You argue that the difference between stereotyping of the Italians versus stereotyping African-Americans is that Italian-American groups have been less vocal than African-Americans. I think that’s backwards. Stereotypes of blacks in America have cultural relevance. Too many people won’t hire a black person because of stereotypes of black people as criminals and drug abusers. Too many people cross the street when they see a dark face walking toward them. Those stereotypes have real consequences. In contrast, no one turns away job applicants with vowels at the ends of their names because they don’t want their business to get taken over by the mafia. People can separate the stereotype from the person in a way they can’t with blacks. The Knights of Columbus is plenty vocal in complaining about mob movies, but no one takes it seriously because no one takes those stereotypes seriously.

The NAACP is taken seriously because anti-black stereotypes (like anti-Mexican stereotypes and anto-Irish or anti-Italian stereotypes 100 years ago) have real world consequences.

You refer to being “on guard against real racism.” African-Americans face “real racism,” in a way that Italian-Americans don’t. And our analysis of portrayals of their stereotypes can’t ignore that, or we fail to guard against it.

The bulk of my post was meant to extend that analysis to Europe, which has a different cultural context, one in which Arabs and Muslims occupy a social position more like African-Americans or Mexicans in America.

I mention this in the hopes that it can be a teaching moment for each of us.

Over all we see this the same way. The controversy over these is as bogus as the controversy over “Book of Daniel” (a crappy TV show which, by portraying Jesus, got the Christian right worked up, though not enough to burn embassies), or the controversy over casting a gay man as a Christian missionary, which did provoke vague threats of arson. The response is that free speech is important, there’s no point pissing people off for the sake of pissing them off, and it’s better to be pissed off than pissed on.