nor have they preserved or maintained the different city/regional cultures of Italy from which they have been influenced.

So growing up in the Italian diaspora simply does not make you Italian in the eyes of Italians but it does by embracing Italian culture

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NintendogsWithGuns@reddit

This happens to every diaspora community in the United States. Fifth generation Italian-American? Your food is inauthentic and your language is corrupt. Fifth generation Mexican-American? Your food is inauthentic and your language is corrupt. Etcetera.

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purritowraptor@reddit

But then they turn around and say shit like "rock and roll and jazz aren't Americans culture, it was made by black people!"

Like.... What?!

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Ladonnacinica@reddit

I literally (and I’m using the term as it’s defined) had someone from Europe tell me this awhile ago.

They claimed the USA has no culture. And no music of their own. I said “Rock and Roll and Jazz is American”. Their response “but that was made by black people in America.”

I was dumbfounded. Like what do they think black Americans are?? Is this person actually saying in a subtle way that only white Americans are the only Americans?

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anneofgraygardens@reddit

It's my experience that Europeans really have trouble comprehending that Asian-Americans are really Americans. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Balkans and the Asian volunteers I knew all had annoying stories about people simply not understanding that they were not from China. (everyone was Chinese no matter what their ancestry was.) And we were mostly English teachers! incredible that the US government sent over these Chinese people to teach English, apparently.

I also went to a wedding in France a couple years ago and was seated next to a really lovely woman who spoke English very well (to my relief, I had been super anxious about being unable to talk to anyone at the wedding because I don't speak French very well), but at one point she made a very strange offhand remark about when spending time with some specific (white) people in San Francisco, it felt like such an "American experience" to her. It's hard to describe now but it was definitely in contrast to the many Asian-Americans she had been encountering on that trip. I'm a native of San Francisco and it was such a weird and off-putting moment because the huge Asian cultural influence is such an important part of the city.

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purritowraptor@reddit

Europeans: why do Americans think they're anything but American?

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Ladonnacinica@reddit

It’s really an Old World vs. New World divide. We can’t fully understand them and they can’t fully understand us.

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FatGuyOnAMoped@reddit

Before WW1 there were multi ethnic states in Europe. Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire were two of them. Even the Russian Empire was made up of multiple ethnicities (Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, various ethnic groups in the Caucuses and Baltics, etc.).

The idea of the nation-state is relatively modern and has really only come about in the past couple of hundred years.

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No-Newspaper-1933@reddit

And we fucking hate those states. I mean consider the last one that fell, the soviet union. That is our idea of a multiethnic state

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Ladonnacinica@reddit

And those empires broke up in part due to nationalism. It didn’t really worked for them.

Important-Hat-Man@reddit

It's such a different mentality that they have trouble believing it.

They actually need to deny it completely because if they acknowledged that Italian is an ethnicity then they'd have to acknowledge how racist it is for them to demand minorities assimilate into their culture.

It's also why they have to insist that America "has no culture" - their concept of culture is a made-up top-down national identity bound to a line on a map.

They need to believe Americans are the real racists for having hyphenated identities because otherwise they'd have to have an honest conversation with themselves about their own racism.

That is my understanding too, though I’m struggling to find a paper on this. But most white Americans have ancestors who immigrated in the 19th century, not ancestors who were colonists. Sadly and unjustly, the ancestors of African Americans were here first.

Physical_Bit7972@reddit

I agree. My ancestors were not in America until recently.

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NotTheMariner@reddit

I think the pedantry is revealing here - part of the white American national identity is a kind of hazy attitude towards the past.

I’m German in a couple of roots, English in a few others. I know I had one great-grandfather who was an immigrant, but as far as a sense of how long I’ve “been here,” I don’t even think it extends up to him. Maybe to his daughter.

I know academically that my ancestors lived in Europe, but my people and their people are different. We speak differently, eat differently, live differently. The past, in this case, is literally a foreign country.

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doublenostril@reddit

My grandparents grew up speaking Swedish, in America. My distant family history is on another continent. When I say what America is a nation of immigrants, I’m closer to the “immigrant” than to being from a family who immigrated here in the 16th-17th centuries.

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molotovzav@reddit

It's like, as a black person I like that they've learned the history of our music, but I also hate they cannot see anyone who isn't white as American. Europeans especially show their racism with this one. They can't fathom that african-americans and other black people are American. They also can't even fathom someone might be half black and half white, like I am. I have gotten so much off handed backwards thinking from euros about my ethnicity and nationality I no longer wish to talk to them about it. Ethnically homogenous people just aren't worth talking to about ethnicity and nationality. They won't get the difference between the two, so now a days I see they're European and I just cut the convo there. It's not my job to educate someone who in all honesty doesn't affect me at all.

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Express-Motor8292@reddit

In fairness, Europe is very much not ethnically homogenous. I suspect you mean racially homogenous, but definitely not all European countries are that either.

Lastly, in the UK anyway, I don’t think people would class you as black either, not if you are half white and half black.

Race is complicated in Europe and differs by country. As for the Europeans you have encountered, ignorance knows no borders, sadly!

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Souledex@reddit

They aren’t that’s true- they just don’t know how to deal with New World versions of nationality and identity. They both want people to assimilate even more, fail to encourage or help people do that, criticize us for having our loose ties to our roots as though we are stealing something from them - like “Why can’t we just be American?” And then they don’t understand that anyone who’s been here for 5 years and lives and works here (sans the occasional nativist bullshit) is considered fully American.

They didn’t start as a melting pot so they don’t know how to be one without many different unresolved tensions.

