Al Capone: From "Dark" to "Fair"

Recently I posted about how fairly light-skinned Italian criminals were often falsely stereotyped as "dark" or "swarthy" in the media. Because Al Capone is so famous, a lot of his rap sheets and wanted posters are uploaded online, and I was surprised to find that they don't all describe him the same way.

His hair is always Dark Brown or Black, and on his wanted poster it was assumed that his eyes would be Brown, but on his rap sheets they're described as either Blue, Grey or Green (his relatives have said that they were blue). But his complexion ranges from Dark all the way to Fair:

Dark

Dark Ruddy

Medium Dark

Medium Fair

Fair

Of course, this inconsistency doesn't reflect any kind of "questionable racial status" for Italians because, first of all, complexion and color (i.e. race) are two different things, and whenever a file mentions Capone's color, it's always White:

White

White

White

And second of all, this kind of thing wasn't limited to Italians and other "ethnics". I also found that criminals of Northern European descent were not always described as stereotypically Fair, but often also as Medium and even Dark:

John Dillinger: Medium

Willie Sutton: Medium Dark

Fred Barker: Dark

Harvey Bailey: Dark

Homer Van Meter: Dark

Organized Crime and Upward Mobility

"A Family Business" was the real-life version of "The Godfather," the movie adaptation of which was released the same year. But [anthropologist Francis] Ianni's portrait was markedly different from the romanticized accounts of Mafia life that have subsequently dominated popular culture. There were no blood oaths in Ianni's account, or national commissions or dark conspiracies. There was no splashy gunplay. No one downed sambuca shots at Jilly's, on West Fifty-second Street, with Frank Sinatra. The Lupollos lived modestly. Ianni gives little evidence, in fact, that the four families had any grand criminal ambitions beyond the illicit operations they ran out of storefronts in Brooklyn. Instead, from Giuseppe's earliest days in Little Italy, the Lupollo clan was engaged in a quiet and determined push toward respectability.

By 1970, Ianni calculated, there were forty-two fourth-generation members of the Lupollo-Salemi-Alcamo-Tucci family—of which only four were involved in the family's crime businesses. The rest were firmly planted in the American upper middle class. A handful of the younger members of that generation were in private schools or in college. One was married to a judge's son, another to a dentist. One was completing a master's degree in psychology; another was a member of the English department at a liberal-arts college. There were several lawyers, a physician, and a stockbroker. Uncle Phil's son Basil was an accountant, who lived on an estate in the posh Old Westbury section of Long Island's North Shore. "His daughter rides and shows her own horses," Ianni wrote, "and his son has some reputation as an up-and-coming young yachtsman." Uncle Phil, meanwhile, lived in Manhattan, collected art, and frequented the opera. "The Lupollos love to tell of old Giuseppe's wife Annunziata visiting Phil's apartment," Ianni wrote. "Her comment on the lavish collection of paintings was 'manga nu Santa' ('not even one saint's picture')."

The moral of the "Godfather" movies was that the Corleone family, conceived in crime, could never escape it. "Just when I thought I was out," Michael Corleone says, "they pull me back in." The moral of "A Family Business" was the opposite: that for the Lupollos and the Tuccis and the Salemis and the Alcamos—and, by extension, many other families just like them—crime was the means by which a group of immigrants could transcend their humble origins. It was, as the sociologist James O'Kane put it, the "crooked ladder" of social mobility.

Six decades ago, Robert K. Merton argued that there was a series of ways in which Americans responded to the extraordinary cultural emphasis that their society placed on getting ahead. The most common was "conformity": accept the social goal (the American dream) and also accept the means by which it should be pursued (work hard and obey the law). The second strategy was "ritualism": accept the means (work hard and obey the law) but reject the goal. That's the approach of the Quakers or the Amish or of any other religious group that substitutes its own moral agenda for that of the broader society. There was also "retreatism" and "rebellion"—rejecting both the goal and the means. It was the fourth adaptation, however, that Merton found most interesting: "innovation." Many Americans—particularly those at the bottom of the heap—believed passionately in the promise of the American dream. They didn't want to bury themselves in ritualism or retreatism. But they couldn't conform: the kinds of institutions that would reward hard work and promote advancement were closed to them. So what did they do? They innovated: they found alternative ways of pursuing the American dream. They climbed the crooked ladder.

