I don’t hold it against Rudy Giuliani that his old man supposedly worked for mobsters at one time. What Italian-American doesn’t have mobbed up relatives? Mrs Vache Folle’s current stepfather, for example, is the son of a capo in the Lucchese crime syndicate. He got whacked in a gang war back in the 1930s. That doesn’t make the stepdad a mobster himself.
The more recent generations of Italian-Americans have had more career choices than their forebears. Antonin Scalia, back in the day, would have had to be a mobster or an organ grinder. They didn’t let Italians into law talkin’ school back then, and they certainly didn’t let them sit on the Supreme Court. Rudy would have run a speakeasy or some racket if he had been born in an earlier generation. No way would an Italian have been appointed US Attorney back then.
Nowadays, I would estimate that less than half of Italian-Americans are in the Mafia. Many of them have been partially assimilated into American society and culture, but I don’t reckon they will ever abandon their quaint Italian ways entirely. They will probably always wear lots of jewelry and eat noodles for every meal, but they won’t necessarily steal.
Italian-Americans contribute immensely to the patchwork quilt of diversity that is America, especially Sicilians with their combined African and European heritage.
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My parents played for years with Italians in a bocce ball league and never got roughed up once.
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