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The apartheid, racial segregation between whites and blacks in South Africa was in force until 1994 and in the United States in practice until the 60s. But those situations were determined by historical roots going back two or three centuries. Italy however is building its apartheid in less than twenty years. Before 1989 immigration in our country was so limited as not to be significant, but today we have race riots and school classes with a 30% maximum of foreigners.

If it depends on the Northern League party, we also had segregated public transport on buses, trains and subways. The ghettos already exist, such as Rosarno, and there are ghetto neighborhoods in many cities simply for social reasons: immigrants of similar origin tend to gather and usually find areas where the rents are not too expensive. The other European countries have problems of integration too. But in most of Europe, racism is not part of the government. 
Above all an immigration so recent as ours, and relatively limited in numbers compared to other countries, that took place in a historical period that should have been long past the worst manifestations of racism, could be handled decently by politics and society. 
We could avoid the most blatant cases of exploitation and segregation, the continuing racist anti-immigrant propaganda, do not repeat everyday on television that immigrants increase the crime when to limit crime, of any color, the only solution is to work against degradation. Instead none of this has been done. Italian politics has seen fit to exploit racism to garner votes, civil society has become easy to manipulate and many have turned their anger toward the immigrants, rather than to the real problems facing the country and the politicians responsible for it. Yet our problems are huge, from unemployment to precarious jobs, the mafias, corruption, pollution and so on. But for many Italians and for political propaganda, the main problem became immigrants. It is no accident, it's so useful to have a scapegoat in a country where everything goes wrong. 
The events of Rosarno and the recent proposal of the minister of education, unfortunately, show that we are already in full in a system of apartheid. But it's not only this, there are a thousand other events that demonstrate, in northern towns administered by the League where they do everything to deny basic civil rights for immigrants, or where the League cannot tolerate even that immigrants do the cleaning, in the parliament where politicians vote racist laws and deny citizenship even to those born in Italy. All in total disregard to human rights, in complete violation of international treaties. But more than anything all this is completely wrong, because it's not with fear and hatred that you can build a civil coexistence with millions of people who, despite what the League says, are now in this country to stay. Piece by piece in Italy is being built apartheid. Just another small step in our continued descent into barbarity.

Francesco Defferrari

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