All three of the great waves of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America innovated. Irish gangsters dominated organized crime in the urban Northeast in the mid to late nineteenth century, followed by the Jewish gangsters—Meyer Lansky, Arnold Rothstein, and Dutch Schultz, among others. Then it was the Italians' turn. They were among the poorest and the least skilled of the immigrants of that era. Crime was one of the few options available for advancement. The point of the crooked-ladder argument and "A Family Business" was that criminal activity, under those circumstances, was not rebellion; it wasn't a rejection of legitimate society. It was an attempt to join in.

[...]

Ianni didn't romanticize what he saw. He didn't pretend that the crooked ladder was the principal means of economic mobility in America, or the most efficient. It was simply a fact of American life. He saw the pattern being repeated in New York City during the nineteen-seventies, as the city's demographics changed. [...] The newcomers, he predicted, would climb the ladder to respectability just as their predecessors had done. "It was toward the end of the Lupollo study that I became convinced that organized crime was a functional part of the American social system and should be viewed as one end of a continuum of business enterprises with legitimate business at the other end," Ianni wrote.

[...]

That's why the crooked ladder worked as well as it did. The granddaughter could end up riding horses because the law—whether from indifference, incompetence, or corruption—left her gangster grandfather alone.

The idea that, in the course of a few generations, the gangster can give way to an equestrian is perhaps the hardest part of the innovation argument to accept. We have become convinced of the opposite trajectory: the benign low-level drug dealer becomes the malignant distributor and then the brutal drug lord. [...] The crooked-ladder theorists looked at the Mafia's evolution during the course of the twentieth century, however, and reached the opposite conclusion: that, over time, the criminal vocation was inevitably domesticated.

Malcolm Gladwell. "The Crooked Ladder: The criminal's guide to upward mobility". The New Yorker | Urban Chronicles | August 11, 2014 Issue.

Sacco and Vanzetti Revisited

This infamous criminal case is one of the most cited examples of "anti-Italianism" in America. In 1927, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were executed for the murders of a paymaster and a security guard during an armed robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts. There's still debate about whether they were guilty or innocent, and it's possible that one was guilty and the other wasn't, but I haven't studied the case closely, so I don't really have an opinion either way. However, few people deny that they received an unfair trial compromised by tainted evidence, and there were worldwide protests over their convictions and executions, including by prominent figures of the day like Albert Einstein, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Upton Sinclair, John Dos Passos, Dorothy Parker, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.

While it's possible that their status as immigrants from Southern Europe could have been a factor, since it was a time in American history when foreigners and non-Northern Europeans were looked at suspiciously and unfavorably, I've seen no credible evidence of that, let alone that specifically anti-Italian prejudice played any part. What's certain is that they were anarchists and followers of Luigi Galleani, a notorious revolutionary who advocated violence, assassination and bombing. Militant anarchists were a big problem back then, kind of like militant Islamists today. President William McKinley had been assassinated by Polish-American anarchist Leon Czolgosz in 1901, and the Department of Justice had arrested and deported 500 anarchists and other alien radicals in the 1919 Palmer Raids, including Galleani and eight of his followers. So any prejudice against Sacco and Vanzetti would have been based on their political affiliations and activities more than anything else. Indeed, the judge at the trial, Webster Thayer, was an outspoken opponent of anarchism and bolshevism who made several inappropriate off-the-bench comments to that effect, for which he was criticized by the press and his peers.

But that attitude was common at the time, and the Sacco and Vanzetti case in fact has a historical precedent that's almost identical in every detail, except that everyone involved was of Northern European descent. In 1886, there was a bombing during a demonstration at Haymarket Square in Chicago, and eight anarchists (five German immigrants, a German-American, an Englishman, and a Southerner) were tried and convicted as conspirators in the death of a police officer, despite a lack of evidence against them. Four of the men were hanged, and a fifth committed suicide in prison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Their unfair treatment also generated worldwide protests, and it's thought by most that they were likely innocent. To this day, no one knows for sure who the bomber was, but speculation revolves around a number of other people, including many who weren't involved in the anarchist movement.