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Express-Motor8292@reddit

There is some truth to that, although let’s not forget that a lot of Americans do not consider other Americans equal. Racism and xenophobia are human problems, not national ones.

Personally, I wouldn’t like to say which nations do racism “better” than others. America has clearly been better at generating wealth in minority communities than anywhere in Europe, but then America is better at generating wealth in all communities than European countries. Vice versa, European countries are much better at not killing their minorities, but then they are also better at not killing their citizens full stop.

Neither system is perfect.

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YmamsY@reddit

What’s so painful about your comment is that you’re doing exactly the same thing. Talking about “Europeans” and “Euros” as “ethnically homogenous people”.

I live in the Netherlands, a country with inhabitants from around 200 separate ethnic backgrounds. Around 25% of the population has a non-Dutch ethnic background. In Amsterdam where I live 59% of the residents come from a non-Dutch ethnic background. Dutch people have all colors and ethnicities there are in the world. Skin color has nothing to do with being European or not.

Yet you call us “ethnically homogenous people” that can’t fathom black people are American. You generalize Europeans as being one ethnicity.

You are the worst offender of said behavior.

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shelwood46@reddit

I was watching a UK show, fictional mystery, and they had a character who was a Black Brit, though he'd spend time in the US, who was an academic expert on the Civil War... and on Blues music, which I think made sense to them as a combo and I was like, wha?? Then he was giving a speech (in Bath) about the Blues about the people who originated and then it was "improved" by [list of white British guitar guys] and I again said WHAA? Like, no, that would not be politely applauded if he tried that here, man.

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Lumpasiach@reddit

That's not the same people.

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Popielid@reddit

For many people in Europe ethnicity and nationality are bound to language and (among right and far right people) to blood, not personal choice or any civic identity.

That's why many people think that Americans are just White Americans, and that other communities (like Black Americans) are just oppressed ethnic minorities without their own independent states.

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With Mexico, it’s even second generations that are looked down upon by some

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Starrk211@reddit

There is decades old beef here in California between Northern California Mexicans (Nortenos) & Southern California Mexicans (Surenos).

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Opportunity_Massive@reddit

That’s crazy! I had not heard about that before, but I’m on the east coast

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So it's like Pennsylvania dutch or Louisiana French?

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Antioch666@reddit

Louisiana French is more like a creole than a dialect. And Pennsylvania dutch is a German dialect influenced by English. They also left for the US before High German made the consonant shift, differentiating it further from German of today.

All the small regions in Italy were once their own kingdoms, their language all derived from latin of course and there was a dialect continum meaning basically the further the kingdoms were apart, the more different they spoke. You might understand your neighbor but not their neighbor, their neighbor on the other side a little, but his neighbor, nothing.

And up until the 14th century all literary work was in latin while people spoke their dialect. And it was around that time poet Dante Alighieri from Tuscany made his work in his native Florentine, then another poet Giovanni Boccacio further expanded on his work and the written vernacular of early Italian. Their work were popularized around Italy and it spread.

So the Florentine dialect is basically the closest to Italian since Italian originated from that dialect.

This new language Italian, slowly (really slowly, many many years) replaced latin as a written language and became the lingua franca in each region of todays Italy.

Most Italians speak their own dialect in their home state and Italian to communicate officially if they are a public speaker or maybe at school etc or talking to italians from another region. Though as with most "old tounges" the younger gen is not bothering to learn it so the dialects are dying. Usually younger italians speak a mix of Italian and their dialect. Mixing sentences etc. But they might not know how to fully switch to dialect.

Pretty much like in the US where f ex Swedish-Americans, mainly the older gen might know how to speak Swedish, the younger gen see no point of learning the language of their ancestors.

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FlakRiot@reddit

(new Jersey) gabagool /gäbəgul/

In Italy each city has its own dialect/language that do not derive from the Italian language and are not a version of Italian.

Neapolitan is different enough from Modern Italian that's it's generally considered a different language. It's just that, in Italy, most people don't speak it anymore.

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Gravbar@reddit

the napoletano language group (covering all dialects from southern rome to calabria on a continuum of intelligibility) is the most widely spoken of all italian regional languages. Sicilian is the next most spoken. Most people from that area can still speak both, even if young people are less capable of average of speaking it with every decade that passes.

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Illustrious_Land699@reddit

Each individual language group is considered a different language apart from those of central Italy which are part of the same group as the Italian language. Neapolitan, Sicilian, Sardinian, Emilian, Romagna, Friulian, Veneto etc are all languages that embrace Italian dialects.

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police-ical@reddit

It's of course correct to use "Italian" to mean "the Florentine/Tuscan-derived Italo-Romance dialect/language which has been adopted as the national language of Italy, AKA Standard Italian." However, most Italian-American families who speak some degree of a sort of cross-pollinated Neapolitan/Sicilian would also typically refer to it as "Italian," partly because they did indeed emigrate from the Kingdom of Italy, partly because specific Neapolitan or Sicilian identities are long gone.

My GF is from Val D’Aosta and one of her favorite things is winding up “Italian” Americans about not being Italian.

They usually back down pretty quickly when she starts chattering at them in Italian.

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OkCustomer3734@reddit

Your GF sounds like she needs to get her superiority complex in check.

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QuesoDelDiablos@reddit

It isn’t a superiority complex. She is actually Italian.

Meanwhile the guy from Tom’s River NJ that doesn’t speak the language and hasn’t even set foot in the country and has absolutely no actual connection to the culture (despite claiming otherwise) is not. He is just a dude from New Jersey. He is not Italian.

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reddock4490@reddit

Lmao, my dumb ass thought you were talking about Valdosta, Georgia

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Kseries2497@reddit

Today I learned that a small city in southern Georgia, Valdosta, is named after a region in the Italian Alps.

