Description
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, in addition to 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 once a web 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 the most important contribution not to only Italian American history, but The united states’s history of immigration and race.