When you look at these parallels and the historical context, it's difficult to imagine that there was anything anti-Italian at play with Sacco and Vanzetti, but some people see only what they want to see.

Italian Immigrant Stereotypes Dispelled

The following is an excerpt from an article written around the turn of the 20th century by the Director of the Immigration Publication Society in New York. It's noteworthy because of the statistics it contains that dispel stereotypes about Italian criminality and poverty compared to other European ethnic groups in the Greater New York area (mostly Irish, but also Jews, Germans and Anglos).

Lies have short legs, the Florentine tag has it, but the Italian is still accused of being a degenerate, a lazy fellow and a pauper, half a criminal, a present danger, and a serious menace to our civilization. If there is a substantial basis of truth in these charges, it must appear very clearly in Greater New York, which is now disputing Rome's place as the third largest Italian city in the world. Moreover, New York contains nearly two fifths of all the Italians in the United States, and in proportion to its size it is the least prosperous Italian colony in the country, and shelters a considerable part of our immigrant failures — those who cannot fall into step with the march of American life.

First, as to the paupers. The Italian inhabitants of New York City number nearly 450,000; the Irish, somewhat over 300,000. In males — the criminal sex — the Italians outnumber the Irish about two to one. Yet by a visit to the great almshouse on Blackwell's Island and an examination of the unpublished record for 1904, I found that during that year 1564 Irish had been admitted, and only 16 Italians. Mr. James Forbes, the chief of the Mendicancy Department of the Charity Organization Society, tells me that he has never seen or heard of an Italian tramp. As for begging, between July 1, 1904, and September 30, 1905, the Mendicancy Police took into custody 519 Irish and only 92 Italians. Pauperism has a close relation with suicide, and of such deaths during the year the record counts 89 Irish and 23 Italians. The Irish have always supplied much more than their share of our paupers; but Irish brawn has contributed its full part to the prosperity of the country; and the comparatively large proportion of Irish inmates in all our penal institutions never justified the charge that the Irish are a criminal race, or Irish immigration undesirable. That was the final answer to the Know-Nothing argument!

Nor do court records show that Italians are the professional criminals they are said to be. Take the city magistrates' reports for the year ending December 31, 1901 — the latest date for which all the necessary data are available. At that time, using Dr. Laidlaw's estimate of additions by immigration to the population of the city to May 1, 1902, there were about 282,804 Irish and 200,549 Italians in Greater New York. If the proportion of the sexes remained unchanged from the taking of the census, there were 117,599 Irish males, and 114,673 Italian. This near equality of the criminal sex in the two nationalities makes possible a rough measure of Italian criminality.

In these columns of crime the most striking fact in the Italian's favor is a remarkable showing of sobriety. During the year, 7281 Irish were hauled into court accused of "intoxication" and "intoxication and disorderly conduct," while the Italians arrested on the same charge numbered only 513. With the exception of the Russian Jews, Italians are by far the most sober of all nationalities in New York, including the native born. Next, noticing only offenses committed with particular frequency, the Italians again appear at a pronounced advantage in: Assaults (misdemeanor), 284 Irish and 139 Italians; disorderly conduct, 3278 Irish and 1454 Italians; larceny (misdemeanor), 297 Irish and 174 Italians; vagrancy, 1031 Irish and 80 Italians. Insanity is here listed with crime, and there are 146 Irish commitments to 35 Italian. Irish and Italians are nearly at an equality in: Burglaries, 63 Irish and 57 Italians; and larceny (felony), 122 Irish and 94 Italians. On the other hand, Italians show at the worst in: Violation of corporation ordinance (chiefly peddling without a license), 196 Irish and 1169 Italians; and assault (felony), 75 Irish and 155 Italians. In homicides, quite contrary to the popular impression, the Italians are only charged with the ratio exactly normal to their numbers after taking the average per 100,000 for the whole city, while the Irish are accused of nearly two and one half times their quota: Irish 50, Italians 14. The report for 1903, the last published, after important changes effected by almost two years of immigration, shows an unchanged proportional variation: Irish 59, Italians 21.

