Italy's New Racism

IGOR KOPELNITSKY

Rome

Emmanuel Bonsu Foster comes from Ghana. He was 13 when he settled in Italy with his parents. One sunny afternoon in late September, Foster, now 22, was sitting on a park bench in Parma waiting for his classes to begin at a nearby technical institute. Seven men--plainclothed police officers, although he didn't know that--suddenly appeared and knocked him to the ground. They beat and kicked him, beat him some more in the police car, strip-searched him at the station, taunted him with "monkey" and "negro," took Abu Ghraib-style photos of the cowering "criminal" and finally, after six hours, released him. His left eye was hemorrhaging, and he was carrying an envelope with his personal effects on which the cops had scrawled "Emmanuel Negro." It seemed Foster wasn't a pusher, after all. He was just black.

Once upon a time, this Catholic country prided itself that Italians were brava gente, good people, tolerant. No more. The right's snarling emphasis on "security" in the run-up to last April's elections (for "security," read: "protecting Italians from immigrants and Gypsies") sent a message that police have been quick to act on. Muslim immigrants should go "piss in their own mosques" was how the notorious deputy mayor of Treviso, Giancarlo Gentilini of the racist, xenophobic Northern League, put it. When Minister for Reforms Umberto Bossi remarked that Italians don't want "the Bingo Bongos" living here, the barroom racism of the third Berlusconi government was official.

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