If you're curious, I'll save you a Google: Valdosta was named after George Troup's plantation, which was variously spelled Valdosta or Val d'Osta, and was named after the region of Italy. Troup was governor of Georgia 1823-1827, as well as serving a few terms in the US House and Senate.

I didn't see anything to suggest that Troup had any connection to either Valdosta or Val d'Osta that would cause him to apply the name to his plantation. Certainly the southern plains of Georgia are not at all reminiscent of the Alps.

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Loud-Mans-Lover@reddit

So... instead of being proud of our heritage, she mocks them for it. Great. Then we can hate them instead.

Fabulous.

My family has culture from where we came from. We celibrate in certain ways, cook in others that "homogenized (many different backgrounds instead of one) Americans" don't. When I tell someone I'm "Italian", they know I'm Italian American and know what that means - how they expect my family to act, etc.

It's not a freaking insult to you. You should be happy we're proud, but instead you mock and hate.

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Brother_To_Coyotes@reddit

NY Italians are Americans. Italians are Italians. That NY Italian subculture is a very American subculture. It’s like trying to connect with Atlanta with Ghana. It’s ridiculous.

The whole American hyphenation connect to an outside culture nonsense isn’t popular abroad.

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I don’t think foreigners understand the context of hyphenating to the outside country your ancestors came from. We are not saying we are personally from the hyphenated country, but we are celebrating that our ancestors were from there. And there is nuance. A large percentage of my ancestors left Europe 13 generations ago in the 1620’s. If someone asks my family background I’m going to tell them I’m an “American Mutt”, but my ancestors were British, French, etc. I’m not going to hyphenate a 400 year old connection. But my Irish ancestry is much more recent and I’m more than comfortable saying I’m Irish-American, too. I’m proud as fuck that my poor, starving ancestors got themselves here and made a successful life here despite being destitute, with absolutely nothing. I will lay claim and celebrate the traditions they brought with them from Ireland, and I don’t give a shit if a foreigner wants to thumb their nose at it. I really don’t.

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Yankee_chef_nen@reddit

I inevitably have to explain that my mother’s side is Scottish and Irish not Scots-Irish. The two sides of her family came over in different waves. The Scottish were here before the Revolutionary War and the Irish came over during the Famine.

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neosatan_pl@reddit

Yup. Nobody outside the US does it. Of course, they will look down on the cause it's retarded.

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AskAnAmerican-ModTeam@reddit

Thank you for your submission, but it was removed as it violates posting guideline "Do not use slurs or bigoted language of any kind in a submission."

Your post is removed, and this offence may result in you being permanently banned.

I remember looking up statistics during the Olympics last year during that whole debacle with the Olympic Village not having AC and it turned out France alone had double the heat-related deaths the US had in 2023, despite having 1/5th the population and a good chunk of our population living in both actual deserts and the muggy hell that is the South in the summer.

I'm not implying that all of Europe is inbred, just its leaders. Yes, my ancestors left the land of inbred dudes beefing over turf and came to the new world. We don't have Habsburgs over here.

It's also a joke don't take it so seriously.

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FearTheAmish@reddit

And their colonies/former colonies have to keep them from annihlating each other every 50 years.

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ask South Americans or Asian subs if they have the same tradition as you Americans.

There are Italian diasporas in every nation in the world except maybe 2 or 3 and the American one is the only one to boast of being Italian while elsewhere having Italian origins is not at all a strange fact.

In China there is the tomb of a woman who according to scholars was Italian.

The woman died more than six hundred years ago.

Add to this the fact that for many their Italian origins are due only to stereotypes and that often there is not even a real attachment to Italy and you can understand why there is this way of thinking on our part.

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Traditional-Job-411@reddit

You basically said I am right while trying to say I am wrong. 😅 watch any reality TV show that will have a mixed person and they do regularly mention they are “Italian”

Your example, the fact that these people you mention were boasting and saying they were Italian, and not even genetically Italian, says something.

If you try to ask another sub if they are “like” America while bashing America, no one is going to agree. That’s called biases.

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I wonder if they do that to people who have non-European ancestry.

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GraceIsGone@reddit

But then a lot of European countries will call 4th generation people born and raised in that country by the name of the country their ancestors immigrated from. They have a very narrow view of what makes a person European.

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Traditional-Job-411@reddit

I agree, especially in some area of the US it leads to even stronger ties. If your grandparents are from Greece and you live in an area where the majority of people are from Greece. Still American, but you observe all the same holidays and eats the same food and listen to your family talk about Greece. It influences you.

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predictionpain@reddit

Interestingly, both Italy and Ireland allow a path to citizenship for Americans who have a grandparent that were born in either country.

Comfortable-Pause279@reddit

I'm not going to argue with you about your weird, incorrect, personal definition of diaspora. Your. Just. wrong:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_diaspora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_diaspora https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_diasporas

I will point out that the 1920s the Department of Americanization of the Bureau of Education launched and ethnic cleansing program that wiped out huge chunks of your collective European culture. We lost entire ethnic communities, and unique language dialects like Français de Nouvelle-Angleterre, Southern Colorado Spanish, Plautdietsch.

Those immigrants fled whatever horrors were happening in Europe. They built communities and lives in the US. They taught their kids your old ways, trying to keep what they could of their culture and identities alive. And then they got crushed by a deliberate decades-long systemic program to un-Ethnic their children and communities. Now those that retained any semblance of a connection with their heritage get told it doesn't count by some Eurotrash piece of shit wearing American street fashion brands holding American designed phones running American programmed software on American operating systems while living in countries (half of which America had to help rebuild from the rubble of World War II).

