Some thoughts while reading David R. Rodediger's book Working Toward Whiteness

 I'm currently reading a book titled Working Toward Whiteness by David R. Roediger. The crux of the book is about exploring accounts and history in which European immigrants recount exploring race relations as considered both white and nonwhite by various sections of American society. The beginning discusses how hungarians, greeks slavs, polish people and Italians as some examples would often be housed with black people or Asian people and from time to time created alliances in the early part of the 20th century and late 19th century. At some point these people would be played against black or Asian people and dangled the carot of whiteness. At the point I'm at in the book it discusses theories of "White on Arrival" and how Europeans had their own views about race before coming to the United States. In discussing Sicilians Roediger writes about how Sicilians were close to Africa and had a history of interacting with Africans, so in some instances accounts describe them as not being racist when coming over. Some Sicilians actually prayed to black saints being Catholic and Italy have history with Africa. Still Italy was becoming an Imperial power in the late 1800s and then became fascist after a fascist movement. This made me recall stories of my Grandpa who was a Sicilian immigrant to the United States. He left in 1930 and didn't have entirely bad things to say about Mussolini. According to my dad's memory anyways he recalled that Mussolini was responsible for feeding poor people in Sicily when previously they had starved. At least for a time. I think it was a bit more detailed about his total thoughts about politics. Appearently he used to sleep with a gun under his pillow and would talk about freedom before he left. I was 4 years old when he died so I only know what gets passed down in stories. From what I know my grandpa spoke broken english and was not racist when he was in America raising my dad. I just know stories about them in Hollywood. My dad is basically a socialist in the sense that he supports Bernie. But I don't want to label him. So in fact my grandpa didn't pass any Mussolini loving to my dad and I probably wouldn't describe affirmitive positions regarding Mussolini to pre mussolini as definitive love at all.