Italy’s first black Cabinet minister, targeted by racist slurs following her appointment last week, said on Friday that Italians are not racist, but that some are merely ignorant of other cultures and the “richness” that immigration can bring.
Italian Minister of Integration Cecile Kyenge, a surgeon born in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), held a news conference to introduce herself to Italians so they could get to know her.
“I am not ‘colored.’ I am black. It’s important to say that. I emphasize it proudly,” she said.
Kyenge’s appointment had been hailed as a big step for Italy, which has only recently had to cope with waves of immigration and the resulting problems of integration into a largely homogeneous society.
However, the move prompted racist taunts from xenophobic politicians and members of neo-fascist Internet groups — a reaction so vile the government authorized its anti-discrimination office to investigate. (One European parliamentarian from the anti-immigrant Northern League party called her a member of a “bongo bongo government.”)
One of her chief defenders, Italian Chamber of Deputies President Laura Boldrini, the lower house speaker, told La Repubblica in an interview posted on its Web site on Friday that she herself has been the target of death threats, which began after she stated publicly that Italy’s laws about inciting racial hatred on the Internet should be tightened.
Boldrini showed the newspaper hundreds of printed pages containing the threats that she said showed “sexist aggression” against her personally, and women in public office in general, ranging from the innocuous to the violent.
“I am not afraid to open a battle front, if necessary,” Boldrini was quoted as saying. “Will we give visibility to a group of fanatics? Yes, it’s true, but they are not a few, there are thousands and thousands. They are growing every day and they constitute a part of the country that we cannot ignore.”
Kyenge, in her comments, thanked her defenders, but refrained from lashing out at her detractors. She stressed that Italy has a long tradition of welcoming foreigners and that tradition must be appreciated anew and applied in daily life.
“In reality, Italy isn’t a racist country,” she told reporters.
The problem, she said, is ignorance of the “other.”
“We need to knock down these walls: Until you know the other, skepticism grows, discrimination grows,” she said. “At this point, what is identified as racism has at its base not knowing other cultures. Because in reality, immigration is a richness. Diversity is a resource.”
Kyenge, 48, was born in the DR Congo and moved to Italy three decades ago to study medicine. An eye surgeon, she lives in Modena with her Italian husband and two children. She was active in local center-left politics before winning a seat in the lower Chamber of Deputies in February elections, and Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta brought her into his coalition government last week.
“We hope she will start a new era for Italy, let’s hope,” said Kaius Ikejezie, a Nigerian shopping at Rome’s Piazza Vittorio market on Friday.
Kyenge has said her priority would be to work to make it easier for children born in Italy to immigrant parents to obtain Italian citizenship. Currently, such children can only apply when they are 18.
“We have people who are born and raised in Italy who don’t have an identity,” she said. “They don’t feel Italian and they don’t feel that they belong to their parents’ homeland. We need to start from here.”
She offered her own experience as an example of the discrimination that confronts non-Italians living here legally and able to contribute to society: Despite having finished at the top of her class in medical school, Kyenge said she could not get work in an Italian hospital for two years because she was not a citizen.
“I have always fought against any form of discrimination and racism,” she said.
However, she said she is also realistic about the limitations of her office, the requirements for a “cultural change” and the precariousness of a government made up of longtime political rivals.
“It could be that today I leave the ministry unable to get any results,” she said. “But I have to be able to put in place a basis for all those changes that are so longed-for, for all those dreams.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese