Many of you may have heard of the recent riots in Rosarno, Italy. Tensions between African immigrants and the Calabrian locals came to a head when two local farm hands were maliciously shot at with air rifles. The victims’ peers fought back, the Italian police retaliated, and the rest is riot history. Over a thousand immigrants have been evacuated, and some face deportation.
The story of Italy’s racism did not begin with field workers and a couple of young xenophobes in Rosarno. Matteo Fraschini Koffi, a freelance writer based in Kenya, recently published an article on allafrica.com about the racism in Italy, his former home. Published in December of 2009, less than a month before the riot, the article reads like a list of crimes committed against the peoples of Africa: A Ghanaian boy tortured. A man from Burkina Faso beaten to death by a local businessman and his son. A black actor assaulted on the street. A man beaten brutally in front of his daughter. While America is only now realizing that this crisis exists, it may already be a way of life for African-Italians.
Maybe.
Shortly after BBC, the Vatican, and NPR admonished southern Italians for their obvious hatred of immigrants, a silent protest blossomed from the streets of Rosarno. Banners hoisted by both Italian natives and African immigrants read “Abandoned by the state, criminalised by the mass media, 20 years living together is not racism!”
So, despite multiple riots, (some against the Camorra Mafia, for blatant exploitation of immigrants) and shouts from evacuated farm workers of “I want to go back to Africa. Italy is too bloody!” what are we to think? Is this a huge step backwards for humanity, or a skirmish blown out of proportion? And why, oh why do we only hear about this sort of racism when it’s too late to resolve the issue?
I can’t help drawing parallels to Southern California. After all of this time, the racism is still simmering. Even if we embrace the cuisine, the music and the cheap labor, we wrinkle our noses at the communal housing, the heavy accents… and, ironically, the lack of available jobs. Maybe Americans don’t have a right to criticize Italy… yet.
What are your thoughts on the matter?
