Mario Cuomo, the son of Italian immigrants in Queens who supporters said could have sat in the Oval Office or the Supreme Court, spent years wrestling what he called the stereotype of Italian-Americans as gangsters and thugs.
When a mob boss was shot and killed in Manhattan in 1985, Mr. Cuomo — then in the first of his three terms as New York’s governor — urged reporters not to use the word “mafia” in describing the crime.
To make his point, Mr. Cuomo invoked a movie he said helped perpetuate that stereotype.
“The conservatives who attack me,” Mr. Cuomo said at the time, “they want to write a piece that’s negative, it almost always mentions ‘The Godfather,’ always mentions ethnicity.” “Mafia,” he added, was “an Italian word, and every time you say it, you suggest to people that organized crime is Italian — it’s an ugly stereotype.”