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librarianhuddz@reddit

Well yes and no for the Irish because I have cousins in Ireland and other relatives and we go over there we're treated like the prodigal son. It was very sweet. or random people will tell you about their cousin who lives in New York or something.

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Adorable_Dust3799@reddit

Almost everyone i talked to in ireland (north and south) told me about their uncle/ brother/cousin in Chicago

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shelwood46@reddit

I have a relative who got an Ancestry report stating we were 2% Irish (mostly German) and went to Ireland, claiming she was exploring her Irish ancestry. A few months later, Ancestry updated and said it was actually 2% Welsh (it now says that 2% is Scottish, it's very confused).

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Illustrious_Land699@reddit

People from Italy think that's stupid and typically believe that the former person has no real claim to Italian heritage.

Italians simply think that in order to have claims on Italian identity you should actually embrace the culture, language, traditions, history, food etc of Italy. Italians see positively the Italian Americans who embrace their heritage, the problem is when they do not but appropriate the Italian identity

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DarkSeas1012@reddit

Nah. The issue is European Italians DENYING the history and diversity of their own culture/diaspora which includes Italian-Americans (and their culture), or Italo-Brazilians, or Italo-Argentinians, or Italian-Australians, etc.

Because all of those cultures ARE part of the broader Italian culture. The language passed down in these places is also legitimate, though it differs from Continental European Italian (which is Tuscan) based on who immigrated, and when. A similar experience can be seen in the Pennsylvania Dutch or Texas Germans who speak a different version (compared to the current version) of their European mother tongue. It's no less authentic or real however.

My family spoke a version of Neapolitan, because though my great grandfather was born in the Kingdom of Italy, HIS father was born in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. My great grandfather didn't really speak Tuscan/modern Italian, so the language passed down here has little to do with that language, and also cross-pollinated significantly with Sicilian language on these shores, because to the Anglos, Sicilians, Neapolitans, Calabrians, etc. were all the same; just "greasy wops/dagos."

It's a perfect example of divergent cultural evolution (and convergent in the example of Sicilian/Calabrese/Neapolitan cross-pollination, making much of modern Italian-American culture), and ALL the permutations of that shared culture are valid. It's weird so many European-Italians gatekeep so hard now, especially given that scholars like Fernand Braudel made academic careers of studying how a broad cultural compatibility between different "Italians" abroad in the world quite literally helped usher in the Renaissance and modern world.

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Illustrious_Land699@reddit

Nah. The issue is European Italians DENYING the history and diversity of their own culture/diaspora which includes Italian-Americans (and their culture), or Italo-Brazilians, or Italo-Argentinians, or Italian-Australians, etc.

No single Italian denies their existence, history, diversity and everything you want but simply those cultures are not part of Italian culture, they have never embraced the national culture and Italian language nor have they preserved the city/regional cultures from which they received influence. Growing up in Italian diaspora cultures doesn't make you Italian. Just as growing up in African American culture doesn't make you African.

The language passed down in these places is also legitimate, though it differs from Continental European Italian (which is Tuscan) based on who immigrated,

Wtf is this bro hahaha. The Italian language is one, it is not called continental European but simply "Italian". This language in Italy coexists with dialects and regional languages that do not derive from the Italian language and are not variations of the Italian language. The city/regional dialects and languages that have migrated to the diasporas are alive and still exist in their areas of origin in Italy.

In diasporas they have been mixed with each other and with the local language, creating a new way of speaking that has never existed in Italy, it is not Italian and it cannot be defined as Italian, it's absolutely not a situation similar to Dutch or German as you say here:

. A similar experience can be seen in the Pennsylvania Dutch or Texas Germans who speak a different version (compared to the current version) of their European mother tongue. It's no less authentic or real however

It's a perfect example of divergent cultural evolution (and convergent in the example of Sicilian/Calabrese/Neapolitan cross-pollination, making much of modern Italian-American culture), and ALL the permutations of that shared culture are valid. It's weird so many European-Italians gatekeep so hard now

So the Italian American culture derives from mixing with each other and with the American culture different traits of different cultures of different cities/regions of only one part of Italy creating a culture that never existed in Italy, this culture has been completely Americanized for decades and decades until today where the result does not give you the slightest exposure to the Italian culture, language, traditions, food, history, society, politics, etc.

No Italians gatekeep Italian culture, Italians appreciate it when descendants of Italians embrace Italian culture but negatively see people growing up in diaspora cultures and appropriating Italian identity.

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DarkSeas1012@reddit

Wtf is this bro hahaha. The Italian language is one, it is not called continental European but simply "Italian". This language in Italy coexists with dialects and regional languages that do not derive from the Italian language and are not variations of the Italian language. The city/regional dialects and languages that have migrated to the diasporas are alive and still exist in their areas of origin in Italy.

Lmao, as if the Italian government isn't literally working to help keep Neapolitan and other separate languages alive after modern Italian language has taken over through the national education system.

It's ABSOLUTELY similar to Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a dialect of low-German, which is ENTIRELY foreign and weird to a modern German language speaker.

In diasporas they have been mixed with each other and with the local language, creating a new way of speaking that has never existed in Italy, it is not Italian and it cannot be defined as Italian, it's absolutely not a situation similar to Dutch or German as you say here:

Yes, that's what I said. What you're missing here is that is a LEGITIMATE portion of ITALIAN culture. You need to read Braudel, you don't know what you're talking about. The concept of Italian-ness transcended regional/city-state boundaries even back before unification. It's why Genovese and Venetians worked together when on the road in the HRE. And why both of them worked with merchants from Amalfi, or the Tuscans outside of the peninsula. Would you really say their culture/way of life wasn't Italian, just because their particular lives experience didn't exist in that form on Italian soil?

