Mary M. Schmidt

“These neighborhood was our first home as a community but, once Italians began to gain status as “full” Americans, they moved out of the communities that they co-habited with other immigrants and people of color. The rootedness in this community shifted into a dissention of difference and of privilege. In order for Italian-Americans to mark their new social location under assumed “Whiteness,” they had to make a physical move away from the marginal communities of color. The discussion ended in my favor but would mark the beginning of a long struggle of unpacking the internalized oppression and discrimination that marked my family’s identity of “White”-working class-Italian-Americans learning to assimilate while keeping their hyphenated identity. Learning to build bridges between my different borders and my passions has been a continual process for me.”
― Lachrista Greco, Olive Grrrls: Italian North American Women & The Search For Identity

“The pieces of who I am, beginning, though, not ending, with my name have complicated the way that I see the simplistic act of checking “White” on census forms or questionnaires. Without ignoring the privileged position that comes with being White in our current society, Whiteness never fully embraced me and for that reason, as well as the historical context, the act of checking that box is uncomfortable and further, marginalizing.”
― Lachrista Greco, Olive Grrrls: Italian North American Women & The Search For Identity

“Every so often in New York I was mistaken for Puerto Rican, Cuban, Greek, or Arab. In San Diego, where I lived for four years before moving to Michigan, I was almost always seen as Mexican.”
― Lachrista Greco, Olive Grrrls: Italian North American Women & The Search For Identity

“Italians in the U.S. are the southerners, the dark ones, the ignorant peasants who carry statues of the Virgin Mary through their neighborhoods and faint with religious passion. They are not the Venetians or Florentines, the ancestors of the deMedicis, the Michaelangelos and daVincis. No, those are Europeans. Historical moments eventually led to the creation of democracy.  Italians, well, they are something different. They come in large and dirty numbers to Ellis Island. Too many of them really. Not all the way white. Certainly not white enough, rich enough, or intellectual enough to understand Faulkner. This is not about race. This is about class. About culture and history. And then it is about race  (Raffo 201).”
― Lachrista Greco, Olive Grrrls: Italian North American Women & The Search For Identity