Keywords

From Consensual Glorification to Amnesia or Social Conflict: The Changing Effects of Material Traces of Colonial Past

The physical contexts in which people live their daily lives are filled with traces from the past. A statue in a park, the name of a street, or an advertisement for a food product can all recall specific historical moments or periods. It is this everyday phenomenon that distinguishes the higher processes of human memory from the more basic associative processes that are shared by humans and animals alike. In a famous quote, Lev Simonovic Vygotsky described this unique feature as follows:

The very essence of human memory is that human beings actively remember with the help of signs. (…) As one psychologist (Dewey) has said, the very essence of civilization consists in the fact that we deliberately build monuments so as not to forget. In the knotted handkerchief and the monument we see the most profound, most characteristic and most important feature which distinguishes human from animal memory (Vygotsky, 1978: 51).

The unique capacity of human memory being to guide its own recollections by means of signs, Vygotsky cited voluntary strategies based either on private choice (tying a knot in one’s own handkerchief) or on the decision of a community (erecting a statue in a public garden in memory of an excellent citizen) as examples of such intermediations. However, the private strategy given as an example is intended for short-term remembrance, whereas the public choice cited uses a kind of material intermediation designed to be durable, even beyond the life cycle of those who were contemporaries of the persons or events signified by the statue. If we consider the tools of memory intermediation not as a strategy of individual but as a community memory, this choice can be explained by the short duration of human life: the stones will be there long after the death of those who decided to use them to signal the duty of historical memory (Apfelbaum, 2010). However, in the long term, the material intermediation of selected elements of the community’s past, which was perfectly clear at the time of the monument’s creation, may become blurred and difficult to understand for those born after that time.

From this briefly sketched theoretical perspective, the aim of this chapter is to observe how a community constructs its own collective memory by using material memory intermediations. However, groups evolve as generations change. Moreover, different meanings of the same trace can emerge because over time the meaning of the social representations of the historical period symbolized by this material intermediation can shift. Consequently, traces of the past that were designed to maintain a consensual version of historical times across generations may instead become a source of social conflict.

In this chapter, we will address these theoretical questions by discussing a specific case, that of the material traces of the colonial past that still persist in the European environment today. Originally intended to glorify a past that, in the eyes of Europeans, appeared rich and benevolent toward more “primitive” societies, these traces have now become the object of intense controversy within the former colonizing countries. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, European anti-racist movements have carried out symbolic actions challenging the colonial legacy of European societies in an unprecedented way, such as the toppling of the statue of former slaveholder Edward Colson in Bristol, UK, or the painting of statues of Belgian King Leopold II in red. Part of public opinion in national majorities reacted to these minorities by denouncing the “cancel culture” or the danger of “erasing” history.

Because of the massive censorship that still weighs on its colonial past (Del Boca, 2005), Italy represents an interesting case study. Indeed, colonial traces are present in many Italian places, in particular in the city of Rome, which the Fascist regime tried to redesign through numerous architectural interventions, to underline after the colonial invasions that the city was once more the capital of an empire as in the time of the ancient Romans. However, for many contemporary inhabitants of Rome and for most Italian citizens, the colonial traces seem less visible today than in other former European countries and metropoles.

Similar research on African and European respondents’ reactions to the colonial legacy shows that younger generations in European countries where memories of the colonial past are less censored than in Italy seem increasingly aware of the moral errors of colonial paternalism and increasingly question the violent legacy of the colonial past (Licata et al., 2018). Therefore, even though the short-sighted cultural policies that manage the colonial legacy have meant that, for many Italians, the link with the colonial signifier is fading or even being lost (Palma, 2018), the time may have come for colonial traces to be detectable again, as signs that cannot be hidden and must be understood.

To explore such a theoretical interpretation of the current impact of past colonial traces in contemporary Italian society, this chapter describes the results of a first qualitative research, devoted to the reactions to the suggestion of a colonial meaning hidden in a seemingly unimportant object of everyday life, namely a candy still bearing on its wrapping the icon of a little African boy. However, before commenting on these data and their possible implications for the question of detectable contemporary impact in a specific European environment, some further theoretical points should be addressed.

