{"id":60,"date":"2023-02-15T19:24:48","date_gmt":"2023-02-15T19:24:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/italian-american.com\/?page_id=60"},"modified":"2023-06-08T16:00:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-08T16:00:11","slug":"about-italian-american","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/italian-american.com\/about-italian-american\/","title":{"rendered":"About The Italian-American Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In the United States, people are often asked \u201cWhat are you?\u201d This is typically meant to be an inquiry into ones\u2019 ethnic origins. The reply, for example, is often \u201cI\u2019m German,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m Irish,\u201d or \u201cI\u2019m Italian.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This response doesn\u2019t quite square with Italians who were born and raised in Italy. They think to themselves (or out loud, in some cases) \u201cHow can someone be \u2018Italian<\/em>\u2019 if they were not born in Italy, do not speak the language, and know little or nothing of day-to-day Italian culture?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fair enough, but the Melting Pot that is the United States is somewhat unique in the world. Sure, the Italian diaspora includes Canada, Australia, and several countries in South America. But those countries didn\u2019t really experience the massive simultaneous influx of immigrants from so many other countries of origin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Therefore, first- and second-generation immigrants in the U.S. would be right to identify as Italians, to distinguish themselves from other immigrant populations sharing the same geographical location. But the tendency to identify oneself in this way has never really faded, and it remains common in the 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, we must also mention that the words \u201cAmerica\u201d and \u201cAmericans\u201d should be used with some degree of thoughtfulness. Even though within the U.S. the terms \u201cAmerica\u201d and \u201cThe United States\u201d are often used synonymously, that isn\u2019t the case in the rest of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After all, Canadians are American, too, as are people from Argentina and Uruguay. And others, of course. It is more accurate to say that Columbus discovered “the Americas,” not America (the U.S.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of which, somewhere on this website we\u2019ll get into the question of Christopher Columbus<\/a>. Was he even \u201cItalian,\u201d given that he was born in the Maritime Republic of Genova 400 years before Genova was part of the Italian Republic? And we all know that he sailed under the flag of Spain. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then there\u2019s the fact that most scholars believe that Columbus never even saw the continental United States with his own eyes, much less ever stepped foot on U.S. soil. (Plus he was basically lost, assuming that he had found a Western route to India.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n