From Dallas Morning News (Texas)
by Steve Blow
My father-in-law, God rest him, was Italian-American. And Louis Territo could not have looked more Italian in a stereotypical kind of way — from the olive skin to the “Roman nose” to the pencil-thin mustache.
My mother-in-law, who will be 97 next week, bless her, shares my heritage. We’re pure-dee East Texan — a dash of this and a dollop of that, adding up to what might be called “generic white.”
It’s hard to imagine now, but Maurine faced considerable backlash when she and Louis married. In the eyes of many, she had married “outside her race.”
And it grew most intense when World War II came along and Italy was on the wrong side. The phone would ring late at night. Callers would hurl anonymous slurs and threats. Some would berate her for sleeping with the enemy.
The irony was that Louis was trying desperately to go and fight for his country — his real country, not that of his grandparents.
But Louis had lost an eye in a childhood accident. His artificial eye was virtually undetectable — until it came time to take the vision test at a recruiting office.
He pestered the Army recruiters in Corsicana until they finally slipped him in, though never for combat duty. He served his country by cooking a million meals at Fort Hood — and then again when called back into duty during the Korean War.
All this was rarely mentioned in the family — never by Louis, only occasionally by Maurine. But it has been on my mind a lot lately.
It’s a terrible thing when we make enemies of those who aren’t.
The prejudice against Italian-Americans and German-Americans during World War II is little remembered these days. We do still carry a sense of shame for the even worse treatment of Japanese-Americans.
And there ought to be some shame around the spectacle that has played out in Irving in recent weeks.
No matter how innocently they try to spin it, backers of an anti-Shariah resolution are engaging in the same sort of broad-brush prejudice that we now consider historical embarrassments.
Growing hostility toward Muslims has now led to increased police patrols around Irving’s mosque and Islamic center, we learned last week.
In another context, it would be comical that Irving seeks to exempt itself from foreign laws. Like that’s a problem. Do they also need a resolution saying the gravity on other planets shall not apply in Irving?
But there is nothing laughable in this situation because Irving’s action plays so perfectly into the hands of the very radicals it fears.
We know that some of the roots of radicalization are feelings of alienation from society and disrespect toward one’s culture and religion. And if I were Muslim, that would be a pretty easy takeaway from what I saw on display in Irving.
Let’s hope our Muslim neighbors are better at not judging the whole by the actions of a few. And it is worth noting that a good number of Irving residents opposed the resolution and that it passed by a bare 5-4 vote.
