The stupidity at the core of Italy’s latest racism storm

NOW it’s bananas. Two weeks ago it was orangutans. Before that it was Zulus. For weeks now, Roberto Calderoli, one of the leading figures in the Northern League, an Italian party demanding greater control on immigration, has been chucking monkey comments at Cécile Kyenge, Italy’s first black cabinet minister.

After Senator Calderoli’s first go on July 13 — ‘when I see the pictures of Kyenge I cannot but think of the features of an orangutan, even if I’m not saying she is one’ — there was the predictable horror expressed by other politicians and the media.

‘Racism,’ they declared, ‘Calderoli’s comments are appalling.’

That they are, though alleged racism wasn’t the worst of it: it was the bad manners — and political stupidity — that I found shocking. Well, that and the senator’s ignorance about orangutans and Zulus, but more on that in a moment.

The first thing to note is that the Northern League is right to attack Dr Kyenge’s policies. She is minister for integration and has proposed changes in the law which would make it far too easy for immigrants to obtain Italian citizenship.

Criticising her on those grounds is not only permissible, it would be obligatory for any reasonable person.

But look what Senator Calderoli, who is senate vice-president of the Northern League, has done. By his comments on orangutans he has drawn attention away from Dr Kyenge’s policies and focused it instead on his own bad manners. Debating rule number one, senator: never make personal comments about your opponent, and never, ever make personal comments about a woman, ever. It makes you sound like an ungentlemanly slimeball, no matter who the woman is or how bad her policies.

And that is what I mean by political stupidity. Instead of Senator Calderoli’s political allies swarming into Dr Kyenge’s political appearances and debating her policies, on Friday they turned up to throw bananas at her as she gave a speech at Cervia, in central Italy. This was such a stupid move that you’d almost imagine the banana throwers were Left-wing agents provocateur. But I doubt it. I think they were just people who are legitimately frustrated about immigration and illegitimately stupid about Dr Kyenge’s racial origin.

And stupid about plenty else, too. Go back to Senator Calderoli’s mention of ‘an orangutan’. When I first heard it, I was puzzled. Dr Kyenge — she qualified as an ophthalmologist after immigrating to Italy in 1983 — is originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. If Senator Calderoli was going to make higher primate jibes at her, why orangutans? They are creatures that exist only in Asia. You are only going to find them in Sumatra and Borneo. I suspect he was thinking orangutans were some sort of central African ape, so his remark would echo Dr Kyenge’s origins.

It didn’t. According to the Jane Goodall Institute, the great apes in Dr Kyenge’s home country are chimpanzees and gorillas. Indeed, the DRC is the only place in which Grauer’s gorilla, also called the Eastern lowland gorilla, the largest of the four gorilla types, exists. Orangutans most certainly aren’t in the frame, they are absolutely not available as material for insult about someone from the DRC. The senator, among other things, showed himself to be uneducated.

Then there was the comment from some of Senator Calderoli’s supporters that Dr Kyenge looked like ‘a Zulu’. Now, I’m having a hard time finding the insult in that one, though I realise it was meant as an insult.

Insulted

The problem is that at one point I spent months in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and I can tell you, whatever considerable charm Dr Kyenge has, she is no way looks like a Zulu. She has the round face typical of central Africans one sees in Brussels (legacy of the Belgian Congo connection), added to an Italian style (which, alas, one never sees around Brussels).

The Zulus, however, tend to have distinctive heart-shaped faces. Which is one of the reasons the Zulus are such attractive people, especially the Zulu women.

Indeed, if you were told you looked like a Zulu, a reasonable response from anyone who bothered to educate himself as to what Zulus looked like would respond: ‘I’m flattered. Thank you.’

Or put it this way: if a man told an Irish woman she reminded him of a French woman, is it likely she would be insulted? You can take the Zulus to be the French of Africa. More, they did give the British a ferocious beating at the battle of Isandlwana, so they and the French have that kind of anti-British military history in common. You could guess I admire Zulus. Still, there is this wider question on the orangutan remark: why is it considered an insult to liken someone to a great ape, orangutan or not? One can call someone a lamb, or a tiger, or an eagle- eyed operator, or a cat; you could say an American footballer looks like an ox, or a politician is a fox.

Indeed, if an Italian politician were to say Dr Kyenge had moved into Italian politics like a black swan, nobody would be complaining. So how is it that likening someone to the higher primates, who are some of the most intelligent and inventive creatures on earth, is defined as an insult?

The answer to that must go back to the 19th and early 20th Century response to the theory of evolution. Darwin and the rest were mocked for proposing the ‘absurd’ idea that we are descended from apes. Gorillas, monkeys, all the apes, were considered low forms of life to which none of us pale, civilised Christian sons of God, made in his image and likeness, could be related. Maybe those Africans, sure, maybe they are close kin to monkeys. But, the argument went, what else could you expect? So Africans were relegated to monkey-cousin division of humanity to separate them from us; and the practice of likening black Africans to monkeys as an insult was born.

However, that means anyone who allows the likening of any African to an ape to be an insult is collaborating in the old racial — and evolutionary — ignorance.

Me, I’m dead flattered that I can look at the studies of the great apes and imagine I am part of that extraordinary family tree. At the same time, I can imagine that if I went to the DRC and approached a group of gorillas, they would look at me — and at the others with me — visitors carrying diseases and noise and mining development, and locals carrying forest clearance, warfare, guns and pangas to turn the noble apes into roadside bushmeat — and say: ‘Related to you lot? Don’t insult us. We, each of us, know how to support ourselves. No slacking here, no unemployment here. We raise our children well. We train them in skills. We keep our family structure intact. We never abandon our babies to divorce or child care. We fight to defend our territory and we mourn our dead with dignity.’

You will find dead-beat dads — and murderers and liars and bankers — among Italians and Irish, but you aren’t going to find them among male silverback gorillas. The fact is that too many of us don’t rise to the standards set by the great apes.

Oh, and about the bananas. I understand great apes don’t often eat bananas, but when they do, they rarely eat the fruit. Instead, they eat the more nutritious pith. Meanwhile we eat the fruit and throw out the pith. And Senator Calderoli’s supporters throw out the whole banana.

As I said, too many of us don’t rise to the standards set by the great apes. Dr Kyenge’s only right response to the accusation that she is like an ape is the one offered by Charlie Chaplin to the accusation that he was Jewish: ‘Alas, I do not have that honour.’

m.synon@dailymail.ie