Last month, my wife and I watched the Italy-Czech Republic World Cup game on television in a bar in Manhattan’s Little Italy. The sentiments there and in other establishments on Mulberry Street reflected dual loyalties. The consensus was that it would be great if the Americans simultaneously knocked off Ghana, meaning Italy and the U.S. would advance to the knockout round.
It will be even more electric in Little Italy today, with Italian-Americans – many of whose immigrant ancestors passed through nearby Ellis Island – gathering to watch the Italians play in the World Cup championship game against France.
The sense of excitement will be shared by many Italian-Americans in Colorado, including those watching after attending Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in North Denver. At Mount Carmel, Mass is said in Italian on the first Sunday of the month, and its parishioners include Italian-Americans who either still live in the area or return to the “old neighborhood” every week from the suburbs.
Returning Italian-Americans note the revitalization of the area as an eclectic neighborhood. Yet they also lament the absence of most of the old restaurants and little, family-run stores. They remember Cerrone’s, where you told Augie how much sausage you wanted and teased him about keeping his thumb off the scale. For a taste of the old neighborhood, they can still head to nearby Patsy’s and Pagliacci’s.
After attending Mass this morning, Arvada resident George Vendegnia, the founder of the Sons of Italy/New Generation who grew up near Mount Carmel, will watch the game at Parisi’s, the deli, market and restaurant about a mile west of the church.
If there’s an irony here amid the immigrant debate, it’s that if everyone would stop shouting, they might notice that in the North Denver of today, the remaining Italian-Americans generally and peacefully co-exist with the newer immigrants. At our church, St. Dominic’s, the priests speak English and Spanish, many Italian-
Americans attend the English Masses, the Sunday morning Spanish Mass is jammed, and the parish dinners and “feasts” are convivially multilingual.
“Italians are very proud people and proud of their heritage,” Vendegnia said Saturday. “But they love being Americans and their American heritage, too.”
Italian-Americans often are descendants of immigrant families that pulled themselves up in the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, and they’re resentful if their path isn’t considered the precedent. Now, few speak Italian, and many regret that. But they’re proud that even when Italian was spoken in homes and neighborhoods, the new Italian-Americans didn’t expect the state to conduct business or print ballots in Italian. They’re also grateful that their forerunners took that stand, because they believe that to do otherwise would have delayed Italian-Americans’ emergence from frequent exploitation and exclusion, both socially and in the workplace.
Along the way, they also have developed thick skins.
What happens when Italian-Americans notice journalists make “clever” references to pasta and checkered tablecloths in stories about Italian-Americans? Or even when a newspaper publishes a headline about how the Toronto Raptors “order Italian” when they draft Andrea Bargnani? Many Italian-Americans are bemused by the selective sensitivity.
And I agree with them, because I know that corresponding lighthearted references to athletes of other nationalities – say, if the Nuggets re-signed Eduardo Najera, a native of Mexico – wouldn’t fly. Like the Bargnani headline, a “Nuggets order Mexican” headline over a future story about Denver re-signing Najera would be clever, not mean-spirited and arguably offensive only to the hypersensitive. Yet with all due respect to my compatriots who disagree with me, I’d also be willing to bet that it wouldn’t run; or that if it did, we’d end up apologizing for it. While “sensitivity” in journalism often can be more opportunistic than sincere, this isn’t hard to decipher at all: We know who we’re not supposed to risk offending, and also whom we can get away with simply telling to lighten up.
Italian-Americans are used to that phenomenon by now.
They’ll be cheering for their ancestors’ homeland today. As Americans.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