Emotional Reactions to Historical Traces

A first intriguing aspect of the material intermediations leading to the recall of history is their capacity to induce a specific type of emotional reaction. A poetic description of such a phenomenon is offered by a famous episode from Book I (29–19 BC) of the Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil. In his unfinished masterpiece, the poet describes how Aeneas—a refugee, driven by the loss of his beloved homeland Troy—finally reached the shores of Italy, where his descendants founded the Roman culture, born from the union of the lost Trojan culture and the Latin culture of the inhabitants of the new land. In the long wanderings through which Aeneas and his Trojan companions slowly fulfilled their destiny, they first arrived on the North African coast. There, while exploring the city of Carthage, Aeneas discovered in a richly decorated temple a mural depicting battles from the Trojan War and showing the deaths of his friends and countrymen. Aeneas was moved to tears and explained his reaction to the presiding friend by saying “sunt lacrimae rerum, et mentem mortalia tangent.” This classic quote is so difficult to translate because the Latin word “res, rerum” refers to both “material object” and “facts”—history being called “res gestae.” Virgil poetically used such indeterminacy to produce an implicative richness that made this phrase capable of leading to different meanings (Wharton, 2008). Among them, it could also imply that “there are tears in historical facts.”

Today, scholars would define these reactions to historical memories as group-based emotions, to distinguish them from emotions triggered by events that solely involve personal goals. Moreover, when they burst their “lacrimae rerum” in the face of material intermediaries recalling past historical events, people are not only expressing their group-based emotions, but also a moral evaluation of their own group’s past. Depending on the moral evaluation, group emotions can thus express different types of self-consciousness: either positive, involving a sense of pride, when traces of glorious episodes are shown, or negative, expressing emotions of embarrassment, shame, and guilt, when traces of less glorious pasts persist in the material environment (Iyer, Schmader, & Lickel, 2007).

More than defeats, which can also encompass glorious and heroic aspects, self-conscious negative emotions are linked to historical actions that may tarnish the overly idealized moral standard attributed to the group (Shepherd, Spears, & Manstead, 2013). It is therefore easy to understand why communities multiply memorial intermediations designed to produce positive emotions at the group level, while traces that recall immoral episodes from the group’s past are avoided or self-censored (Bar-Tal, 2017).

However, judgments about the moral aspects of a group’s history change both from one generation to the next and as more advanced moral standards shape social discourse. Thus, intermediations originally intended to recall what appeared to be a glorious and morally commendable past may, over time, remind citizens of a period that now seems shameful. However, such a profound change does not happen easily or quickly. Therefore, when the material traces refer to types of collective behavior that conform to moral norms that were once dominant but are now increasingly unacceptable to many, depending on the type of representation of history that the perceivers have, different reactions can be observed simultaneously, ranging from negative to positive collective emotions. Such a shift in reactions is more evident for the intermediation of institutional memory. However, a different and intriguing question is related to the question of whether everyday objects, which are meant to be quickly consumed and not intended to last, can also be the source of emotional reactions, and whether these reactions can change significantly in accordance with the new historical awareness of the cruelty of European colonialism.

The Colonial Legacy of the Ephemeral Traces of the Past

Like any historical period, the colonial era left not only institutional but also ephemeral traces. Representing colonial domination in material objects used for private consumption such as toys, advertising, food packaging, and gadgets, to name but a few examples among the multitude of material goods intended to embellish everyday life, these ephemeral traces shaped the mentality of ordinary Europeans in a way that corresponded to the important role that colonialism played in their societies at the time of their production. Abandoned by the tide of time, in some forgotten part of the home, these objects slowly lost their original communicative intent, becoming a nostalgic reminder of past family moments. Their status as unimportant objects, linked to personal and familiar life and therefore less conspicuous than the formal intermediaries of community memories glorifying colonial rule, such as statues or street and place dedications, made their racial implications more difficult to grasp. However, as a function of generational change and the emergence of a new sensitivity to racial injustice, these objects have recently begun to be seen not as an innocent legacy of the past, but as a troubling testament to the pervasiveness of colonial imagery in everyday routines of the past, such as buying food or choosing gifts for children (Forsdick, 2020).

