I wonder why!

I keep hearing people use this as an analogy to anti-muslim/arab sentiment, and I don’t think they realize that they’re needlessly shooting themselves in the foot. The most law enforcement officers to die in a single attack before 9/11, by *far*, was when Italian anarchists blew a police station to hell (unlucky accident - they were aiming for a less-crowded *church*!).

The fact that kids in school have to learn ad nauseam about Sacco and Vanzetti, and yet no one ever mentions (say) the Wall Street bombing of the same year, is simply nuts.

I’m not saying that prejudice against Italians was “justified” in some metaphysical sense; they’re a plenty successful immigrant group these days. I’m just saying that you wouldn’t have to be a crazy racist to want to stay out of Little Italy at night, or tell a policeman if you saw a Sicilian-looking guy leave his bag on a train seat.

This is all a little tangential to your point, maybe. I guess I’m just sick of seeing references to anti-Italian prejudice in United States history tossed around as if it was a persuasive historical analogy to present situations. There are better ones!

Allow me to disagree. While there are many other immigrant groups that have achieved success afterwards, many of them fall under the “model minority” umbrella. Italians are a useful example because of this objectively existing violent sub-culture. The sentiment was that, remember, while this country is one of opportunity, these guys are the exception, they are uniquely bad, they are inherently criminals incompatible with our polite society, and if we keep allowing them then our civilzation will just drown in crime over time.

The most law enforcement officers to die

I don’t agree with this criterion due to the fact that most terrorists simply didn’t target police stations with intent to kill a lot of police, which includes this one.