The only black person in the room: the truth about racism in Italy

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What makes a person of color Italian is an issue that is approached in two different ways: the racist approach and the anti-racist approach on the part of progressives. The unconscious racism often denounced by the latter is to take this opinion with tweezers a minor evil. What is unconscious racism? It’s a question like the one I’m often asked: Have you ever thought about going back to Sri Lanka?

I am, like many children of immigrants, a person with a fairly stable life in Italy. Of course, I don’t know how my life will be ten years from now, so I can’t completely rule out the possibility that one day I might migrate elsewhere. But it is reasonable to assume that I will always stay in the West. Yet this is a frequent question, one in a series of other questions that Italians of color are often asked.

How come you speak Italian so well? How do you say dad in your language? Are your parents cleaners? The kind of phrases that range from poorly expressed compliments to stereotypes and provocations. We all perceive them as microaggressions.

But I’m sure the dishwasher who got beaten up after work because he’s a nigger “doesn’t care that your neighbor tells you you speak Italian very well. The problem for the graduate who can’t teach because he does not have the nationality, although he has lived in Genoa since he was two years old, he is not asked if he is Italian, the problem is that he is not yet Italian.

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Pointing out unintentional racism is like putting a pool under a leaky ceiling when the roof has already rotted. By “lesser evil”, I do not mean “marginal”, but it is not the original evil. The involuntary racist is usually someone who leads an almost one-color life. His friends are white, as are his colleagues, and the same can be said of his family; he rarely interacts with people of color, and when he does, he does so on a very superficial level.

The unwitting racist has no idea what racism is. Because it’s racist, you say. Yes, sure, but in a way very similar to your black friend who says he would only date a woman of African descent if she has fair skin. I think this type of racism is in a way comparable to the problem of colorism in ethnic communities: it is internalized, sometimes made up of involuntary actions and languages.

You will agree with me that there is a gulf between someone who says there are no black Italians and someone who posts a photo of a white volunteer in an orphanage Indian, echoing the stereotype known in English as the white savior. When Silvia Romano [an Italian aid worker kidnapped in Kenya 2018] was published, among the photos published in the newspapers I was impressed by the one in which she was surrounded by a crowd of African children. Should we say that Silvia Romano is racist?

I think that whoever finds himself committing unintentional racism is in turn a victim of history, a victim of the mental structures that are the result of centuries of inequality between whites and blacks. I am not saying that it should be tolerated, I am saying that we should refrain from pointing fingers and helping to dismantle these mental structures, because even the most anti-racist among us is not at it. shelter.

What makes you Italian?

White people have never had to think about what it means, in terms of power, to be white. They have always considered their experiences to be universal. This is a common argument among black intellectuals in English speaking countries. In Italy, white people have never thought, over the years, what it means to be Italian. They always assumed that being Italian meant being white Caucasians like them. They are convinced that their idea of ​​universal Italianness is correct because this combination of skin color and nationality is normal.

Yet the concept of Italianity cannot be firm, immutable and fixed, it has already changed, it is still changing.

What makes you Italian? Skin color is one element that fades very easily in predictable and, I would say, old-fashioned responses.

“For me, being Italian means embracing the values ​​of Christianity.

It means eating and loving the food that we are famous for around the world.

A true Italian stays true to his condition.

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