Now the fruit is rotting on the tree

The recent attack on African farmworkers in southern Italy simply breaks my heart. There's no other way to put it, especially when Reuters reported on January 10, 2010 that the incident is reminiscent of 1960's Ku Klux Klan attacks against black citizens in the United States, and the anti-Berlusconi press in Italy is running headlines declaring that the migrants' wholesale expulsion from Rosarno, the Calabrian town where the attacks occurred, was tantamount to "ethnic cleansing."

The BBC indicates that the migrants, mostly from Ghana and Nigeria, were fruit pickers who camped in abandoned factories and other decrepit buildings without utilities and were paid only about $30 per day. This recalls Edward R. Murrow's brilliant work, "Harvest of Shame," exposing the abhorrent conditions under which African-American migrant laborers worked in this country in the 1950's, and also the desperate characters from "The Grapes of Wrath." Despite toiling in the most miserable of circumstances, the workers in Italy were deemed a threat by the residents of Rosarno, and thus were violently attacked. What could those residents have been so desperately afraid of I must ask, albeit rather rhetorically.


Clearly, people are afraid of those who are not like them. It is the definition of xenophobia and this offensive fear exists throughout the world. What happened in Italy is not unique to the Italian character. The French, plagued by turbulent riots in their immigrant-dominated "banlieus" (working class suburbs inhabited primarily by ethnic and racial minorities), and their controversial laws prohibiting the display of religious symbols, such as wearing yarmulkes and hijab, have received international attention and condemnation. And Spain, formerly a poor, emigrant nation like Italy, has struggled with anti-immigrant sentiment, and has engaged in an aggressive practice of intercepting the arrival to its shores of boats of migrants from Africa. Similarly, in November 2009, the Swiss voted to ban future construction of minarets on mosques in their country, an act which offended Muslims far beyond the borders of Switzerland. As well, European nations are adopting the American model of detaining people found unlawfully present inside their borders regardless of whether or not they present a danger to society. (See, http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/home.html). Nonetheless, an Italian friend finds the incident in his homeland shameful, and compares it to the treatment of Jews in Italy a generation or two earlier. He is undoubtedly, and thankfully, not alone in this assessment.

To their credit, both the Pope and the U.S. Catholic Church have expressed sympathy toward victimized migrants. On January 11th, The Guardian of London on reported that "In his traditional Sunday sermon to the crowd in St. Peter's square yesterday, the pope said: 'Immigrants are human beings, different in culture and traditions, but nevertheless to be respected. Violence ought never to be the way for anyone to resolve the difficulties.'" It reminds me a bit of the slogan often used in pro-immigrant rallies here, "no person is illegal." Indeed, it is noteworthy that Italians themselves, upon their immigration to the United States at the turn of the century, were viewed with disdain by the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who held power in this country. They were but dirty Southern Europeans who were less intelligent than their Northern peers, and most immigrants at that time, coincidentally, were Calabrian and Sicilian. So now the discriminated against have become the oppressors. Power corrupts.

The Guardian further revealed that a growers' association leader from the region stated that Italians do not want to do such farm work, and with the evacuation of the migrants, 800 kilograms of citrus fruit remains rotting on the tree. My Italian friend confirms that a relative, who is an employment specialist in that country, finds that while Italians complain about the foreign-born invading their country, no Italians respond to announcements for jobs in farm labor, and Romanian and Albanian women have become the primary caretakers of the elderly and infirm.This rings quite familiar. In the U.S., Mexicans and Central Americans take on the tedious and dangerous work on our acres and acres of farmland, and Caribbean women in cities like New York care for our parents and children. The issues of integration and tolerance have become commonplace discussion in the U.S., and we are now engaged in a national debate on immigration reform. Is there a lesson here we might share with our European brethren?

NOTE: For an excellent view of the racial and ethnic tensions in France's poverty-stricken neighborhoods, I recommend two films available on DVD: La Haine (Hate)(1995) and The Class (PG-13, 2008). The former is filled with offensive language and troubling scenes. It should not be watched by children or sensitive adults. For a peek at immigrants in Italy, watch Rahil's Secret (2006).