In our research, we chose to address the issue of colonial traces left in ephemeral objects still available in European contexts, by observing the reactions of participants exposed to the advertisement of an Italian chocolate candy that is still frequently found today in some Italian cafés, internationally known under the Italian label of caffé. Recent historical contributions have convincingly investigated how the history of chocolate and coffee culture was used to intertwine the imaginary of three continents (Brazil, Ethiopia, and Italy) during the Fascist ventennio (1922–1945). According to researcher Diana Garvin (2021), coffee-centered narratives, describing the long journey from the bean in the field to the machine used in Italian coffee shops, were used to construct a colonial imagery based on all kinds of advertisements placed in this specific type of shop. In fact, alongside the growing success of their products, Italian caffé became key sites for the promotion of fascist imperial projects in East Africa—an architectural and artistic legacy that remains in place today. By unraveling the trade in coffee beans and human bodies between Italy, Brazil, and Ethiopia in the interwar period, and expanding our understanding of how food and agriculture were politicized during the Fascist period, this new type of historical and cultural studies has clarified the untold story of colonialism, also seen as the story of “caffeinated imperial aggression and resistance” (Garvin, 2021: 292).

It is interesting to note that traces of the politicization of food and agriculture during the Fascist period persist in the objects that can still be found in contemporary Italian cafés, whether they are old advertisements used to create a nostalgic scenario or images printed in the packages of sugar sachets made freely available to customers. Moreover, a similarity between the different colors of coffee preparations (latte, brown coffee, etc.) and the colors of human skin also remained as an intangible colonial trace, linking old marketing strategies with contemporary ways of speaking. A sentence by a black German activist quoted in an article significantly entitled “Chocolate advertising, consumption of race?” may illustrate how these links could be critically internalized.

For brown skin, the German language only has terms borrowed from eating and drinking like ‘chocolate brown’ or ‘coffee brown’. If someone tries to put me on a color scale, I could be classified as ‘coffee brown’. Does that even exist? Oh sure, in people’s perception there are any number of shades and corresponding labels. What you people have in common is the divergence from the generally unspoken norm – whiteness (Hackenesch, 2014: 97).

The following qualitative research aims to observe the reactions of white Italian participants to the packaging of a classic chocolate candy, which still shows the stereotypical face of an “African Moor” printed on the wrapper. This candy has already been selected by historical researchers as a relevant Italian example of European colonial ephemera (Hackenesch, 2014). Also, an image of the advertisement “L’una tira l’altra: Nougatine Unica” (“One thing leads to another: Nougatine Unica”), painted by Severo Sepo for Venchi chocolates (Turin, Italy, c. 1935, 30.5 cm × 61 cm. Archivio della Communicazione, Parma, Italy), showing the same wrapper still present in a contemporary Amazon link selling this candy online, was used by Garvin (2021: 304) as an example of his examination of racialized chocolate advertising. Building on these historical and cultural studies, the research discussed in this chapter aims to understand the extent to which the connections between chocolate advertising and racial categorizations might begin to be noticed by the white majority as well, in a society where socio-psychological research has shown that the historical faults of Italian colonialism are largely self-censored from the historical consciousness of many citizens (Leone, d’Ambrosio, Migliorisi, and Sessa 2018; Leone, Giner-Sorolla, D’Errico, Migliorisi, and Sessa 2018; Leone & Sarrica, 2014).

The Research

Participants and the Interview Process

Twenty-two people— 9 men and 13 women—participated in the study. Their ages ranged from 18 to 59 years, with a mean age of 37.9 years and a median age of 33.5 years.

A semi-structured interview was offered individually to each participant. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the interviews were conducted either face-to-face or online; in both cases, according to the Code of Ethics of the Italian Association of Psychologists (AIP),Footnote 1 participants were fully informed about the research and agreed to be recorded. The interview consisted of two parts: after asking for the participants’ informed consent, in the first part the interviewer asked sociodemographic questions—such as age and occupation—and introduced the research and the chosen candy, showing a picture of the chocolate wrapper (Fig. 13.1).

