The Vergognosi of Staten Island
The Vergognosi of Staten Island
(January 19, 2009)
"Italian Americans for Obama" 2008 presidential campaign sticker.
Again, Italian Americans are involved in racist attacks. Again, it's time to speak up.
It's happened again.
A morning news report on the radio announces a racist attack against blacks, this time on election night, on Staten Island.
Once again, I think, “Italians.”
For in my city, all too many murders of people of color have been at the hands of young Italian-American men.
Willie Turk, 34 (1982) in Gravesend, Brooklyn.
Michael Griffith, 23, (1986) in Howard Beach, Queens.
Yusuf Hawkins, 16 (1989) in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
Manuel Mayi, 18 (1991) in Corona,Queens.
According to the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, four men – Brian Carranza, 21, Michael Contreras, 18, Bryan Garaventa, 18, and Ralph Nicoletti, 18 – were involved in what The New York Times described as “one of the city’s worst series of hate crimes in years.” The fact that a Latino (nicknamed “Dominican Mike”) has also been implicated in these attacks doesn’t lessen the shame and outrage I feel as an Italian American.
The suspects were charged in federal court of interfering with voting rights during their election night spree. Garaventa pleaded guilty, while the other three pleaded non-guilty. Carranza is out on bail after his mother posted a $200,000 bond by putting up her house as security.
According to the federal indictment, the accused men were so incensed by Barack Obama’s presidential victory that they went on a racist rampage across the borough. In the city’s past, Italian-American youth waged pitched battles with their African-American and Puerto Rican counterparts as part of “turf battles” to defend neighborhood streets. This past November, these men allegedly drove out of their neighborhood in search of people of color to hurt. They are accused of:
- beating Alie Kamara, a seventeen-year-old Muslim immigrant from Liberia, across the head and legs with a metal pipe and a stolen police baton, while shouting “Obama” in Park Hill;
- pushing a black man to the ground in Port Richmond;
- accosting a Latino man, demanding to know who he voted for;
- driving past a hair salon and threatening to kill those inside, using a racial epithet, and cursing Obama; and,
- driving their car into another man dressed in a hooded sweatshirt who they believed was black. Ronald Forte, 38, father of five, was thrown against the window shield, shattering it. The white man was in a coma for forty-five days and now needs extensive physically therapy.
In recent days, Jewish individuals and groups have been discussing the “shanda” (Yiddish for shame, disgrace) engendered by Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme and organizing public forums. We Italian Americans share the vergogna (shame) and disgrazie (disgrace) of this heinous racist crime on Staten Island.
I’m fully aware that racism is not the purview of any one group; it is the tragic American legacy. But the fact that three of the accused are Italian Americans demands that we speak up. This is not the time for political distancing with flaccid assertions that these accused men are “aberrations that don’t represent the community,” blah, blah. Larry Ambrosino, head of a Staten Island booster group, spoke plainly, “Unfortunately, knuckleheads come in all sizes, shapes and colors. As a Staten Islander, as an American, as an Italian-American, it disgusts me.” But we Italian Americans need to be more proactive and better organized in condemning such criminal acts. Where are the self-proclaimed leaders and spurious scholars who decry ad nauseam the likes of “The Sopranos?”
Jerry Krase has written thoughtfully about this subject on his i-italy blog:
"I believe that a major reason for the focus upon Italian Americans as epitomizing racial bigotry among white Americans is the reluctance of most Italian-American organizations and their leaders to honestly address the problem of racial and ethnic bias. In most cases Italian-American spokespersons have tended to deny the extent or degree of the problem or to make defensive statements when bias incidents in the community occur. This has resulted in an even greater focus on the community because it projects an appearance of lack of remorse or sympathy for victims of bias-related violence."
In 2005, after an Italian American was arrested in Howard Beach for a hate crime, filmmaker/writer Kym Ragusa, historian Jennifer Guglielmo, and I organized an event entitled “Creative Responses to Race, Violence and Community: A Call for Peace” at New York University’s Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. The evening of readings and performances by scholars and artists musicians, and the subsequent audience dialogue, sought to find creative and collaborative ways to combat racism.
Yes, Italian Americans can be the new anti-racist front, on this day we honor Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision and courage, and as we ride the sweeping tide of history that is the Obama presidency.
Related Links
- Christine Hauser & Colin's Moynihan’s “Three Are Charged in Attacks on Election Night,” 01.07.09
- Christine Hauser’s “After a Hate Crime Spree, an Intense Effort to Make Arrests,” 01.11.09
- Pablo Guzman, “FBI: White Man Victim Of Obama Win Bias Attack,” 12.24.08
- Deborah Young & John Annese, “Staten Island's Rosebank residents quick to disown 'Krew',” 01.08.09
- Libero Della Piana’s “Shark Tale Controversy: Are Italians the New Anti-Racist Front?", 10.14.04
DISCLAIMER: Posts published in i-Italy are intended to stimulate a debate in the Italian and Italian-American Community and sometimes deal with controversial issues. The Editors are not responsible for, nor necessarily in agreement with the views presented by individual contributors.
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The tunnel vision and
The tunnel vision and self-pity of Italian Americans who scream "cultural holocaust" over The Sopranos et al. and yet have nothing to say about Italian American racism is so tiresome. Yet while disgusting incidents such as the one you discuss here continue to occur, I do get the sense that things are changing. The comments from Italian Americans who repudiate the bigots (in the Young & Annese article you provide the link for) are heartening. Perhaps the leaders and scholars should take a cue from them. There does seem to be less of the tribal mentality we saw in the 80s, when Italian Americans reacted with a defensive vaffanculo attitude and an unjustified sense of injury when Michael Griffith and Yusuf Hawkins were killed. I think young IAs increasingly are comfortable with a multicultural society; a character like "Pino" in "Do the Right Thing" is becoming an anachronism. The Harold & Kumar attitude, which sees racism as stupid and uncool, seems pretty widespread among youth today. But then again, Latino immigrants on Long Island might have a different opinion. Even so, those hate crimes haven't occurred in Italian American 'hoods and seem to be perpetrated by white boys of various ethnicities.
--GdS
yes
i agree
addressing bias
Thanks Joe for reminding us that addressing bias against Italian Americans (and Italians) requires that Italian Americans (and Italians) first address their own biases, or at least simultaneously.
I wish
that i-italy would fix this problem of people's names not appearing with their comments even though they entered them in the NAME field, and
comments left on a Blogger's post and on the subsequent "published" Magazine version were linked. Others have left interesting comments on the Magazine side.
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Signatures
Yes, we're working on this. Meanwhile, I guess that readers who leave comments should be sensible enough to sign their own names in the body of their messages.
Man Gets 9 Years in Election-Night Bias Attacks
September 11, 2009
The white instigator of an election-night rampage against black people in retaliation for President Obama’s victory was sentenced in federal court on Thursday to nine years in prison.
Judge Carol B. Amon also gave three other men — two white and one Hispanic — prison terms ranging from about 4 ½ years to nearly six years for the 2008 attacks on Staten Island, which put one victim in a coma.
“The victims were selected for no other reason than what the defendants believed was the color of their skin,” the judge said.
In a guilty plea earlier this year, the ringleader, Ralph Nicoletti of Staten Island, said he and the other defendants grew angry while monitoring election returns on the Internet at a makeshift clubhouse. He said they decided that if Mr. Obama won, they would “go after black people” they assumed had voted for him.
for more read: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/nyregion/11bias.html?_r=1&ref=nyregion
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