Undercurrents of racism in Italy

Abstract

Modern racism is commonly supposed to have been "invented" in Europe. Yet Europeans are prone to cycles of forgetfulness, and in their recent reawakening have declined to "invent" new theories of racism and instead borrow social models and explanations from the United States. The Italian experience of the resurgence of "racial" prejudice points up the need to de? velop an understanding of the contingent nature of the phenomenon, and the way it builds on Europe's traditional cultural sedimentation of racism. Europeans tend to deploy the term "racism" to cover a range of dispa? rate attitudes and behaviors towards social groups stereotypically identified as "different," and "inferior." In their recent discussions of "racism," European social scientists ponder the resurgence of anti-Semitism, anti-"black" attitudes aimed at extra-European immigrants, and ethnic prejudice arising from ethnic separatism and the search for ethnic identity. They view these three types as symptomatic of a poorly defined but perceptible resurgence of racism, even if the actual participants fail to see any connection among them. In Italy today, as in Germany, we are more likely to find "racism" under the guise of anti-"black" prejudice against immigrants unified by their being poor laborers from outside the European Community, rather than by the color of their skin. In France, it may be that "white" Muslims are the target of "racial" prejudice equally with the "black" immigrants from the Maghreb. Yet the prejudices arise in a Europe in which no nega? tive stereotype, no fear of the "other" ever died, be it of the Mongol, or the Gypsy, the Black or the Jew. The stereotypes persist even when the original group is absent, so that there may be anti-Semitism without Jews, or anti-black prejudice by people who have never seen a black person. The newest waves of immigrants have attracted the stereotypical identification and discrimination previously directed against "different" groups.