In his 1989 movie, "Do The Right Thing," Spike Lee portrayed Italian-Americans and African-Americans as two ethnic groups with minimal understanding of one another and a good deal of barely submerged hostility toward one another. This depiction was fairly accurate and, at least to some extent, can be explained by the fact that ethnic groups in America are substantially shaped by their historical experiences in the country (269).
The historical experiences of these two groups, despite some similarities, are substantially different and it is these differences that explain a great deal of their misunderstanding and antipathy to one another. The purpose of this paper is to examine the similarities and the differences between Italian-Americans and African-Americans, discussing how each has shaped the two subcultures of Americana and influenced their relationship with one another.
Comparison of Italian-Americans to African-Americans
A key difference between Italian-Americans and African-Americans involves their history of coming to America. For Italian-Americans, immigration to the United States was entirely volitional. Moreover, for many of them, America was viewed as a land which would lift them high above the poverty and low social status they had experienced in Europeù-and indeed, although they experienced cultural disruption, this dream was realized for most with one to two generations (Gold 8).
On the other hand, African-Americans had no love or hope for something better in this country; indeed, most didn't even know about this country's existence before landing here. And their coming to the United States was entirely non-volitional. They were brought to America in chains as slaves and forced to experience cultural disruption with no dreams of the disruption being a temporary transition that would afford them the good life (Gold 9).
The two experiences associated with coming to the United States have provi...