Fig. 13.1
A Photograph of a chocolate wrapper with the chocolate.

Image of the chocolate wrapper shown to respondents

Full size image

The image, which remained available to the participant throughout the interview, is freely available at an Amazon web address, aimed at sending the product online.Footnote 2

After this introduction, the interviewer asked the respondent a few questions about the chocolate, including his or her prior knowledge of it and his or her reactions to its package: “Do you know this product?”; “What comes to your mind when you look at the image on the chocolate wrapper?”; “Looking at it more closely, what do you think it represents?”

Following these initial questions, the interviewer introduced some aspects of chocolate packaging’s history associated with Italian colonialism: “I would like to tell you about the history of this confectionery. The packaging of this confectionery represents a child of African origin. This is a possible reminder of the children belonging to the Italian colonies conquered during the colonization campaign launched by the Fascist regime. During the Fascist regime, this image was intended to convey to the Italian consumer the idea of a product made with raw materials from the colonies, in order to reinforce the propaganda ideal of colonization as an affirmation of Italian power.” This revelation led to the second part of the interview, which included questions aimed at assessing the possible change in the interviewee’s reactions and emotions toward the candy as a result of the new clues provided by the history of the packaging: “What do you think of this image after learning more about its history?”; “What do you think of this candy now?”; “Could you have imagined that this candy could be associated with such a historical period?”; “Do you think that there are other products on the food market associated with this same period?”; “What do you think about the fact that this product is still being advertised using this image?”

Results

Based on the median age (33.5 years) of the participants, the sample was divided into two groups—the younger and the older, both consisting of 11 respondents. Reactions to the image of the candy were therefore explored before and after allusions associating the packaging with Italian colonial history (as part of comparisons) and observing differences between younger and older respondents. Controlling for prior knowledge of the product, only one of the 11 younger participants and five of the older ones were already familiar with it.

First Reactions to the Image of Chocolate

In the first part of the interview, when the respondent has already seen the image but has not yet heard about its possible associations with the colonial era, interesting differences appear between the two age groups. In response to the question, “What is the first thing that comes to mind when you look at this picture?” the younger participants paid attention to the taste and packaging of the chocolate, quickly linking them to Africa and black people, as follows:

Hazelnut, caramel, Africa.

Erm… so, first I think of the logo drawn on the packaging, which seems to me to be an indigenous figure, reminding me, I suppose, of a particular chocolate… . And then, if I have to look at the chocolate, I think more of something crunchy, tasty. I don’t know why it reminds me of caramel.

The responses of older respondents, on the other hand, are mainly experiential, consisting of memories of the taste of chocolate and the emotions provoked by it, related to their childhood and youth memories:

Well, … . I remembered the taste of the chocolate and the crunchy interior and then I liked it as it was made, beyond the classic candies, which were rolled here and there, this one instead was rolled only on the top. It’s not the classic candy that opens by pulling on the two pigtails.

Ideas on Chocolate Packaging

Furthermore, in answering questions that explored the interviewees’ ideas arising spontaneously from the image (“What comes to your mind when you look at the image on the chocolate wrapper?”; “Looking at it more closely, what do you think it represents?”), the issue of the link with Africa emerges again among the young participants. Indeed, they read the image as a representation of the country where the raw materials (i.e., chocolate) come from, as in the exempla:

Africa comes to mind. Maybe a bit of a stereotypical image.

Well, maybe a… a call to… umm… a reference to… Maybe this wrapper represents, I don’t know, chocolate and so, in fact, a reference to the land in which this chocolate is produced.

