In A Great Conspiracy against Our Race, Peter Vellon explores how
Italian immigrants, a once undesirable and "swarthy" race, assimilated
into dominant white culture through the influential national and radical
Italian language press in New York City.
Racial history has always been the thorn in America's side, with a swath
of injustices--slavery, lynching, segregation, and many other
ills--perpetrated against black people. This very history is complicated
by, and also dependent on, what constitutes a white person in this
country. Many of the European immigrant groups now considered white also
had to struggle with their own racial identities.
Examining the press as a cultural production of the Italian immigrant
community, this book investigates how this immigrant press constructed
race, class, and identity from 1886 through 1920. Their frequent
coverage of racially charged events of the time, as well as other topics
such as capitalism and religion, reveals how these papers constructed a
racial identity as Italian, American, and white.
A Great Conspiracy against Our Race vividly illustrates how the
immigrant press was a site where socially constructed categories of
race, color, civilization, and identity were reworked, created,
contested, and negotiated. Vellon also uncovers how Italian immigrants
filtered societal pressures and redefined the parameters of whiteness,
constructing their own identity. This work is an important contribution
to not only Italian American history, but America's history of
immigration and race.
