Justice Alito Criticizes ‘Sopranos’ Stereotypes
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. criticized The Sopranos television show yesterday for stereotyping Italian-Americans and his home state of New Jersey.
In a talk at Rutgers University, Alito complained of “an insidious connection popular culture often makes between being a gangster and being Italian,” the Trenton Times reports.
As examples, he cited The Godfather movies that connect Italian food with being a gangster and The Sopranos TV show, formerly on HBO, linking New Jersey to the Mafia. He also referred to pizza restaurants, such as Little Caesar’s or Capone’s, that are named for gangsters or movies about them.
Before joining the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006 and moving to Virginia, Alito had lived for almost 20 years in a New Jersey neighborhood in the same area where Sopranos character Tony Soprano lived.
“You have a trifecta—gangsters, Italian-Americans, New Jersey—wedded in the popular American imagination,” he said, according to a report in the Associated Press.
Alito said the true stories of immigrants need to be heard. Alito’s grandparents came to the country from Italy and kept their Italian-American ways of living. Alito’s father, Samuel Alito Sr., was part of “the transitional generation.”
Discrimination made it difficult for Alito’s father to land a first job after graduating from Trenton State Teacher’s College. When Alito Sr. was asked for his ethnicity on forms, he always put down American.
“He had earned through hard work the right to be called simply an American, period, not any type of hyphenated American,” Alito said.
