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"My Heart Is as Black as Yours": White Backlash, Racial Identity, and Italian American Stereotypes in New York City's 1969 Mayoral Campaign
MARIA C. LIZZI
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"MY HEART IS AS black as yours!" mayoral hopeful Mario Procaccino declared to an unfriendly and largely African American crowd at a Harlem campaign rally. Most reporters and pundits responded to the conservative Democrat's claim with derision, calling it an awkward and insulting attempt at creating rapport with the African American community. The interpretation of this remark gained added significance because, in 1969, race was a key factor in all of the issues facing Procaccino and his opponents, Republican state senator John Marchi and the liberal, erstwhile Republican incumbent John V. Lindsay, who was running as a third-party candidate after losing the Republican primary. |
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Procaccino's remark appeared particularly ill-advised in light of the accusations he faced throughout the campaign. From the outset, he had established himself as a strong "law and order" candidate, a position that, as former sanitation commissioner and Lindsay supporter Samuel Kearing explained, was generally "understood to mean: Elect me and I will put the Blacks in their proper place."1 Procaccino's speeches on the subject of crime prevention, opined southern segregationist George Wallace, sounded like ones "you would hear in Alabama—except with a New York accent."2 Lindsay and his proponents, including all of the major New York newspapers with the exception of the Daily News, readily agreed and treated Procaccino's campaign as nothing more than "an indirect appeal to bigotry," in Lindsay's words. Consequently, they easily branded both Procaccino and his supporters as "racist" and "anti-black."3 What Procaccino's opponents failed to realize was that, if the racism of white ethnics was specifically anti-black, it also resembled the interethnic resentments and hostility "white" ethnic groups had directed toward each other in urban America, particularly that which more established groups inflicted upon those they considered "interlopers." Their attitudes and action, therefore, were not based entirely on race hatred or difference, but also on the assumption that groups competed for urban resources and the belief that African Americans and other minorities should have to undergo the same trials that they had faced in order to gain certain "privileges." Unfortunately, in believing this, white ethnics interpreted their own experience with ethnic bigotry and social struggle as equal to the racism faced daily by those who could not externally assimilate to whiteness.4 |
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Identifying Procaccino's supporters, mostly working-class and lower-middle-class white residents of the outer boroughs (The Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond [Staten Island]), as "white backlash" racists allowed Lindsay to dismiss their concerns about race and related issues. Although they often displayed racist behavior and used racist language, these New Yorkers also expressed very real concern about issues such as school and community integration, job security, and crime. They bore a striking similarity to the "Middle Americans" who had helped elect Richard Nixon the year before—Americans who had, as they saw it, worked hard to overcome heavy odds to gain access to some of the benefits of American society.5 They were angry, as Mario Procaccino said, because "they had tried to play the game by the rules, but ended up getting pushed into a corner." In Procaccino, the son of a shoemaker who had risen through the ranks of the Democratic Party to become city comptroller, they discovered, as Procaccino proudly proclaimed, a "little guy for the little guy."6 |
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