bleechers's Blog

Note: In light of AMC's "Godfather" marathon yesterday, I am reposting this entry.

Remembering Joe Petrosino

Hating Parts of Your Own Culture Can Sometimes Be a Good Thing

My subheading is actually misleading. Joe Petrosino didn't hate the organized crime part of Italian-American culture, he simply didn't recognize it. To him, and to the vast majority of Italian immigrants around the turn of the last century, the "values" represented by the mob culture were foreign to the true values of most southern Italian immigrant families.

Joseph (Guiseppe) Petrosino arrived in America in 1874 at the age of 14. At the age of 23 he joined the NYPD and made it his life's work to showcase what was true of most Italian immigrants: they were good neighbors, honest workers and patriotic Americans. To Joe, organized crime brought shame to the Italian-American community. He "hated" that part of his culture. I imagine he would hate how it is glamorized today, by Italian-Americans no-less, in shows like The Sopranos and Growing Up Gotti.


Joe Petrosino was assassinated in Sicily in 1909 while on a mission to chase down mob criminals from the US. His death has inspired many who came after him to seek the high road of honor, justice and truth.

Thomas Sowell, in his book Ethnic America, describes the driving force of the southern Italian immigrant with the words "sanctity of the family." For many today they can only see The Sopranos version of what that phrase represents, but that show (and the countless shows and movies of the same theme) have given American audiences a grotesque vision of what "sanctity of the family" means in the Italian tradition.

Sowell notes that not only the family, but the village is also valued in southern Italian culture. Southern Italian immigrants had no historic hatred of other ethnic groups and generally got along well with Jewish, Irish and other immigrant groups. If you valued family, they valued you.


As with all cultures, not everyone took the high road. Some "families" took to crime. Others, however, from the same culture, risked all to clean up their communities.

I need not give a history of Italian-American organized crime. Turn on your TV and you're likely to find it represented in one way or another multiple times in multiple ways up and down the satellite dish. What I need to do, however, is to remind all of us who it was that brought down the mobs and mob bosses. Among those who brought down the dons you will repeatedly find the names of Americans of Italian descent, from cops to DAs to judges to juries.

Brave Italian-American men and women who hated a disease that had spread its stench to the whole community made it their life's work to bring criminals to justice. They did it because they were patriots, American patriots. Like Joe Petrosino they did it because they understood that all Italian-Americans carried a stigma because of the actions of a small group of thugs. Italian-Americans suffered at the hands of the mob as much as or more than any other group.


An attack on organized crime was an attack on organized crime; it was not an attack on "Italian culture". Patriotic and law-abiding Italian-Americans never saw it any other way.

In many ways it was important that the men who brought down the mob (from Petrosino to Guiliani) were of Italian descent. It demonstrated to the world that attacking a disease associated with a culture doesn't translate into an attack on the culture itself. It was important to honest Italians that the greater culture know that we shared their disgust and fears. This could only be accomplished if we first distanced ourselves from the disease and then led the charge against it, welcoming help from wherever it arrived.

I want to be very careful not to appear as though I am telling other cultures exactly how they should attack their own problems and image, but one thing I know (and this is what Joe Petrosino knew), the solution can only come when honorable and patriotic Americans decide that curing the diseases that infect their own culture is more important than defending the worst of the worst because of some skewed notion of "unity."


Each Community Must Find Its Own Answers

I don't have the particulars or all the answers for you. Some cultures have a much harsher history of oppression than the southern Italians had. My father used to tell me that a second generation Italian-American could get a haircut, buy a new suit, get an education and blend in with the rest of the greater society. But Americans of African descent couldn't use that strategy. A haircut, a new suit and a large vocabulary do not alter the color of your skin.

Thankfully, we live in a day where the content of one's character is more often than not trumping the color of one's skin. But the change in attitudes isn't universal yet and it hasn't helped everyone; the prison rates among young African-American males remains frightfully high. I don't pretend to have the answers, but Joe Petrosino taught me this much, whatever the answers may be, they must be found within each community.


The first step for any culture, stop glorifying your worst members.

I don't mind the mockery of the mob stereotype on shows like The Simpsons. I am a big fan of Chico Marx too. Just like any other aspect of US history and culture, some good-natured satire can be very funny. But the glorification of organized crime or any implication that all Italian-Americans are somehow potential mobsters should not be tolerated by Americans of Italian descent.

Hopefully other cultures will be smart enough to stop glorifying the worst members of their communities. Until then, I'll keep tallking about Joe Petrosino even as The Sopranos garners more Emmy nominations and spreads into syndication.

Hating elements of your own culture can sometimes be a marvelous thing.