Are we so racist?

Insults, bananas, and yet more insults, in words and gestures, hurled at our Minister of Integration. Such is the response that is poised to make us – sadly – notorious worldwide, so much so that two days ago CNN opened its broadcast with a report entitled: “Italy, country of bananas?” Needless to say, these repeated new “misdemeanours”, as they are dubbed by those who love to minimise them, are damaging to our international image, which is not exactly brilliant these days. Not that we always think pragmatically, but tourists of colour – and not just American ones – may think Italy is a country to stay away from.

So have we really become racists? Having browsed through blogs and social networks which offer a daily serving of insults and violent outbursts against immigrants, one would be tempted to answer, “Yes, no doubt we have.” We should remember, though, that anonymity brings out the worst in some, and that most of the time it is the frustrated, the dissatisfied, and the angry who express themselves most aggressively. Others – who, despite everything, still make up the majority – usually keep quiet.

Land of welcome and hospitality

No, we are not racist, as evidenced by the way Italians generally welcome the unfortunates who have landed on our shores. As a rule: on arrival, these boat people are greeted by individuals offering blankets, clothes, food, other help, and not uncommonly shelter.

[[Racists? No, not even in some of the main towns in the Veneto]], which, at the time of the “marshal mayors,” were fully-fledged citadels of intolerance. When we put this theory to the test, we found that it was precisely in Veneto where immigrants themselves said they were the most integrated, more than anywhere else in Italy. Racist? No, not when we consider the multi-ethnic schools, which are becoming the norm virtually everywhere, and the extraordinary work done on a daily basis by principals, teachers and often even by parents in schools across Italy.

Politicians have set a bad example

Exasperation, resentment, anger against foreigners are not, of course, feelings and behaviour unknown to Italians. Far from it. But they result mainly from an absence of control, a widespread laissez-faire attitude fueled by the uncertainty of punishment. When a North African, who runs over and kills a young girl on a pedestrian crossing before fleeing the scene, is simply put under house arrest; when Albanian burglars are back on the streets a few days after being arrested; when residents of Roma camps quietly transform neighbourhoods into dumps; when Romanian, Slavic, and Albanian pimps can put their girls on the sidewalk with total impunity – these are without doubt conditions in which the germ of racism takes root. Under such circumstances, foreigners can become scapegoats, especially when you consider that that many of them, who are unemployed, without prospects and with no place to stay, can easily turn to crime.

[[The risk of a drift towards intolerance is fuelled by laxity]], by understaffed police forces, and also – often – by unacceptable legislation. But insults also contribute to this tendency, especially when they are made by public figures in full public view, who use them in a studied manner to obtain easy applause from one side and outrage from the other – a mixture that guarantees notoriety and coverage in newspapers for people who perhaps have been out of the spotlight too long.

Racist insults are a poison, which when spread with a dangerous lack of discernment, quickly infect people who are socially and culturally susceptible: if a highly placed figure can say “orangutan”, why, they wonder, can they not be permitted in turn to give vent to their anger by saying, “gorilla, go back to the jungle and catch bananas”? And this is exactly what has happened.

Cécile Kyenge's response

"Change has already begun"

"Italy is smothered by racist voices," Italy's minister of integration, Cécile Kyenge, the first Black minister in Italian history, told Belgian daily La Libre Belgique. In an interview with the newspaper, she talks about the racist attacks she has endured since her appointment last April. On July 27, for example, bananas were hurled at her as she gave a speech in a central Italian city. On July 13, Roberto Calderoli, a vice-president of the Senate and a member of the conservative Northern League, compared her to an "orangutan".

These slurs are "a cultural fact and we have do everything possible to implement a real cultural change in Italy," explains Kyenge. Born in the Congo, the 48-year old minister came to Italy at the age of 19. She says that this "change has already begun".

“Italians are not more racist than other people," she says, "Italy is just, for the moment, smothered by certain voices that, unfortunately, howl more loudly than others." Adding that Italy does not need to copy another model of integration, Kyenge remarks that in the past the country has “known the suffering of emigration and, today, its experience of immigration is not comparable to that of France or of another country."