Father and Son--That's Italian! Ragu Spaghetti Commercial USA c. Late 1980s--No Blacks, No Homos

Father and Son--That's Italian! Ragu Spaghetti Commercial USA c. Late 1980s--No Blacks, No Homos, No Funny Colored Hair People.

I would say being Italian American was about exotic as you could get in America during the 1980s and still be accepted by the culture at large. However, there was a broad brush Mafia stereotype courtesy of the Jews in their Hollywood movies.

If you were of Eastern European ancestry (didn't matter which group), well, the Cold War and the Iron Curtain were still going strong. You didn't have the numbers or the power structure like the Irish Americans and to a lesser extent the Italian Americans. You were all (didn't matter which group you were from) lumped together as "Dumb Polacks" (a pejorative term which I still hear from time to time) brought over here to work in a factory or maybe be a cop or work for a Jew. You didn't belong.

Spago means string in the Italian language.

The Italian Americans changed American society by changing the food Americans ate.