Heritage

I was re-watching The Sopranos lately. In the episode "Christopher," there's this peculiar scene where they are talking about how some natives were protesting against a statue of Columbus, and the crew got revolted because they felt like that was basically "Anti-Italian sentiment." Furio agreed but proceeded to say that he wasn't really fond of Columbus because he was Northern Italian, saying that Northern Italians usually view Southern Italians as subhumans and always have their noses up in the sky. Which is true in a way, quoting a friend of mine who is a Brazilian of Southern Italian heritage and currently lives in Northern Italy: "Those Southerners are all criminal scum." Oh, such are the nuances of ignorance, comical.

That was really interesting to see. Furio saying and showing that information about Italy, because most Italian Americans, especially newer generations, identify themselves as Italians but don't know much about the culture that they "mirror" themselves so much on. This is not exclusive to them, too. Irish Americans, African Americans, Korean Americans, Japanese Americans, and the list goes on and on. That's quite funny to me, you see (having Italian ancestry myself) I think it's sad to not know your heritage and let it fade away. However, I honestly think the pretentious nature of classifying yourself as something you aren't and not even trying to learn more about it is quite hypocritical.