Paper Whiteness: The Italian Press and the Racialization of Identity in the U.S. South
Dickinson College, 10 November 2025
Matteo Brera’s lecture examined how Italian-language newspapers published in Louisiana and Alabama between the late nineteenth century and World War II shaped the racial positioning of Italian immigrants in the Jim Crow South. Drawing on the archival corpus preserved and digitized through the DaShoW project (A Darker Shade of Whiteness), he showed how editors and educators used journalism, schooling, and civic associations to negotiate Italians’ ambiguous status – neither Black nor fully white – and to recast their identity as respectable, disciplined, and “American.”
Through readings of selected articles from Il Monitore del Sud, Il Gladiatore, the American Citizen, L’Italo-Americano and La Voce Coloniale, Dr Brera’s lecture illustrated how ideals of literacy, cultural refinement, and moral uplift became instruments of “paper whiteness,” transforming education into a racial marker. Particular attention was devoted to figures such as Frank Loria and the Dante Alighieri Society, whose educational programs in New Orleans aligned humanistic culture with civic virtue and, ultimately, with whiteness. During the talk, Brera also presented the DaShoW online archive and its digital tools, offering students and faculty a guided overview of the platform, its searchable newspaper repository, and its interactive public-history resources.
The lecture concluded by underscoring the importance of archival recovery. The fragile periodicals digitized by DaShoW reveal how racial thinking was printed, circulated, and taught, offering both a window onto Italian American history and a reflection on how cultural institutions shape inclusion and exclusion. Archival work, Brera argued, is indispensable not only for reconstructing the past but also for understanding the historical roots of contemporary debates on race, education, and belonging.
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