Souciant editor Joel Schalit, in Thursday's Equal Times.
When I visited Italy, I did see a little more overt racism than in some other parts of Europe, but all in all, the racism there and in France, as well as some places in the Netherlands, seemed about on par with that of Boston, by which I mean, it was fairly racist. Of course, those racists seemed to be the local analogs of racist people I know and encounter in New England, meaning that in general, they were people less-likely to have traveled and more likely to openly sexualize non-white women. Again, those were my impressions. I think it's curious that many countries that were once home to progressive thought have become increasingly conservative as their influence has waned. I guess the easiest way to feel better about oneself is to discount others . . .Though preceded by the racist stereotypes of Africans and Arabs of the slave trade, as many scholars and journalists have noted in recent years, Italy was never forced to undergo a process of de-Nazification following the Second World War.