So the Italian American culture derives from mixing with each other and with the American culture different traits of different cultures of different cities/regions of only one part of Italy creating a culture that never existed in Italy, this culture has been completely Americanized for decades and decades until today where the result does not give you the slightest exposure to the Italian culture, language, traditions, food, history, society, politics, etc.

So if we take this to be true, you're good with admitting that pizza is not Italian culture? Because it was Italian-Americans, and American GIs during and after WW2 that spread pizza around the world (and guess what, around Italy itself too). As long as you're willing to be intellectually consistent, I can accept that and we can agree to disagree! But if not, then sorry, no, you don't get to claim that as legitimate italian-culture while simultaneously denigrating the diaspora community from which it came.

Read Out of Italy: Two Centuries of World Domination and Demise/Le Modèle Italian by Braudel. It will be informative to you I believe, and back up with academic authority what I have said here.

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Illustrious_Land699@reddit

Lmao, as if the Italian government isn't literally working to help keep Neapolitan and other separate languages alive after modern Italian language has taken over through the national education system.

Obviously the Italian language has become the main one but the point is that the dialects and regional languages are still alive while in the diasporas they are not and that something born and created outside Italy by descendants of Italians will never be part of Italian culture.

It's ABSOLUTELY similar to Pennsylvania Dutch, which is a dialect of low-German, which is ENTIRELY foreign and weird to a modern German language speaker.

That objectively comes from a form of German and has simply evolved into something different. In the diasporas, not a dialect of the Italian language or a version of the Italian language has emigrated, but many dialects that derive from Latin and that have mixed with each other and with the local language, creating slang that today have simply been added to the local language.

Yes, that's what I said. What you're missing here is that is a LEGITIMATE portion of ITALIAN culture. You need to read Braudel, you don't know what you're talking about.The concept of Italian-ness transcended regional/city-state boundaries even back before unification

It is not difficult to understand, historically Italians were the people of Italy, this was the Italianness. Immigrants are still Italians when they emigrate, their descendants are not. Christopher Columbus, Napoleon's ancestors and Leonardo da Vinci were Italians, Christopher Columbus' descendants born and raised in Spain were Spanish, Napoleon was Corsican and French just as the descendants of the Italian diasporas are not Italians, unless, they grew up exactly like an Italian.

Then, since the 60s the Italian ethnic group has been established and completely formed, when the national culture and Italian language, which for centuries were limited only to artists, politicians and nobles, spread completely making the Italian population united, as the destiny and purpose of unification.

Then, there are also regional ethnic groups such as Sicilians, Sardinians, Lombards, Tuscans, Emilians etc.

Italians are therefore part of 2 identities, the regional and the national.

A descendant of Italians like Americans with Italian origins will also be part of 2 identities, the American and the Italian-American, not the Italian one. Italian Americans are an American ethnic group, as are Native Americans, African Americans, Amish, Mormons, Irish Americans, Mexican Americans etc.

So if we take this to be true, you're good with admitting that pizza is not Italian culture? Because it was Italian-Americans, and American GIs during and after WW2 that spread pizza around the world (and guess what, around Italy itself too

This is one of the greatest american misconceptions. Pizza is Italian and was spread by Italian immigrants and Italian influence. I'll leave you some data that always come in handy

"The first pizza franchise in the world was started by the Campanian dairyman Luigi Giordano, reaching 3,000 outlets in Northern Italy and abroad, as a way of selling excess milk as mozzarella

Predating the first American franchises Shakey's Pizza (which opened it's 2nd branch in 1956 but has never done much outside California) and Pizza Hut which opened it's second branch in 1958.

Pizza hadn't even conquered America by the 1950s. They didn't have access to Mozzarella until the 1920s, substituting provolone or other cheeses, and Lombardi's started as a deli, selling cold or luke-warm pizzas to be reheated at home, only later becoming a pizzeria.

The first franchise in the UK was Pizza Express, founded in 1965 and modelled on Italian pizzas Although pizza was served in London in Italian restaurants from at least the 1930s, and served to the italophile son of Queen Victoria at an Italian feast in the 1890s.

Pizza Hut arrived in 1973.

Brazil and Argentina have their own styles of pizza created by immigrants from the 1890s/1900s

In France the first pizzerias were opened in Marsaille in the 1890s/1900s, where census data shows 20% of the population was Italian, of which 3/4 Neapolitan.

The first pizzeria in Paris was opened by the Neapolitan Bartolo Memola in 1950. Pizza Hut arrived only in 1987.

The first pizzeria in Copenhagen was also opened by Italian immigrants in 1952, etc, etc.

So for Northern Italy, Europe and S America the pizza effect is demonstrably untrue.

No really in Asia etheir. Believe it or not even North Korea imported Neapolitan chefs to teach authentic pizza making.

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jaggy_bunnet@reddit

This entire thread is Americans wondering why Italians don't care about them, but OK.

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LoudCrickets72@reddit

Very true. Where would San Marzano be without American flora and fauna?

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Kilane@reddit

Exactly.

My parents refused to speak Italian in our home, and wouldn’t teach us. They insisted - “ we’re American, we speak English here.”

As for Italians talking down to Italian Americans- they can “andate a farvi fottere. “ If google translate is correct- they can go fuck themselves. My parents and grandparents would always say - “ if Italy was so fucking great, we’d still be living there.” I’ve seen the quality of life my family has achieved in 2 generations. My Italian relatives lives are significantly different than what we’ve achieved.

