Dr. Tom Ferraro, the marvelous commentator for Blank Slate Media, last week highlighted that there are 319,602 Italian-Americans in Nassau County. In the 2000 Census, there were 408,572 in Suffolk. Our two suburban counties ranked among the highest population percentage of Italian-Americans in the U.S.  (Suffolk was 2nd with 28.8), and Nassau was 7th (23.9).

I grew up in an immigrant household and have been privileged to teach immigration history. I am keenly aware of the challenges for categorizing any ethnic group. The book I co-edited 30 years ago had the subtitle: “Salad Bowl or Melting Pot?”  My North Shore co-author, Josef Sirefman, and I focused on the spectrum experienced by all immigrants: ethnicity (staying primarily in their own ghettoes); acculturation (blending American culture with their ethnic inheritance); and assimilation (becoming primarily “Americanized”).