The Italian White Burden: Anti-racism, Paternalism and Sexism in Italian Public Discourse

Abstract

This chapter aims to contribute to a deconstruction of public discourses on, and iconographies of, race and whiteness in Italy, through an analysis of the Italian white normative imaginary of disembarkations in mainstream media and political discourses (2015–2019). It focuses on both securitarian and hegemonic humanitarian narratives, paying particular attention to the mediatisation of the figure of Carola Rackete, a ship of the German NGO “Sea-Watch” who, in 2019, violated the ban imposed on Italian ports and landed forty-two migrants. Described as a criminal in securitarian public and media discourses, Rackete was instead represented by hegemonic anti-racist humanitarianism through the colonial iconograpy of the white saviour. In order to unpack the symbolic implications of such visual narratives, the chapter applies a critical discourse analysis to newsmedia, photojournalism and cinema. Our analysis is supported by interviews with journalists, activists, film-makers and artists conducted for the project “(De)Othering: deconstructing Risk and Otherness in Media Narratives” (2018–2021).

In the case of Gaia Giuliani, this article is an outcome of the project “(De)Othering: Deconstructing Risk and Otherness: hegemonic scripts and counter-narratives on migrants/refugees and ‘internal Others’ in Portuguese and European mediascapes” (Reference: POCI-01-0145- FEDER-029997), funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology FCT (DL57/2016/CP1341/CT0025, CES-SOC/UID/50012/2019) and FEDER, the European Regional Development Fund, through the COMPETE 2020 Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization (POCI), and by other Portuguese institutions through the FCT. In the case of Carla Panico, the author acknowledges the support of the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation (FCT) through the PD/BD/142794/2018 scholarship.