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Smolmanth@reddit

I actually watched a movie about a Sicilian man who married a northern lady and brought them back to visit his family and it highlighted the tension and cultural differences between north and south. It was an Italian movie and I forget the name.

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Candid-Math5098@reddit

I was confused by a colleague who described herself as "half-Italian, half-Sicilian".

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macoafi@reddit

Visiting cousins in Sicily, one of them very emphatically told me and my siblings "you're not Italian, you're Sicilian."

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As a person who has partial Sicilian blood...yeah there's a ton of discrimination against Sicilians. You're not really supported to mention what "type" of Italian you are.

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PipingTheTobak@reddit

My most Italian infuriating opinion, is that they do it out of jealousy. Most American Italian cuisine is better than the Italian version. Especially pizza. Italian pizza is just not very good. A mediocre New York corner slice is better than any pizza I had at the most famous places in Italy. Their lasagna is usually a lot better though

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Yankee_chef_nen@reddit

Any American pizza, even Little Caesars, is better than Italian pizza and they know it. You are absolutely correct about it being jealousy.

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jetf@reddit

lol cmon lets not exaggerate. Italian Pizza can be very good. Naples has some of the best pizza ive ever had. Little Caesars is crap.

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CatBoyTrip@reddit

i don’t see no italians making a pretzel stuff crust pizza.

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ProbablyAPotato1939@reddit

Little Caesars is crap.

Please buy some though, the Tigers need to pay Skubal.

In all seriousness, though Italian pizza and American pizza are basically different meals, it's like comparing Chicago style to New York.

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Pinkfish_411@reddit

What an outlandish opinion.

Pizza as it's commonly known now wasn't very common in Italy until somewhat recently, actually. Like Italians in the ~50's wouldn't really be eating it. In the early 1900's the working class ate flat bread with like lard and onions, not tomato sauce and cheese or anything of the sort. So that checks out.

An Italian wrote a book about it (and other food myths common in Italy) not too long ago and it was very provocative.

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PipingTheTobak@reddit

Okay, but you know that you don't actually need a 500-year-old tradition to make really good pizza right? Like we've only really been eating pizza since the 40s or so ourselves. You can just make good pizza

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LopsidedLeopard2181@reddit

Not Italian.

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mikkowus@reddit

Italian pizza is bread with sprinkles of toppings.

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Kurt805@reddit

*puts a drop of cheese and a thin layer of tomato paste on a thick crust*

Another side effect of this is that they also can't accept any minority cultural contribution without claiming it for themselves - the best example is English people and curry. They absolutely refuse to admit it's Indian food brought by ethnically Indian Brits - it is British and only British and you're the real racist if you credit it to Indian Brits.

Europeans will insist that this is the exact same "melting pot" that America has, but it's actually just Japanese style "homogeneity." They're just sublimating minorities into their culture, claiming their stuff, then denying that they ever existed.

You hear the same thing from Japanese nationalists: "No! Indigenous people are just Japanese, therefore I can't be racist, you're the racist!" Curry is British and only British and you're the real racist for calling it Indian!!!

"Foreigners refuse to respect Japanese culture, so I hate them - I'm not racist, you're the racist!" Romani refuse to assimilate, so it's ok to hate them and you're the real racist for segregating people like that!!!

Anyway, the real reason Italians hate Italian-Americans is that their existence is a challenge to their entire worldview. If Italian is an ethnicity, if a diaspora exists, then their entire national identity collapses. They need "Italian" to be an ethnicity-neutral idea bound to a line on a map.

You see similar snark from other countries - but it's really only Europeans you see losing their minds over their diasporas. It's really just a post-colonial justification for why they have so much of other people's stuff. "Uh, we didn't steal it, it's just British culture." China? Japan? They don't really care about what anyone else thinks, so they don't bother with those kinds of excuses. "Instant ramen? Of course it's Japanese!"

On the other hand, they have nothing but their made up stereotypes about Americans - oh, he just thinks he's Italian because his grandma fucked a guy in Rome - he just claims to be Italian because he's ashamed of being American - they're so obsessed with their race because they're segregationist eugenicists.

No, Giuseppe, we actually just let each other keep their own culture and identity without forcing them to submit to the culture of the ethnic majority. Hyphenated identities don't threaten to destroy our national culture, because we didn't need to make one up like to cope with the consequences of WWII + centuries of colonialism. We just...talk about that stuff and try to work it out honestly with each other.

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Usuf3690@reddit

I think it's rooted in the fact they hate that Italian Americans call themselves Italian. I think they hate the fact that Italian American food has kind of spread globally, and I think it's because Europeans in general often look down on Americans.

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Allaiya@reddit

I think it’s more Europe vs American divide. I see it across all diasporas. Polish, German, French, English even sometimes.

Latest one was how Americans just “cosplay”. Or they make fun of the “bad” French or German languages that have evolved here differently over hundreds of years than the standard ones today.

They hate us cuz they ain't us

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sorry_con_excuse_me@reddit

Okay maybe my perspective is different because I’m Spanish and Cuban, and grew up around Italian Americans.

Cubans (either from the US or the old country) do the same pride thing as Italian Americans where they act like they invented a number of things that came from Spain (but were changed considerably), and it’s equally laughable to me.

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angrymurderhornet@reddit

My maternal grandparents were born in Italy in the 1880s. They didn’t meet until after they emigrated separately to the U.S.; there was already a growing Italian American population in our hometown, so they fit right in.

My grandfather came from a small town near Naples, and my grandmother from southwestern Sicily. Apparently his parents had hoped to match him up with a rich hometown girl in the old country, and were really pissy about him marrying a Sicilian. He wound up permanently estranged from his parents, but he and my grandmother were happily married until she died fifty years or so later. later.

