Culture
Most Italian Americans have assumed a mainstream American identity. Erik Amfitheatrof observed in 1973 that, "The children of the Italian immigrants no longer feel Italian. They are American. In shedding a sense of apartness from American life, they have also relinquished their once-powerful emotional associations with a remote Italian world...." Most immigrants arrived from Italy by 1914, so most can trace multiple generations in the new country. Many have inter-married with other ethnic groups. They are well represented in all fields of endeavor. Many Italian Americans still retain aspects of their culture. This includes Italian food, drink, art, annual Italian American festivals, and a strong commitment to family, including extended family. Italian Americans influenced popular music, especially in the 1940s and 1950s, and continuing into the present, one of their major contributions to American culture.
A University of Chicago study of fifteen ethnic groups showed that Italian Americans were among those groups having the lowest percentages of divorce, unemployment, people on welfare and those incarcerated. On the other hand, they were among those groups with the highest percentages of two-parent families, elderly family members still living at home, and families who eat together on a regular basis.
The National Italian American Foundation (NIAF) - a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. - works to represent Italian Americans, spread knowledge of the Italian language, foster U.S./Italy relations and connect the greater Italian American community. Additionally, two major Italian American fraternal and service organizations, Order Sons of Italy in America and Unico National, actively promote knowledge of Italian American history and culture. Another prominent organization, The Italic Institute of America, is also in the forefront of these activities. Italian-Americans remain strongly connected with their culture today.
Read more about this topic: Italian American
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Our culture is ill-equipped to assert the bourgeois values which would be the salvation of the under-class, because we have lost those values ourselves.”
—Norman Podhoretz (b. 1930)
“As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.”
—Margaret Mead (1901–1978)
“To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination.... After the racist statutes are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long.”
—Michael Harrington (1928–1989)