Don’t judge me based on the color of my skin

I was in a sociology class at university. The entire room with the exception of the Nigerian instructor was white. On this particular evening, the instructor asked the class: “What does it mean to you to be white?” The usual answers went around the room: privileged, not stopped by police because of skin color, less likely to be arrested and incarcerated, learning about how great our race has been throughout history. I timidly raised my hand when the usual answers were done being thrown out and waited to be seen.
“Yes?”, she asked.

“Invisible.”

Everyone turned to look at me like I had worms growing from my head.

“What do you mean by that?”

“You’re dark skinned, the only one in the room. You’re different from us, so we notice you. You see a sea of white faces, some lined with dark hair, some with light, but we’re all the same. We know that there are sensitivity protocols that we need to be aware of when it comes to you and who you are because of that, just the same because you’re a woman, or if someone has a disability. When you see us, there is none of that because we are the same as each other in your eyes, regardless of how we identify and define ourselves within.”

And this is the point of my rant.

I am sick of being lumped in with whites. I am sick of being seen as the person who’s family owned a black family sometime in American history. I am sick of being labeled as white because, despite the color of my skin, my family lineage resembles that of an African lineage than a European one. People from where my family was from have been lynched same as black people were in the south. We were labeled as criminals, deviants, and threats and tried and incarcerated because of our heritage and the misdeeds of a very small few. Their exploits were made even worse through the creation of myths by Hollywood which either demonized or created anti-heroes out of us. I am Sicilian, a wop, and proud of it. Why, because despite all my people have been through, we do what needs to be done, care for our families, work hard, live life, love and die happy.

Sicilian slaves were one of the oldest enslaved peoples. The Romans were notorious for enslaving the people they conquered, and with Sicily in its proximity with Italy, Sicily was one of the first territories to conquer. Sicily rebelled, of course, and paid in blood. The country was conquered over and over throughout history, and its people enslaved repeatedly by the conquerors, the French, Germans, and later the Spanish. Sicilian revolts against enslavers made the people out to be troublemakers, unwilling subjects to countries that were bringing us civilization in the form of forced labor. Conquerors took Sicilian lands as their own, much like the English did of the U.S. in the 16 and 1700’s. So when the country finally began to be independent in the late 1800’s, Sicilians had nothing, and the economy was poor. Sicilians immigrated to the U.S. to locations where manual labor would be plentiful, but the stigma of being troublemakers followed, and were Sicilians were looked down upon and were seen suspiciously. When the mafia wars began in the 1920’s, and carried into the 1930’s, Sicilians moved from being seen as troublemakers to criminals, and would be arrested, charged, tried and convicted based on evidence that others would have had an easy time beating. Those who weren’t convicted were victims of mob justice, like the 30 Sicilians in Louisiana who lost their lives as a result of lynch mobs. While Hollywood glorified the gangster myth of Sicilians, those movies always ended with the gangsters dead or in jail. We were seen as violent, willing to kill someone, even family, without a thought. Sicilian history is available online for those who wish to learn more; it is too complex and long to go into here.

Did you enjoy The Sopranos? How about The Godfather movies? All those Hollywood gangster films starring Humphrey Bogart and Al Pacino? James Cagney was always a staple. Do you think that’s who we are? Does it surprise you to know that we were the ‘niggers’ of the Mediterranean (if you use the term wop to describe a Sicilian it’s the same as using that ’n’ word to describe a black person)? Or is it just white skin you see, which means we owned a black, making us the enemy, and part of a race that owes you…something? Certainly the Italians, Germans, French, Ottomans, Americans, or anyone else will not be giving us an apology anytime soon for what they have done to us in the past. U.S. people of European ancestry certainly aren’t going to be sorry for all of the disparaging images we’ve had to endure, or the lynchings or unjust convictions we’ve received. They don’t give a crap about any of that. But, because we’re white, that means we are just as guilty as they are, right?

I’m sick of it.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. Move along, nothing to see here.