So, yes, there was classism involved. The best comparison I can think of is a 19th century Hyacinth Bucket (IYKYK) wanting to marry off a son to an aristocratic English woman, but then having him take off for America and marry a working-class Irish immigrant.

I think it’s more an inability to understand for Italians that how things are today aren’t the way they’ve always been.

East-Eye-8429@reddit

I'm an American of Italian descent - my great grandparents came from Abruzzo. I have a good friend from Milan. He does take issue with the Italian-American pronunciation of words but I've always taken it to be that he wants me to talk like a modern Italian, not like a 1920s peasant laborer. About the cuisine, he is fine with it but does like to point out that it's not the same as modern Italian food. I will say he definitely looks down on southern Italians to an extent.

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Popular_Sir_9009@reddit

I'm a hillbilly, not an Italian. So I have no dog in this fight.

But I spent a few weeks in Northen Italy a few years ago for work. And on several occasions, the locals went out of their way to explain how they're different and harder-working than the Southern Italians.

It wasn't something I asked about or cared about. But they really seemed to want people to know.

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lawyerjsd@reddit

Yes and no. Some of the issue regarding language is based on the Neapolitan dialect of Italian immigrants circa 1905, which is significantly different than Italian. So to that extent, it is based on the North/South divide. But Italian Americans - and I am Italian American - are Americans through and through. We have a connection to a place that only existed 120 years ago, and a lot has changed since then.

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Mrfixit729@reddit

Italy is most famous for pizza and Fascism. And both were done better by other countries.

It’s got to be frustrating.

Amerigo (Ahm-Reeego) Vespucci was an Italian who mapped the Americas.
The Feminine Latin form of Amerigo is America.
Tomatoes are from Central and South America.
Tomatoes are a night shade, but were bred to be not poisonous once ripe and red.
Poor peasant fishermen near Naples would bring home their bounty for the day and their families would make a stewed tomato sauce to pour over the seafood, sometimes with pasta.
Marinara in Italian mans Fisherman.
People in Naples put Marinara sauce on focaccia with basil and called it by the Italian form of the Greek word Pita....Pizza......
People in Naples emigrated to the United States, bringing with them these dishes.
Cold ferment is stumbled upon in NYC, making a different sourdough.
American Italians invent a newer form of Pizza that blows up.

They can snub their noses at themselves all they want, but here's the BIG MASSIVE KICKER.

Cristoffo Corombo was Genoese. He was born in Italy. His name translated into Latin and then into English is Christopher Columbus.

North America was found by an Italian. Mapped by an Italian. And then settled by Italians.

BOOM!

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ShoeDelicious1685@reddit

100%

Calabrians aren't dunking on 4th generation Italian Americans. That's something tbe more European minded northerners do.

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paintingdusk13@reddit

When I learned Italy didn't actually get tomatoes until the 1500's it changed how I thought about Italian culture forever. I assumed Italy itself sprouted from a tomato vine when the Earth was still being formed.

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ButtSexington3rd@reddit

The only reason I know about the north/south Italian culture divide is from a series of books based in Venice. It's written by an American author who lived in Venice for a while. It's also how I learned about the regional language dialects.

As a general rule, Americans know nothing about culture clashes within individual European countries.

ScatterTheReeds@reddit

Gee, ya mean Europeans are prejudiced???

🤔 I thought that was only Americans.

/sarc

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CtForrestEye@reddit

Oh yes. My manager was confused when I brought in a nice assortment of Italian dishes for the holidays as my name is very English. I explained my grandmother was from Rome and grandfather from Sicily on my mom's side. He said Sicily didn't count as it's been taken by so many different people through history, it's not really Italian. He has a very Italian name. Yes, we see it here.

He did like our cooking though.

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violet_femme23@reddit

Nah I think less refined than that. I think it’s because they’re Americans yet claim to be “Italian”. Like chill, your great-Nonna immigrated here in 1902 and the only Italian you speak is names of foods, and even that is spoken poorly. A lot of them also use the excuse “I’m Italian!” as an excuse for poor decorum and emotional regulation too.

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Murderhornet212@reddit

It’s not poorly, it’s just a different dialect

New York Italian here. It’s kinda true though, if you’re born in the US you’re American and not Italian. In the US we’ll say we’re Italian but abroad say we’re American or from New York etc.

Most Americans are largely ignorant of any north-south Italian divide.

Everyone is just Italian to us.

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FrauAmarylis@reddit

Living in Europe now, I understand what OP is getting at, but Americans who haven’t lived abroad or didn’t notice the classism when they did, aren’t going to understand this.

It’s Extremely classist here. Our British friend is dating an American neurosurgeon. He is a Physician’s Assistant in the UK army. He told us that in the UK, he would never be able to date a neurosurgeon.

My Italian-American MIL always told everyone her dad was from the north of Italy. When we moved abroad and started traveling throughout Italy, I noticed how different Italians look in the north than the south, and said, Are you sure your family is from the north because you look like a Southerner.

Sure enough, DNA test came back and she is very Italian, all from Foggia and Sicily.

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PureChampionship3993@reddit (OP)

Meanwhile in America you have female lawyers and doctors who have husbands and boyfriends who are accountants, engineers, graphic designers, IT workers, auditors etc so working jobs that aren’t considered as ‘prestigious’ traditionally.

This would never happen in Singapore or Korea too.

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pseudoeponymous_rex@reddit

I wasn't even aware that Italians talked down to NY Italian-Americans, though to be fair I'm from the Midwestern branch of Italian-American emigration.

