As far as people in the ‘Old Continent’ are concerned, part of the narrative behind the U.S. election campaign is about how an Obama victory is likely to trigger a sea change in the the way Europeans address the race issue – and perhaps more importantly – its burgeoning immigrant population.
For Italy’s La Stampa, Barbara Spinelli writes in part:
“What happens in the U.S. on November 4 is all-important. If Barack Obama were to win, many things would change in those European countries which are tempted to close themselves off to foreigners, not only in the realm of politics but in terms of the habits and conversations of average citizens. The debate about the mixing of cultures will inevitably incorporate the shock from across the Atlantic. … Isolating classes of foreign children or segregating Gypsies are emotional reactions that are not only dangerous, they are futile. … The speech on race that Obama gave in Philadelphia on March 18 was decisive for Italy.”
By Barbara Spinelli
Translated By Enrico Del Sero
October 19, 2008
Italian – La Stampa – Original Article (Italian)
This isn’t the first time the Italian people have questioned themselves about their defects and how cloistered they are, yet have remained convinced they are good-natured, innocent and open to outsiders. Innocents are often attracted by evil — the kind that runs contrary to their own virtue — perhaps due to some ill they may have suffered in the past. By not recognizing such evils within themselves, they know not of them. These are the evils which are succeeding today — and escalating due to xenophobia and violence. After Romano Prodi’s government fell [Jan. 24 ], these vices expanded, not only because of a proposed law to fingerprint Gypsies or criminalize those living underground [the undocumented] — but because when the Prodi government fell, a whole set of inhibitions and taboos suddenly vanished. [Prodi led a center-left, somewhat immigrant-friendly government].
The desire to create separate classes for immigrant children who haven’t mastered Italian, which has been proposed by the Northern League [Lega Nord ], has emerged out of this already convoluted climate. As Rachel Donadio put it on The New York Times, xenophobia is particularly strong in Italy, “a country that has only recently transformed itself from a nation of emigrants into a prime destination for immigrants .” Discussing integration in a reasonable fashion becomes difficult when making multiculturalism a fact ceases to be possible — and the heavens of ideology slam into the floor of reality. Racism is a strange beast — it may thrive in the abstract (as in the case of anti-Semitism against the few Jews in East Europe and Asia) or be spread despite the very small number of people who fuel it (as in the case of racism with the few racists in America).
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