[The
Times, U.K.]
La Stampa, Italy
Obama Victory May
Create 'Perfect Storm' in Italy
"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 …
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).
Which is
why what happens in the United States 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.
As in the domain of global
finance, these shocks have taken on the nature of the Perfect Storm, as
recounted by writer Sebastian Junger .
This "perfect storm" is a tempest, the effects of which are maximized
by an unexpected confluence of conditions that alter not only the way people
think, but the way they behave. If Obama wins, a similar storm may unsettle our
society. For decades, intellectuals and politicians have denounced political correctness.
In the 1970s, this prevented a thorough analysis of the differences between
races and cultures -- or even denied them. This way of thinking produced a
counter-ideology no less abstract, which favors political incorrectness and
serves to justify an easy xenophobia. As it has in the world of finance, the
dominant paradigm has stumbled over reality and collapsed in regard to
relations with those who are different.
Obviously racism, like
fascism, isn't the same as it was in the past. The words and behavior have
changed. But when a conscientious politician like Giancarlo Fini
[President of the Italian Chamber of Deputies] becomes alarmed, then one had
better watch out. In fact, Fini, the founder of
National Alliance fully understands the dark side of Italian
innocence. If, as he declared at the Synagogue of Rome on October 16, “racism
and xenophobia are a kind of monster that could arise in various shapes and
sizes … in Italy we have far too many demonstrations of ignorance, fear and
aversion,” and these phenomena “may become racism if not duly confronted,” then
it should be clear to all that something is terribly wrong.
It's better to call it
xenophobia, since racism focuses only on genetic differences. But the source is
nevertheless the same: a diversity that makes people angry - and the fact that
people hide behind linguistic distinctions doesn't help. Even religion itself
can become a distraction: Journalist (capitalized because it begins a sentence
after a colon, not because it is a title worthy of capitalization) Nicholas Kristof argued that rumors about Obama being Muslim are in
fact surrogates for racial slander (The New York Times, Sept. 21 ). This isn't
the racism we confronted in the past, but there is certainly a feeling that in
1952 and again 1971, anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss described as "the
fear of a hybrid culture" (Race et histoire; Race et culture, A.
Michel, 2001). This sentiment - combined with other ingredients such as the
ignorance referred to by Mr. Fini and the global
inequality which exacerbates the migration of peoples - leads to a modern form
of racism that is often underestimated - even by liberals.
Precisely because it's
undergoing a transformation, Italy urgently needs to endow itself with
forward-thinking policies on a multicultural society. Isolating classes of
foreign children or segregating Gypsies are emotional reactions that are not
only dangerous, they are futile, as the history of many European countries
shows. As linguist Tullio De Mauro put it, “The more
heterogeneous school classes are, the better students perform. Whether with
good students or bad, it's always the same" (Corriere
della Sera, 17 October). To allow these ideas to
linger would mean accepting a hasty, brutal and uncivilized integration.
Claude Lévi
Strauss described the pitfalls of integration when it encompasses the stranger
while continuing to abhor variety: “This is a threat to civilization” and its
ability to remain intact despite change. Progress happens only, “when
coalitions of cultures are created.” Only in that case, he writes, is history
"cumulative" - such as during the Renaissance or the Neolithic era -
rather than "solitary” or “stationary.” The aversion to a “hybridization”
expressed by Marcello Pera in Corriere
della Sera on August 21, 2005, was no less a contribution
to the current storm: A synonym for “bastard,” hybridization would open the
door to “unregulated immigration,” demographic decline, and so on - alarm after
alarm.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
The discourse on race that
Obama gave in Philadelphia on March 18 
was decisive for Italy as well, as it, too, is
becoming a melting pot in which different cultures make up the nation.
Publishing house Rizzoli had a great idea when it published the speech with a
preface by Giancarlo Bosetti (On Race [Sulla
razza] 2008). You had better read this book,
because it will help you understand both the present and the future. You'll
realize that much remains to be done if we are to eliminate the prejudice of
not only Whites, but Blacks. Both are called by Obama to a “mental
revolution." Whites have to realize that now there's racism without
racists, as explained by outstanding sociologists Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Racism
without Racists, 2003) and Michael Brown, Whitewashing Race, The Myth of
a Color-Blind Society, 2005). But Black minorities, blinded by prejudice,
must also be transformed.
Senator Barack Obama delivers his now historic speech on race
in America, March 18, 2008. WATCH
The point is that
since the post-war period began, there has been a sort of progressive consensus
with respect to minorities, modeled on Israeli history and the idea that every
minority that has been oppressed or discriminated against, beginning with Black
Americans, must complete an Exodus
from slavery.
This Exodus is the new
planetary myth, and is typically combined with a rejection of the assimilation
which occurred to Jews in Europe [Jews never felt like they were accepted and
never assimilated - giving rise to political Zionism, which was founded by Hungarian Jew,
Theodore Herzl ].
Both the myth and the rejection should now be rethought: the fragmentation of
identity cannot become the model for every minority, otherwise it would create
a coalition of cultures of the type hinted at by Claude Lévi-Strauss when he
invoked a cumulative, rather than a static, history.
Posted by WORLDMEETS.US
Assimilation has to be
renamed, but again, this is our starting point. It's as if Obama had learned
from Lévi-Strauss the pitfalls of historical fossils that tend to petrify
everything they touch. When Obama said that the union created by America's
Founding Fathers was created but not completed, or when he reminds the Black
Church's Reverend Wright that “society isn’t static” but can change and
improve, he unmasks White stereotypes and the battle of Black people to escape
an identity of desperation and despair. The audacity of hope is possible only
because societies are alive and not stationary. That also applies to Italy.
The man who is xenophobic has
the passions of misery described by Spinoza :
resentment, a fear that makes the future seem empty, and an
incapacity to have hope or even desire. The man clings to these emotions
like a lifesaver after a shipwreck, convinced that life is a zero-sum game in
which one benefits only if other people lose. An Obama victory would benefit
not only the United States - and not because he's a Black or liberal candidate
- but because it would refute the standard history that dooms civilization to
stagnate and perish.
CLICK HERE FOR ITALIAN
VERSION
[Posted by
WORLDMEETS.US October 26, 11:59pm]
