Italians were denied whiteness through the Dago epithet before racial-nativist ideology hardened
Evidence
The Italians were often thought to be the most degraded of the European newcomers. They were swarthy, more than half of them were illiterate, and almost all were victims of a standard of living lower than that of any of the other prominent nationalities. “They were the ragpickers and the poorest of common laborers; in one large city their earnings averaged 4o per cent less than those of the general slum-dweller.”* Wherever they went, a distinctive sobriquet followed them. “You don’t call… an Italian a white man?” a West Coast construction boss was asked. “‘No, sir,’ he answered, “an Italian is a Dago.” — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 392
Categorization
- XREF: Strong historical evidence for how ‘not white’ status was conferred in daily speech long before full racial-nativist theory — feeding the reader’s ‘stages of the enemy category’ model. — connects to: White supremacy could expel Italians from whiteness when useful. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 141; Racial hierarchy and whiteness were invented inside Europe before modern capitalism
- SEED: Angle: the informal ‘Dago’ colloquialism as a pre-theoretical stepping stone to formal racial exclusion of the same group a generation later.
Broader Connections
- White supremacy could expel Italians from whiteness when useful.
#corroborates(0.95) — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 141 - Racial hierarchy and whiteness were invented inside Europe before modern capitalism
#corroborates(0.80)