Читать книгу Some Immigrant Neighbors онлайн

7 страница из 11

I saw a “grown-up” show this hostile feeling one day as I was passing along a crowded street on the East Side of New York. An American youth of about eighteen years of age snatched some fruit from the push cart of a young Italian of the same age. The Italian grappled with the young thief and was giving him a sound thrashing when a policeman, leisurely swinging his club, turned the corner. With one glance he took in the scene of the Italian-American war. Raising his club and shouting, “You Dago,” he charged full at the Italian. The young fellow saw him coming and took off down the street as hard as he could run, dodging as he went the flying club the policeman had hurled. When the tempest had calmed I stepped up to the officer and said, “Officer, what did the Italian do?” “Do?” said he with supreme disgust, “he was a Dago.” Evidently the sole crime of the Italian consisted in being a “Dago,” a foreigner.

To some people all Italians are either Dagos, or Guineas, all Jews are Sheenies, all Chinese are Chinks and all Russians are Owskies. They are foreigners, and that is enough. Such people forget that while the language of the immigrant sounds “funny” to us, ours sounds just as strange to him. While we laugh at the pig tail and queer shoes and strange clothes of the Chinese, they follow the American in crowds through Chinese cities and make fun of his absurd dress, and call him names that are not wholly complimentary, all because he is a stranger to them.