Walk through, say, Boston's North End. It's like walking into Italy. There are old men sitting in front of cafés muttering in Italian about the way the young folk dress. There are fresh pizzas and sandwiches with their smells wafting through the air. The streets are narrow, mostly pedestrian, and cobbled, with few cars coming and going. And, yes, if you go into a deli in the North End, you can buy cured meats with Italian names.
This is not a wealthy neighborhood. There was a period of time in the past when Italian-Americans were the subject of quite a bit of prejudice and stereotyping. It's news to me that Italian culture is somehow "completely illegible" to the poor, and I can't help but feel that whatever point the author wanted to make is lost or perhaps flawed.
(Somebody will say that the North End is uniquely Italian. Sure, but I grew up on the West Coast and learned about Italian sandwiches from an Italian sandwich shop anyway, because Italian sandwiches are not somehow confined to a tiny corner of Boston. Again, what the utter fuck.)