This morning I received a new phone call by Valentina Furlanetto of Radio 24, which once again whished to interview me as an afro Italian writer, or migrant, second-generation and, just this morning, coloured author. This time the journalist asked me if, in my view, Italian “black” children and adolescents may have some benefit by the Obama’s election, finally having a positive myth in which recognize...
I already imagine the enthusiastic comments: "Cool, finally a black super hero!"
Firstly: but what can I do to say that I refuse these racist labels?!
Second, I want to write it here: children and adolescents, all of us in this country can have a benefit only if we start to stop giving so much attention to skin colour.
Our “estimated” Berlusconi, with his proverbial elegance, was the only leader in the world to point out Obama’s colour (calling him “abbronzato”, suntanned) and, perhaps, it is not a coincidence.
For this reason, I say especially to the so-called “migrant” writers to start leaving this soft form of racism.
On the other hand, in my modest opinion, when other people called migrants die on ships or in the sea, live like slaves in a CPT or are "lucky" to survive the journey and find exhausting works, we have to finish using this word to go around and give interviews, lectures and "lessons", telling what is the life of a stranger in Italy…
About me, I am not an afro Italian storyteller, I am not a black author and I am not a migrant writer.
I just write and tell stories.