During WWII, U.S. Saw Italian-Americans as a Threat to Homeland Security
&gt; By the 1920s, pseudo-scientists and polemicists in the 1920s popularized the notion that Italians were a separate race from Anglo-Americans.<p>These scientists were &#x27;pseudo&#x27; only in retrospect.  It literally took a world war to knock eugenicists out of the mainstream.<p>As we pat ourselves on the back today for being so rational and enlightened, we would do well to remember episodes like that and restore some sense of humility.  The progressives of that era considered themselves no less enlightened and rational than we do ourselves.