The majority of the people of the French revolution were in it for the bread and/or hatred of nobility. Some of the more intellectual bend people of the French and American revolutions were inspired by thoughts that were present in the European Enlightenment which were the product of two and a half thousand years of European history and ultimately inspired by Ancient Greece and Rome. But of course the British took their first steps towards more freedom many centuries before the French revolution. And many other countries, like those in Scandinavia, draw on many other sources of inspirations also.
No, he wasn’t being a racist prick. An Italian saying a black person is tan is a harmless joke.
And I can pull out a whole bunch of links to any culture to prove how racist they all are because of the actions of a few and that won’t prove anything except that I have too much time on my hands. A lot of those links are soccer-related where fascists can hide in the crowd and make monkey-noises when a black man touches the ball. If a couple of imbeciles burned down a gypsy squatter village, it doesn’t mean the whole country was behind it. A couple of insensitive picnicers took a picture near the bodies of two drowned gypsy girls? Well, that certainly proves all Italians are ghouls.
There are stupid Italians who love to refer to blacks as “eggplants” and are unrepentantly racist. But there is no greater percentage of such lowlifes from Italy than there are anywhere else in the world. In Italy (and England and Spain too, by the way) cowards make monkey noises in soccer stadiums and in the South cowards hide behind sheets and burn crosses. Does this mean that all Southerners are cowardly racists? Absolutely not. Same for the good people of Italy who are in fact excited about Obama’s victory.
Yeah, but that makes the joke almost funny.
“You have so much in common! Young, handsome, a great tan…”
Pers’nally I like the idea of racists defending Obama, but that’s probably because I have that special perversity of temperament necessary to stay alive and liberal in Texas. “He may be a ngger, but he’s OUR NGGER!” :mad: 
Yeahbut…
Perhaps Zoro was being overly sensitive, but I have never in all my years following American sport heard of an athlete receiving so much racist abuse that he considers leaving the field of play. In fact, in all my years of following American sport, I have never seen or read of or heard of fans attending sporting events hurling racist abuse at an opposing player.
Perhaps it happens all the time. I don’t know; I don’t actually go to the ball field very often. But I’m pretty sure that, even in the Deep South, Ole Miss students don’t make monkey noises when African-American wide receivers from Auburn or UA touch the ball.
Jackie Robinson was the subject of a considerable amount of abuse when he broke the color barrier and the sporting part of our nation has seemed to move beyond that. Certain parts of Europe haven’t reached that point. You can dismiss my links and my opinion if you want to but I think you’re being shortsighted if you can’t see that populist slogans, words, and actions at sporting events aren’t a symptom of a larger issue in Italian society.
The point of the links, I think, were to demonstrate that racism is alive and well in Italy just like in the United States (if not more so), not that all Italians are racist. It was a direct response to claims that racism may not be as serious a cultural force in Italy as in the US, and that Berlusconi may not have considered how the joke would be taken. That seems to be debunked, but still, there’s nothing all that offensive about it. It’s not particularly tasteful to mention their appearance in the first place, but it’s not entirely appropriate to treat it as taboo either, IMO.
Dickens did a marvellous job of satirising this American gasbaggery in Martin Chuzzlewit, where practically every American Martin meets drones on about how their country originated liberty as the rest of the world looked enviously on.
And, of course, Samuel Johnson cut right to the chase.
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?”
Really? Are black militants flag-waving patriots? There are lots of different shades of racists in America.
I really take exception to the notion that extreme patriotism is the same thing as xenophobia. Loving one’s country does not equate to disliking foreigners. I just don’t see the connection. One of the things that many Americans like about our country is its diversity. What about what is written on the Statue of Liberty?
And in the North other hate groups – with or without cowardly masks – burn crosses there also. You weren’t serious about thinking it’s just a Southern thing, were you?
Sometimes I get the feeling that the rest of the country has just discovered black people.
Yes, exactly.
This is a topic that interests me. I grew up in a place where “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”. I grew up in a country that once enshrined a black man as less than a real person - 3/5, to be exact. I lived in Hawaii, where whites and Japanese and Chinese were all right, but those Filipinos, man - don’t turn your back or they’ll knife you. And I’ve worked with people who swear that Ethiopians/Somalis/Kenyans are the worst of the African continent.
I’m still trying to intellectually navigate some extraordinarily nationalistic landmines. My current theoretical conclusion is that the US has had 400 years to attempt to reach a coda/plateau on racism while places like France and Italy and Spain have had about 30 years to reap the rewards and benefits of their somewhat different manifestations of international colonialism.
Don’t think for a second I’m giving the US a free pass. Hell yeah we’re still a racist society, just like the Turks still hate the Armenians; the Shias hate the Kurds; the Serbs hate the Croats; and everyone in Europe hates the Roma (except for you, of course).
When it comes to white on black, however, the US is in a unique position to claim the holy grail on both ends of the spectrum - slavery/KKK to a black president.*
Italy and France and Spain don’t have that luxury of 350 years of abolition and 50 years of civil rights movement. It took them 20-40 years to go from owning overseas colonies to “Oh, shit, those black people are coming here now”**, and they were facing those fears while we here in the US were coming to the conclusion that the black guy in the next cube as nothing more - nor nothing less - than a colleague.
That’s a scary thing for a society to experience, and I see it here in my own community where the white Christian locals feel like they’re being overwhelmed by Somali and Sudanese refugees when just 30 years ago it was practically illegal for a Catholic to marry a Lutheran in my neck of the woods.
