"My experience is that our Italian American heritage today makes us distinctive, but that it is no longer degrading or handicapping.  Some people still anglicize their name to avoid seeming foreign, but we still have enough national leaders named Panetta and Giuliani, Pelosi and Pompeo, Cuomo and Garcetti to know that we are accepted as real Americans without needing to worry that we will be considered aliens or even anarchists if we do not hide behind an anglicized name."