Toward a relational theorization of racisms

ABSTRACT

As the title of Ann Morning and Marcello Maneri's new book implies, in Italy razza is commonly regarded as an “ugly word”. And while much has certainly shifted in the last decade – particularly in the realms of scholarship and cultural politics, and largely thanks to the steadfast efforts of Black Italian scholars, activists and culture workers – everyday white Italians still commonly express reservation about explicit discussions of race, even in the midst of an undeniable resurgence of racial nationalism and racist violence across Italy. As such, Morning and Maneri's book makes a much-needed intervention into the ongoing dilemma of “race-talk” in the Italian context.

KEYWORDS:

• Racism
• Italy
• Black European studies
• Blackness
• comparative race studies
• Cultural Racism

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2023.2234775)

Notes

1 Here, it should be noted that Morning and Maneri explicitly draw on Paola Tabet's La Pelle Giusta (1997), a groundbreaking work in the field of Italian race-critical studies that drew on interviews with young schoolchildren to study the reproduction of racist attitudes in Italian society (see Morning and Maneri 2022, 26). This text is woefully under-cited in the growing literature on Italian racism, and it was wonderful to see it featured so prominently in An Ugly Word.

2 The word “race” appears in the first section of Article 3 of the Italian constitution: “All citizens have equal social dignity and are equal before the law, without distinction of sex, race, language, religion, political opinion, personal and social conditions” (see Milcia and Giuliani 2016).