At the same time, even before hearing the researcher’s directions, some among the young participants spontaneously recognized the link between the image of the wrapper, the color of the chocolate, and the color of their skin, for example:

Then, if I pause to think, I just say: a person of color, then, chocolate color, you can say, right? chocolate color… But, of course, then, you have to think for a moment because if, well, there is an association exclusively with the fact that a person of color… I mean, anyway, I don’t think white chocolate has a white person’s face on it, so…

A kind of racist aspect transmitted by the image, associated with a moral perplexity, thus seems to emerge among the young participants. This awareness does not emerge among older participants, who instead pay more attention to the exotic origin of chocolate. Interestingly, these older respondents see instead a link with the country of origin of the raw materials which is associated not only with Africa but also with Brazil, through a spontaneous connection between the image of the candy and coffee:

It looks like coffee, I would say. Um, if I were to look at the… uhm… the drawing, the one he wants to represent, with the figure I see, gives me the image, it seems to me… . It gives me an image a little bit Brazilian, a little bit exotic, and so it would make me think, if I dwell on, on the image of a chocolate coffee…

I can think of coffee, a coffee bean.

Brazil. A Brazilian.

The theoretical hypothesis of a perceived triangle linking Italian coffee to Africa and Brazil (Garvin, 2021) thus seems to be confirmed by these free associations of older respondents. Only one of the older participants’ responses fully captures the colonial significance of the packaging image, in the very first stage of the interview, by stating:

It gives me a bit of an idea of those Mamies… those ladies who used to guard the colonial houses.

With regard to the emotions spontaneously evoked in the first part of the interview, most participants, when looking at the image on the chocolate wrapper, said they had positive feelings, associated with joy, lightness, cheerfulness, positivity, and sympathy. Some participants attributed these positive emotional reactions to the smiling expression on the wrapper. Only two participants deviated somewhat from this general positive response.

The first case is that of a 26-year-old participant, who identified the image as an African woman, but immediately spoke of his “displeasure” at seeing it, as it seemed to border on racism:

To me, it seems to represent an African woman, a bit stereotypical, ironically represented, even a bit like a caricature… . In fact, I’ve never really looked at it that closely. To be honest, it’s a bit off-putting, because it associates a sweet product like that with an image, it might not be an African woman. It seems to me that you associate skin color with chocolate color, which almost has a slight tinge of racism, perhaps.

In contrast, a 55-year-old man said that the image’s reference to the land where the chocolate is produced, and more generally its link to the extraction of raw materials in third-world countries, was for him a source of uniquely positive feeling: “Definitely well-being for people who usually suffer a lot.” This older interviewee grasped the almost generous aspect of helping people who are usually in conditions of suffering, without saying anything more about the exploitation of raw materials from disadvantaged countries.

Ideas Coming to Participants’ Minds After the Researcher’s Indications

Following the researcher’s suggested cues, which associated the image on the chocolate wrapper with the Italian colonial period, a difference emerged between younger and older participants. Here, the citing of examples is enriched by the age of the respondents, since, according to the theoretical frame briefly described above, the division of the sample according to their median age affects participants’ responses. Specifically, younger participants seemed to be more influenced by the unexpected associations with the Italian colonial period and showed strong reactions to this new interpretation of the hidden meaning in the commercial image.

Below are some examples:

Uhm… well let’s say that… (unintelligible) from what you’ve told me, let’s say… that things are changing a bit… and that this same child seems to me perhaps a potentially let’s say… exploited person, subjected perhaps to some… not really commendable treatment by the… precisely the fascist regime towards the African colonies… .. I don’t associate it with positive feelings anymore, but with more negative feelings, let’s say. (Man, 22 y.o.)

Sadness because I’m against those ideals anyway, so… I’m sorry that this kind of advertising is used for a confectionery product. (Woman, 27 y.o.)

Well, oh my God, that’s a bit scary. In the sense that it’s contrary to what I thought… I had interpreted it as, what a beautiful thing, we are putting an African product into our food culture, but in this way it means you are emphasizing white supremacy, it seems like a bit of a sad situation. (Woman, 27 y.o.)

On the contrary, older participants reported being less impressed by the new suggestions they received on the image printed in the package, as in the following quotes:

But, beyond the story, I see this face, I thought it was a lady, this little black boy very nice, very endearing… . (I see) Nothing different from before. (Woman, 54 y.o.)

