The ostensible premise of The Godfather, the film version of which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, is that American society is so prejudiced against Italians that extraordinary men such as Vito and Michael Corleone have no choice but to turn to crime. In a way, then, author Mario Puzo was a kind of goombah Ibram X. Kendi, director Francis Ford Coppola the dago Ava DuVernay, and The Godfather the guinea 12 Years a Slave.

If you doubt my claim, consider two scenes. In the first, Michael, back from hiding in Sicily, finally decides to get married (again) and so tracks down his college girlfriend. Kay, the daughter of Yankee protestants (including a minister), has long known the real nature of the Corleone “family business” but had been willing to overlook it because Michael seemed to reject that life for himself. But after the shooting of Sollozzo and McCluskey, Kay knows that Michael has entered that world forever. (In the film, her realization is implied when she visits the Corleone compound and speaks with Tom; in the book, it’s made explicit when, on the same visit, she speaks with Mama.)

To convince Kay to marry him—the word “woo” hardly captures his cold approach—Michael must rationalize his family’s activities …

In the second scene, a wistful Don Vito laments to Michael that his son was, in effect, forced into the mafia.

Note, first, that the don presents his own, and Michael’s, dilemma as a choice between starving his family or a life of crime. This is hokum. And it is immediately belied by the don’s sorrow that his youngest son couldn’t become a governor or a senator. What about a middle-class life practicing an honest trade? The idea isn’t even contemplated, for himself or his sons.

Note, too, that Sonny, the eldest brother, “had to” become a Mafioso. Why? This isn’t explained, beyond the hoary cliché to “take care” of the family. But the Corleones are richer than the dreams of avarice. “Need” stopped being a motivating principle for them well before 1920, with the first shipments of Corleone-financed Canadian booze to Corleone-controlled speakeasies all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. And why, in the end, did Michael have to follow his father’s and brothers’ footsteps? He didn’t. The central tragedy of the film is that he chooses to, ostensibly to save his father—this is what he tells himself—but really because he enjoys power.