Earlier today I read a thread here on this messageboard regarding Bess Truman’s refusal (in her post-First Lady life) to allow a journalist into her home because he was Jewish. Today that’s an abhorrent action, but 1947’s Gentleman’s Agreement illustrates that her attitude was not only common but also enshrined in local law.
In my mind (and I’m perfectly willing to be corrected) racial relations in much of Western Europe are the same as the United States circa 1972 - post Civil Rights; pre Civil “Acceptance”. That’s neither a recommendation for a medal nor a condemnation; I’m simply stating that we Americans are a little further up the evolutionary scale of race relations than Italy is. Not much, but a little.
Racism is pandemic. There isn’t a single nation on the planet that can claim the moral high ground on the issue. The US has fought its battles and the war’s not done yet, but I think we’ve decided to confront the issue head on. The talking about race makes a lot of people mad but at least we’re talking about it, not burying our heads in the sand until the Hutus massacre the Tutsis.
So let’s get back to the OP. “He has nice tan”, here in the United States in 2008, after all of our years slavery and racism and reconciliation, has the connotations of a somewhat funny, somewhat racist (but maybe not) attempt at humor; it could go either way. Silvio Berlusconi was born and raised in Milan and is the current owner of a football team, a rival to the team that harassed Zoro, and both AC Milan and Inter Milan have a long history of overtly racist actions against black opponents. “He has a nice tan” in northern Italy has distinct and deliberately different cultural connotations there than it does here. Berlusconi didn’t say “tan” in a joking way a la Chris Rock; that was his way of saying what people say (“used to say” is too optimistic) here in the US - that Obama is “a good n----r”.
Is everyone in Milan/northern Italy/Italy/of Italian descent racist? No, of course not; that would be stupid. I’m just saying that our values and culture are different from Berlusconi’s - and he is defintiely not a paragon of virtue.
*South Africans will protest, but I will remind them that their state is predominately black. Not that I deny them the struggle; just saying that … well, we’re predominately white. Can we compromise by saying same struggle, different reasons?
**Gross oversimplification. I know I’m wrong in several specifics but I hope y’all can see the overall point I’m trying to make rather than getting bogged down in the minutae of specific details.
Great post. This quote is the highlight for me.
Stop. Look, I know this is the Dope where the pedantic rule, but really, you know damn well what I was talking about. An American male who says the word ‘nigger’ has a good chance of having Old Glory somewhere on his truck.
-If you feel the need to tout out a story of someone you know who has a truck with an American flag on it who isn’t racist I’m just going to ignore you.
Here’s a description of what he said and what happened, according to “La Repubblica”: «C’ è la speranza che la nuova generazione di politici come Medvedev e Obama possa essere un buono spunto di partenza». Pausa leggerissima, sorriso ancor più accentuato ed ecco che, con un tono e uno sguardo un poco malandrino e assai meno formale, aggiunge: «Obama ha tutto per poter andare d’ accordo con lui», dice, appoggiando la mano destra sull’ avambraccio sinistro del capo del Cremlino, «è giovane, è bello~è anche abbronzato», conclude, allargando le braccia come un consumato attore alla fine della recita in attesa degli immancabili applausi, «e quindi penso che si possa sviluppare una buona collaborazione». Il sorriso si trasforma in una risatina sommessa, Berlusconi si volta verso il presidente russo in cerca di complicità e Medvedev ricambia, togliendosi la cuffia della traduzione simultanea, poggiandola sotto il microfono.
Translated by me, probably badly:“There’s hope that the new generation of politicians like Medvedev and Obama will be a good starting point.” Slight pause, an even bigger smile and it’s here that, with a tone and a look that was slightly naughty and much less formal, he adds: “Obama has everything he needs to get along well with him [Medvedev],” he then says, placing his right hand on the left forearm of the Kremlin chief, “he’s young, he’s beautiful–he also suntanned”, he concludes, spreading his arms like a consummate actor at the end of a performance waiting for unending applause, “and therefore I think that a good collaboration will develop”. The smile transforms into a quiet little laugh, Berlusconi turns towards the Russian President looking to share the joke and Medvedev replies by taking out the simultaneous translation earpiece and placing it under his microphone.
/end translation.
Abbronzato means “bronzed or tanned by the sun” I’m not familiar enough with Italian to say that it has any specific racist overtones. My take on his intentions with this was that he was making a joke, ribbing Medvedev a bit. I think the “abbronzato” quip was even an afterthought, something that popped into his head.
From what I’ve seen, Berlusconi is just awful when it comes to this sort of thing. He has no sense of diplomacy or tact. His sense of humor doesn’t seem to be that good either. He really is like David Brent from the BBC version of “The Office”: he thinks he’s funny and charming, but really he’s not. The joke was a bit lame anyway, but his delivery stunk as well (also like David Brent).
I end with a silly clip from La Repubblica to the tune of a '60s era song “Abbronzatissima” (very tan girl): http://mmedia.kataweb.it/video/3611279/abbronzatissimi-il-videoremix
I appreciate you analysis, and in the OP I was pretty clear I wasn’t convinced this was really a racist insult. I really was wondering if this would make racists in America defend a black man. Few are really answering this question, so I’m pretty much done with this.
I’m sorry I asked.
Simultaneous translation earpiece?! Those are real?! Holy shit!