Can you notice that it’s a bit leaning to the right?
American in Italy here! I am not justifying this, just explaining it from an Italian perspective. First, the paper is not mixing up her Indian heritage here with Native American. They took the idea that she is seeking a white male VP running mate and wrote “hunting for a white man”, which conjured up a “funny” homage to native Americans in spaghetti westerns, while giving a nod and a wink to the racism inherent in making the VP pick race-based. Second, this paper is a sensationalist rag sold in grocery store checkout lanes, with no expectation for the stories to be good, or free of any number of unsavory isms.
native Americans in spaghetti westerns.
I’m not sure how it is in Italy, but a lot of the older Italians I know absolutely love old westerns (of… Varying quality)
Yep. They also created giant groups of people who think the saguaro cactus grows in Texas.
Yes, this about covers it (correctly).
And it is pointing at racism (it’s no secret the “had” to get a white male of certain age).
Also I think the Indian part was used just because of that additional funny coincidence. It’s not not funny, but far from good. … tho thinking about it now - using the same joke by having Adolfy depicted as Crocodile Dundee, while still not lol funny, does seem kinda funny.
To be fair the Italians have a 500+ year history of mixing up Indigenous Americans and Indians.
Europeans: Americans are so obsessed with race
Also Europeans:
This has almost nothing to do with race (or at least with hers), it’s just a dumb analogy to play with the title in a western movie fashion. “Hunting the white man” refers to the search for a white vice-president that would play well with “wasp” population.
Basic Americans don’t understand nuance or that other places have different ideas. To an American everything is done through America lens which frequently looks idiotic or poorly educated from outside.
I think any country would come asking questions if their political leaders were pictured with culturally sensitive stuff like this. Imagine if a mid tier US paper put modi in half Hindu half Muslim traditional clothing. To us it’s a quick way to talk about the two biggest religions in that country. Modi would be pissed though.
What’s ironic is you’re displaying exactly what you’re critiquing. This joke is a bit funny, but it’s on par with something like “Prince Charles asks NRA to fix his car”. There’s just baggage. And lord knows Italy has plenty of its own.
This isn’t coming from a naive, “regular Joe” Italian. News papers should be a bit better about international sensitives.
I mean, they’re right. The European version of racism is much more inattention and inexperience-fueled. This is arguably an example.
That is not my experience in Italy.
Just ask a European about gypsies or African migrants. It will get very racist very quickly.
Yeah, my experience has been that a lot of countries whose residents tell me racism is an American problem and we should stop trying to project it onto other societies happen to live in countries with huge problems with it that just aren’t explicitly spoken about in the same terms.
I had a Brazilian friend tell me race is not all that important in Brazil and that he’s tired of Americans assuming it is. I periodically have to ask him, “Do you read Brazilian news, bro?” and send some links that make it blatantly obvious that racism is alive and well down there.
You also just get people who have bought into very pervasive attitudes in countries that justify/explain away racism when it’s encountered.
Or Albanians, Romanians and other people with a history of migration (at least in Italy).
That said, the racist dynamics in Italy are still different from those of a country with a much different history, linked to slavery and colonialism (thankfully Italian empire was a ridiculously failed attempt), with a different racial distribution in population. African migrants are for example a relatively new phenomenon. We are now at the 2nd generation give or take, and I have the feeling things will normalize ad they did for balcan people, as long as right-wing governments will not sabotage immigration on purpose to maintain it as a problem and gather votes…
Gypsies may be a counterexample, that’s true. African migrants are an example: America’s very fabric is (traditionally) about black vs. white, even moreso than the things it’s conventionally associated with. Europe, on the other hand, just thought of Africa as the colonies for a long time, and Africans arriving in great numbers is a new thing.
It’s not less racist, but it’s racist in a very different way.
Europeans mistaking Americans for Indians for centuries.
Italian here, they probably did it on purpose so that people would repost it and they succeeded.
