("Houses and jobs for residents first" and "Stop Immigrants")
For the months leading up to the elections, there have been posters slapped all over town, new ones posted over the old ones every day until there were layers and layers of them, so thick that they started to peel off their base. The ones I found the most repugnant were the Lega Nord posters, and not just because I find their political ideology to be xenophobic, homophobic, and racist, though that was a big part of it. The main reason why I found the posters themselves creepy was that they never displayed the name of a candidate in the city, they always said either VOTE or some polemical statement like STOP IMMIGRANTS. At most, they said the name of Lega Nord's leader and backbone, Umberto Bossi.
Why, I wonder, don't they put up the name of their candidates? Every single other party does it, from right to left. The fact that the Lega doesn't makes them seem both completely tied to their leader, Bossi, and incredibly secretive, a society that wants to be known and unknown. They play on old fears of the Other and on campanilismo in a boldface manner that has to be seen to be believed. One poster literally says that what happened to the Native Americans will soon happen to Italians, and another says that keeping Italy unified is the equivalent of Apartheid. And they are arguably the most powerful political party in Italy.
Still, I can badmouth the Lega all I want, but I don't feel that this is just another instance of those racist Italians shunning political correctness. I see it happening from a distance also in the United States and in northern Europe, where racism seems to be creeping into even the most unlikely places. No one is immune.
I've had two conversations on the subject recently too, one with a barista at one of my favorite cafès and the other by chance with my students.
I was drinking a coffee a week ago when this chatty barista came over to talk to me. He likes me because I'm American and I speak English (even though we speak Italian, I think people like to know that if they felt brave enough they could switch to English to practice, if only they felt like it), and now he can't let me leave without starting up a conversation. This time he asked me if I were staying in Italy forevermore. I don't think so, I said. For many reasons, but also because I don't think I can find a job that will get me a work visa. He looked at me, shocked, and said, "You need a visa? But you're American?" I said, well yes, but I'm not a European citizen, so I don't get a free pass. I am extracomunitaria. He said, "Well there should be some sort of deal between the United States and Italy. You came here to work, not like a Moroccan who comes here to steal!" With that I snapped my mouth shut and stared at him, but I didn't have the courage to reply. Of course in the next five minutes my mind was flooded with things I could have said and should have said, like the fact that the average Moroccan immigrant probably works three times as much and as hard as I do, that the fact that I was white and from a rich country didn't mean I should be treated differently. But of course I didn't say these things, instead I left the cafè and haven't gone back.
Then today in my first year class, I asked the students to practice the conditional by saying what they would do if they ruled the world. For example, one boy said, if I were president, I would fight corruption. Another boy asked me to come to his desk to help him. He asked, "Come si dice mandar via la gente?"
"Send away. But send away who?"
"Lampedusa!" he replied, referring to the Italian island between Sicily and Tunisia that has been inundated with immigrants and refugees from the fighting in northern Africa.
"You can't send away a place," I said.
"Gli extracomunitari! The immigrants!"
I pulled a face of shock and offense. "Me?! You want to send away me?!"
The kids all erupted in laughter, and the boy's deskmate said, in Italian, "Don't listen to him prof! He's a racist! He's a racist!"
I stormed away in mock disgust, listening to them recounting the story to their companions, still laughing. "The prof is extracomunitaria too! He wants to send her away!"
Italians never think of me as an immigrant because I am white and blonde, and for sure I don't suffer the way other immigrants do. But I try to remind them that I am an immigrant, that immigrants come from all over and for all sorts of reasons, often just for work and money, which is what one needs nowadays for a better life. We're not some sort of mass invasion, ready to steal your jobs, rape your women, and murder your children. We're all human beings navigating a new and strange situation together, and it's not going to just evaporate.
Sorry for the seriousness. I'll get off the pedestal tomorrow.
