This is meant as a question and not to start a debate or a controversy.
I read the novel many times and all throughout i get the impression that Puzo was promoting the Sicilian culture. And to praise the Sicilians, he gave examples of other races or nationality not being their equal in busninesses or statemanship matters. e.g the negroes in Harlem not being able to run things, Jack Woltz not being very smart despite being a movie mogul, Tom Hagen having flaws as a consiglire despite being raised by the Don fo 3/4 of his life etc.

In the book, Mario Puzo praised the Sicilian a lot and especially for their cunning. And he even went one step further as to write that "Tom Hagen only fault as a Consigliere was that he wasn't a Sicilian". Doesn't this imply that one way or the other that Sicilians are superior than the other ethnic groups? Or that being Siclian would automatically make you smart and give you what it takes to run an empire of organized crime?(I know, Fredo is the exception to the rule but still... )

So by definition, couldn't that kind of thinking considered racism? After all, the dictionnary defines racism as: The belief that one race is superior than another. And we are conviced that the the Sicilian are better.

I am curious to hear your thoughts

It wasn't so much Puzo as it was that was the sicilian way. Like Al Neri's way of thinking was that black people did nothing but do drugs and pimp women, which ofcourse is not true. But Puzo did not think that way.

Puzo's characters express contempt for gay men as well as for blacks. Those attitudes were common during the 1940s and 1950s. By including this in the novel, Puzo not only added another dimension to the Sicilians' jingoism, but kept the setting authentic. Could you imagine a novel like Fannie Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes," set in the 1930s American South, without at least some racist characters?

And lets remember that The Godfather was written over 30 years ago, long before this current PC era of bending over backwards worrying about what is & isn't 'racist'.

Whenever I watch the meeting called by Vito after Santino is killed & the narcotics deal is made, where Zaluchi forbids it being near schools but ok's selling drugs to the blacks, ("In my city, we would keep the traffic in the dark people -- the colored. They're animals anyway, so let them lose their souls...")...I wonder if that line would EVER make it onto the screen today.

Apple

Good question. Huckleberry Finn still draws heat over its language. That's a shame because it's one of the most anti-racist novels in American literature.

What about Frankie P using the words ****** and ***** ....

@ African Americans

to the above post.

Puzo was first and foremost a wonderful story-teller. In telling stories about Sicilians--both in their native land and in America--Puzo was reflecting his own observation that Sicilians, so often invaded, brutalized and downtrodden, had to be more clever and cunning than other people in order to survive. And yes, there were plenty of racist remarks and observations in the novel (and the film), but there I think Puzo was accurately reflecting the racism of Mob guys, who look down on eveyone in general, African-Americans in particular. The irony is that Italian-Americans probably have suffered more from bigotry than any other group of white Christians. Puzo noted in the novel that even Don Corleone bore stoically the mockery and bigotry he suffered in his early years, when he worked in the railroad yards.

Well, here's my 2 cents on this topic. I think Puzo (as someone said) was reflecting the thinking of the old timers. Also to my understanding non Italians could never be "made men" in the Italian American Mafia. which explains why Tom Hagen's biggest "fault" was that he wasn't Italian.

Hi,
It added to the authenticity of the book/movie. It wasn't only the African-Americans or Spanish that were slurred. There were a few comments about the Jews made in the movies.

GF2 Pentangeli:You give your loyalty to a Jew before your own kind.

GF1:Vito:Give it to the Jew congressman in the Bronx.

What she is saying is that they are referred to as African American, not black. We shouldn't be called by differen't group names. We are all one thing: PEOPLE

Sorry, that was pretty corny, but it's true.

Sure, they were racist, what difference does it make really? African -Americans are racist and Jews are racist too. I hate it when people get on a board that they clearly know what the subject or whatever is about and start whining about race.

The novel and film merely reflects the attitudes and views people had at the time. This was long before the age of political correctness.
To kow-tow to the liberals would render both the book and film unrealistic and less believable.

People from just about every country consider themselves superior, or at least the older generations did.
But Vito uses the term "Sicilian" for someone cunning and clever enough with the balls to stay in the mafia business, and usually those people were mostly only Sicilians since the mafia was from Sicily.
And anyways, about the anti Afroism, well today people continually disgrace gays, by calling something that they don't like "gay" and using the word ****** as an insult.
50 years from now jaws will be dropping, when they listen to music that slams gays.

well there could also be music of "gays" slamming "straight" people, i saw something about a year ago, it was a "gay MC" and laughed , and thought that Rap music was bad enough as it was. To each his own.

Guineapig.