Talk:Sicilian Americans

Serious work
This needs serious work. Seriously. --Xyzzyplugh 14:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)


 * When I created Sicilian American I didn't know this existed. Is there enough in the two to merge and then improve?--T. Anthony 07:46, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

This article still needs some major expansion. There's a lot more to Sicilian-Americans than what's represented here. Zaldax (talk) 13:35, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Dean Martin should be removed from this page, since his parents came from Abruzzo and certainly NOT Sicily. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.6.190.108 (talk) 18:01, 26 June 2013 (UTC) Done.

Organized crime
I realize that the original authors hoped in this article to show that there is more to the Sicilian American community than the mafia stereotypes and I applaud the effort to show that. I would argue that, as written, some of the article is more of an essay about why those stereotypes are unfair than an NPOV encyclopedia article.

Having said all that, I believe that there is some interesting content regarding organized crime that would be valuable to have (again, not trying to make Sicilians look bad but we should not be censoring content). It is noteworthy that during the early 1900s there were very successful business enterprises in many locations around the U.S. run by Sicilians including Sicilians who had not been directly connected to the European mafia (e.g. I recently wrote Free State of Galveston, an interesting example). It would be interesting to explore how/why Sicilians were so successful at these ventures (indeed one could say the reason some Sicilians took to these types of businesses was because they were so heavily discriminated against in other types of ventures).

Anybody with detailed knowledge about how all those little histories are related?

--Mcorazao (talk) 19:13, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I too am hestitant because our ethnic group has been highly stigmatised. I have some material on this but I don't know if I feel comfortable writing it. I know this was an old post but I'd be happy to provide it to you.Paolorausch (talk) 20:49, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Violence, Lynchings, Racism against Sicilian-Americans
Due to American racial policies Sicilians were viewed as racially different from other groups, due to this we suffer as one of the few European(ish) origin groups to have been lynched. I think we should build this out to demonstrate how the Sicilian-American experience differed from other Italic groups. Paolorausch (talk) 20:49, 1 June 2016 (UTC)


 * What are you talking about? I read this book, it talks about all Italians and discrimination faced in the USA.--Walter J. Rotelmayer (talk) 21:14, 1 June 2016 (UTC)

Perception of Sicilians in 1940s US
http://burgesses.info/memorabilia/soldiers_guides.html

interesting primary source. ""Morals are superficially very rigid...but they are, in actual fact of a very low standard." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Paolorausch (talk • contribs) 09:57, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

Number of Sicilian-Americans
The number given of ~80,000 can't be anywhere near accurate. In 2017, roughly 5% of the US, or 17 million people, claim Italian heritage. The great majority of them are from the South, just say conservatively 2/3, or about ~10 million. Of these many have heritage from Campania, Calabria, and Sicily. Again, just conservatively, it couldn't be less than 2 million then. Hard to find data counting Italian ancestry by region though. If anyone can, please add. Spettro9 (talk) 14:49, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Capitalization of "Direct"?
Fourth sentence of the article mentions "Direct connections", with direct capitalized, despite not being the beginning of a sentence. Is this referring to a specific subject called "Direct connections"? Or is this an errant capitalization? 107.115.33.17 (talk) 04:33, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Sicilians and Jim Crow
In the interests of avoiding an edit war: I propose that the section on Sicilians being discriminated against and occasionally lynched be restored to the article. @Legal History Expert's objection is that there are "no primary sources". As I said in one of my edit summaries, WP:RS notes that "Articles should rely on secondary sources whenever possible" and "Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy". The information in question is backed up by reference to four reliable secondary sources, including the New York Times, the Library of Congress, and a PhD thesis. This, to me, plainly meets the criteria of WP:RS. AntiDionysius (talk) 17:17, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Understanding legal jurisprudences and the difference between social and legal discrimination
Jim Crow is a legal jurisprudence that never targeted Sicilians. No legally white group was ever targeted by Jim crow. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/22/sorry-but-the-irish-were-always-white-and-so-were-the-italians-jews-and-so-on/ Telleroftruth2000 (talk) 11:47, 17 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I agree. I have put your correct edit back up BadFaithSourceRemover (talk) 03:12, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * well, I didn't put it back up per say,someone else did but rather added your citation. BadFaithSourceRemover (talk) 03:14, 22 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Italians were legally white throughout all of American history.There was never even a court case disputing it. It was never in dispute actually. There were occurrences in which certain individuals "questioned" our whiteness but Italians were always on the white side of the legal racial line. AnthonySacco (talk) 03:22, 30 July 2023 (UTC)