After World War II, awareness around the Sardinian language and the danger of its slipping away did not seem to concern the Sardinian elites and entered the political spaces much later than in other European peripheries marked by the long-standing presence of ethno-linguistic minorities; Sardinian was in fact dismissed by the already Italianized middle class, as both the Sardinian language and culture were still being held responsible for the island's underdevelopment. The Sardinian ruling class, drawn to the Italian modernist stance on Sardinia's path to development, believed in fact that the latter had been held back by the islanders' "traditional practices", and that social and cultural progress could only be brought about through their rejection. Consequently, the Sardinians have been encouraged to Italianize and thus part with what they believed to be negatively marking their affiliation with a stigmatized identity.