The one serious crime to which Italians are prone more than other men is an unpremeditated crime of violence. This is mostly charged, and probably with entire justice, upon the men of four provinces, and Girgenti in Sicily is particularly specified. It is generally the outcome of quarrels among themselves, prompted by jealousy and suspected treachery. The Sicilians' code of honor is an antiquated and repellent one, but even his vendetta is less ruthless than the Kentucky mountaineer's. It stops at the grave. Judged in the mass, Italians are peaceable, as they are law-abiding. The exceptions make up the national criminal record; and as there is a French or English type of criminal, so there is a Sicilian type, who has succeeded in impressing our imaginations with some fear and terror.

[...]

It is important that two or three other truths about the Italian should be known. Like all their immigrant predecessors, Italians profess no special cult of soap and water; and here, too, there are differences, for some Italians are cleaner than others. Still, cleanliness is the rule and dirt the exception. The inspectors of the New York Tenement-House Department report that the tenements in the Italian quarters are in the best condition of all, and that they are infinitely cleaner than those in the Jewish and Irish districts. And the same with overcrowding. One of New York's typical "Little Italies" is inhabited by 1075 Italian families — so poor that only twenty-six of them pay over $19 monthly rent — and yet, when a complete canvass was made by the Federation of Churches, the average allotment of space was found to be one room to 1.7 persons. Like the Germans and Irish of the fifties, our Italians are largely poor, ignorant peasants when they come to us. But by the enforcement of the recent law our present immigrants are greatly superior physically and morally to those of the Know-Nothing days. The difference in criminal records is partly the proof of a better law. The worst of the newer tenements are better than the best of the old kind, and every surrounding is more sanitary. Better schools, recreation piers, public baths, playgrounds, and new parks are helping the Italian children of the tenements to develop into healthy and useful men and women.

[...]

They are honest, saving, industrious, temperate, and so exceptionally moral that two years ago the Secretary of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco was able to boast that the police of that city had never yet found an Italian woman of evil character. Even in New York (and I have my information from Mr. Forbes, of the Charity Organization Society) Italian prostitution was entirely unknown until by our corrupt police it was colonized as scientifically as a culture of bacteria made by a biologist; and to-day it is less proportionately than that of any other nationality within the limits of the greater city. More than 750,000 Italian immigrants have come to us within the last four years, and during that entire time only a single woman of them has been ordered deported charged with prostitution.

[...]

From the very bottom, Italians are climbing up the same rungs of the same social and industrial ladder [as the Irish and the Germans]. But it is still a secret that they are being gradually turned into Americans; and, for all its evils, the city colony is a wonderful help in the process. The close contact of American surroundings eventually destroys the foreign life and spirit, and of this New York gives proof. Only two poor fragments remain of the numerous important German and Irish colonies that were flourishing in the city twenty-five or thirty years ago; while the ancient settled Pennsylvania Dutch, thanks to their isolation, are not yet fully merged in the great citizen body. And so, in the city colony, Italians are becoming Americans. Legions of them, who never intended to remain here when they landed, have cast in their lot definitely with us; and those who have already become Americanized, but no others, are beginning to intermarry with our people. The mass of them are still laborers, toiling like ants in adding to the wealth of the country; but thousands are succeeding in many branches of trade and manufacture. The names of Italians engaged in business in the United States fill a special directory of over five hundred pages. Their real estate holdings and bank deposits aggregate enormous totals. Their second generation is already crowding into all the professions, and we have Italian teachers, dentists, architects, engineers, doctors, lawyers, and judges.

John Foster Carr. "The Coming of the Italian". The Outlook, February 24, 1906. (Quoted from: Immigration and Americanization: selected readings. Compiled and edited by Philip Davis and Bertha Schwartz. New York: Ginn and Company, 1920.)

Sicilians Fight Back Against the Mafia

In Sicily, the birthplace of the modern Mafia, the mob has served as the real power center for decades, infiltrating all aspects of life and government. But Frontline/World reporter Carola Mamberto finds that one town is fighting back. "Taking on the Mafia" tells the story of how a Palermo restaurant owner and a movement of young people help to score a rare victory in the country's battle against Mafia dominance.

"Italy: Taking on the Mafia". Frontline/World, Jan. 27, 2009.