Probably, I rememer as a kid Nonna, who was N. Italian, telling me back in Italy she was told all kinds of ridiculous thing about S. Italians like they slept with the animals in the house. Basically it's how Northerners here talk about southerners. Which up until that point I thought that was specific to the US. I didn't realize stuff like that happened outside the US.

She said though after coming to the US she met and became friends with people from S. Italy and realized everything they were taught about S. Italians was bs.

BTW, the first time I had this discussion but not the last time from people around the globe. One thing I have to give the whole melting pot US thing that is kind of cool is that people from various countries and ethnicities and cultures who typically wouldn't get along yend to find each other and get along just fine because they get sort of forced into it and they find that, surprise, they are just people like any other people.

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DarwinGhoti@reddit

I’ve never even noticed it. They must spend way more time thinking about us than we think about them, I guess.

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ShakarikiGengoro@reddit

I remember I told someone that my family came over from Italy in the 1920s and they asked were from and I told them oh they had a farm up in northern Italy somewhere and then they lectured me on the class divide.

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dead_wax_museum@reddit

I just hate the fake Italian Americans that feel the need to say how ya dooooin and fogetaboutit. The Sooranos really cheapened the Italian American culture and I hate it.

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misterlakatos@reddit

It drives me crazy when someone who was born and raised in this region, and whose parents and grandparents were born and raised here as well, refers to themselves as "Italian" when they may speak 4-5 words of Italian and are as American as the next person that was born and raised here.

A number of people of Irish descent do this as well. It's really annoying.

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HaleEnd@reddit

No it’s because “Italians” from America aren’t Italians lmao

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Illustrious_Land699@reddit

It has nothing to do with it, it is not that an Argentine or a Brazilian with northern Italian grandparents who calls himself Italian is seen differently from an American with Italian origins who does.

In Italy every single city/region has its own culture with its own language/dialecta, cuisine, traditions etc that coexists with the national culture and Italian language which, despite existing since the Middle Ages, has spread completely to the poorer social classes only in the 60s.

It means that every Italian grows up with an Italian culture and a citizen/regional one that determines their identities.

The fact is that during the mass emigration from Italy, only many different city/regional cultures emigrated and were mixed with each other and with the local culture, creating a culture that never existed in Italy, called Italian American, Italian Brazilian, Italian Argentine cultures, etc., which determine their respective identities.

Growing up in Italian-American culture therefore makes you Italian-American and American and does not give you exposure either to the national culture and Italian language of which it has never had influence or from the different city/regional cultures that it has not preserved or maintained.

Aggravating_Kale8248@reddit

I can’t fathom thinking you’re superior to another country’s people based on things that don’t matter at all. Thinking your country is superior because of the food is like thinking you’re cool because you don’t work at McDonald’s.

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CaptainAwesome06@reddit

I'm not Italian-American so I don't really care. I think it's probably a combo of European elitism and Italian-Americans being in-your-face about their ancestry (not all of them obviously).

Europeans seem to get annoyed that Americans call themselves Italian, Irish, etc. I think they don't realize that Americans don't have 1,000 years of living in the same country and there's an innate human desire to belong somewhere. On the other hand, some Americans obsess over it, which I think is weird. I've done my own genealogy research. I think it's interesting to know your family history. But I'm not going around telling everybody where my great great great great grandparents came from.

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Fire_Mission@reddit

Don't know, don't care.

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ApprehensiveSkill573@reddit

Americans literally never spend any time thinking about this.

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CinemaSideBySides@reddit

No. I've actually never heard a North/South divide when the topic comes up. Normally it's more of a misunderstanding of how Americans talk about ethnicity and culture in general, with Europeans falsely accusing Americans of claiming European citizenship.

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forwardobserver90@reddit

This hasn’t been my experience at all, excluding Reddit were most Europeans seem to hate Americans.

I spent time in Italy playing baseball during college and the Italians I met loved talking to me about where my family was originally, how we got to America, what we do now, and so on. Incredibly nice people.

Same when I was in the military. We worked with Italians from time to time. They’d see my very obvious Italian last name on my uniform and come up and talk. Same deal, ask all kinds of questions and were genuinely nice people.

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GSilky@reddit

Italians can be as chauvinist as the French.

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ashsolomon1@reddit

People love to hate America.. which will only get worse over time. Contrary to what the media says, we are a country with a strong history of ancestors coming here and immigrating from other countries, a ton of people take pride in their background.

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BrownDogEmoji@reddit

Meh.

Let them shit talk. Maybe if southern Italy had not been so brutally poor and controlled by the mafia for so long, more people would have stayed instead of jumping the first rickety ship to America.

I honestly prefer more authentic Italian cuisine because it’s less fatty and more nuanced, but Italian American food is my comfort food. And if my ancestors don’t like that fact, it’s not my problem.

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BlueInCardinalNest@reddit

40+ years ago, yes. Now, not so much. Younger generations don't seem to be as involved in this and are more prolonging stereotypes.

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OptatusCleary@reddit

I do think that could be part of it, but not all of it. I think in general emigrants (from various countries) tended to come from less favored regions/ subcultures/ groups within a country. So the people who remained might look down on the people who left and their descendants.

Another aspect of it is that some people don’t seem to understand how much ancestry and cultural connection a person might have. I get the feeling that some online discussions assume that Americans are all predominately “American,” with perhaps one Italian, Irish, German, or whatever ancestor way back in 1776. That really would be a tenuous connection, but there are plenty of people with all or almost all of their ancestry from one place and parents or grandparents from that place. I think those two types of people get conflated in these discussions.

I always assume this is one of those internet memes no one actually cares about

and if they're too serious they should probably touch some grass.

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