Month: October 2022

Every white boy I’ve ever made spaghetti with garlic and oil for loved it.

I don’t know at what age human beings first become aware of what they look like and where they fit in; who their tribe is; what group they belong to.

The first four years of my life I lived in an Italian-Jewish neighborhood in the Bronx. I have no memory of awareness of anyone being any different from anyone else. The only difference, in my experience, between Italians and Jews is the day they go to church.

When my grandmother sold the house we lived in we moved to the projects, still in the Bronx but now with a more mixed bag of neighbors. (For those unfamiliar with the term ‘projects’ they are public housing – you know, for poor people.) I remember that our neighbors directly across from our apartment were named “Rivera”.  Since us kids were pretty the same age the doors were always left open and we floated back and forth between the two apartments.

Back in the old days your parent’s friends were called Aunt and Uncle.  My mother had a friend, Margie Yates. Margie was from Jamaica, the Caribbean Island, not the neighborhood in Queens.  And yes, Aunt Margie was Black.  I adored her. I loved to hear her talk, that Jamaican accent – musical and magical.

Walking home from school with my friend Sheryl, I told her she had to come up and meet my Aunt Margie, who I knew was visiting that day. I don’t remember any of that encounter but I do remember that when Sheryl and I went outside to play, I guess I was gushing about Aunt Margie. Sheryl blurted out (this is the 19050’s remember) “But she’s colored! My reply? “No, she’s my Aunt Margie.”

I was perhaps 6 or 7 years old and still wasn’t aware that what you looked like mattered.  No one had told me. I hadn’t experienced being different yet.

When I was 8 we moved to Queens and that all changed.

~~~ To be continued

Every white boy I’ve ever made spaghetti with garlic and oil for loved it.

I used to be 96% Italian, that’s been downgraded to 86% Southern Italian and the remaining 14% various other Mediterranean ethnicities – as you can see. The Southern Italy portion is confined to Sicily yet recent history has my father’s family living in and around Naples. Still considered Southern Italy but not as far south as Sicily.

An exotic little son-of-a-gun, aren’t I?

Mediterranean people tend to the darker side – hair, eyes, skin. And so I do tend. But not everyone in my family tended that way. One of the (many) pointless lies my mother told was that her father had flaming red hair and blue eyes. I found his draft card online and he was described as having black hair and brown eyes. WTH? I have said that my mother never met a lie she would not embrace wholeheartedly but this is a corker. That said, my cousin Camille,  my mother’s sister’s daughter had red hair – Lucy Ball red only natural.

When my elder male sibling was born he was described as looking like a little old man because he had white hair, blue eyes and dead white skin. When I was born 2 years later I was described as a monkey – covered in black hair, black eyes and dark skin. The hair fell off, so not werewolf syndrome but it was also said that I was born with a caul.

Needless to say when my mother took the two of us out she got a lot of sidelong glances. Where did that “white” kid come from? My father was dark but my mother had medium brown hair and hazel eyes, olive skin but not the yellow-cast olive tone that I have. Yet, she said that when she was young they called her ‘blackie’.

Which brings me to – Italians weren’t considered “white”. Indeed we were referred to as ‘blackies’ and perhaps that was what my mother was referring to – racist taunts. in the 1890’s, when there was a large influx of Italians into the United States, particularly in New York City, the general opinion was that the Italians were animals, savages and should be deported.

(Here’s a fun web site – The Racial Slur Database – the page for Italian is HERE.)

I was born in 1946 in New York City, a multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-national city where one would think ethnicity wouldn’t be much of an issue. But of course it was. NYC was populated with human beings – and human beings love to hate.

~~~To be continued