In a way, all the chocolate we eat comes from exploitation in Africa and South America, so when you come to chocolate, there is an exploitation side behind it… . I’m not surprised. (Man, 37 y.o.)

I’m not very impressed with this story because for me, my end goal is to enjoy a taste… if I have to make a choice towards this product, I expect to find the taste I like… honestly it (the new information) brings me an emotion yes, but not a major emotion. For me, it’s sort of a speech of relative importance… I honestly don’t care about it. If I focus on this product, the fact that I know the story you told me doesn’t change my choice. If I choose it, basically because I liked it… It doesn’t involve me much, if I may say so, knowing that it was made in a particular environment, at a particular time, perhaps taking advantage of a situation, of certain particular moments… no, it really doesn’t move me. (Man, 58 y.o.)

Finally, a small number of respondents, regardless of age, wanted to emphasize that they retained a positive view of the sweet even after receiving information about its possible links with a colonial meaning, as in the following example:

I think it is still a very good product; however, I think there must be a reason behind the fact that the image has not been changed. Honestly, (…) neither my view of the candy nor my view of the candy company has changed that much. (Man, 26 y.o.)

Despite these reactions minimizing the consequences of the information provided by the researcher, after hearing the allusions linking the image of the package to Italian colonial history, the young participants reported a change in their self-reported emotions, with reference to emotions such as regret, sadness, surprise, disgust, shame, anger, or anxiety.

An important set of concluding remarks refers to the participants’ critical assessment of the marketing choice to retain the old colonial image and their willingness to buy the product anyway, or to avoid buying it. On this crucial point, a wide range of reactions was collected, again with interesting differences between the two age groups:

The image definitely needs to be replaced, because even though it’s something that belonged to the past, in the end it’s a theme that’s always present… it’s too important for the product, the image is the first… the first look you get at a product, and if it makes you think of bad things, you don’t want to buy it… because it doesn’t affect a person physically but psychologically yes. If a person has… an African background or whatever, background… or (if) they’re people who have suffered these abuses in the past, it doesn’t seem right to make them, so to speak, to make them see these things again. (Woman, 27 y.o.)

Among the older respondents, other reactions were evident:

Probably over time, the image has lost the value it had in the beginning and nobody, not even the current producers, knows what the purpose of the image was anymore. (Woman, 54 y.o.)

In addition, among the older participants, someone cited the positive value of tradition, strictly related to nostalgic feelings (Kessous, 2015):

Keeping a brand, an image that is the same as it was several decades ago makes me curious. It’s a marketing choice, which I may or may not agree with, but… it’s nice. It takes you back in time and gives you that fun feeling of when you were a carefree boy or received an award; in short, it’s a nice thing to remember… Standing still in a certain position means courage to me, so it means … . courage, so it means trust from the manufacturing company, saying: 'no, it’s my product, I’m still advertising like this because it’s a winning product. (Man, 51 y.o.)

On the contrary, some of the younger members of the group were adamant that they would never buy racialized food:

… I’m against racism, so if you look at it from a fundamental point of view, this product is also an emblem of a justification of racial supremacy, so I would keep it away. (Woman, 27 y.o.)

Finally, many participants suggested that this product continues to be distributed and purchased, despite the image on the packaging, because of a lack of knowledge of the story behind the image:

Well, it’s completely… I don’t know… many… a lot of people maybe, not knowing the context, might have the first reaction that I had… but if a lot of people could know the origin of the logo and… contextualize it historically, maybe they wouldn’t… I don’t know how tempted they would be to buy it, knowing the original reference it’s from, that’s all. (Man, 22 y.o.)

Discussion

The manipulation implemented in the qualitative research discussed in this chapter, where a colonial meaning of a candy wrapper still depicting the face of a small African boy was suggested to the participants after collecting their initial reactions, was intended to simulate these processes of social influence by which minority groups now bring to the fore some of the material traces of colonialism that remain unnoticed in the background of European environments. As for the consequences of the actions of these minorities, whereby previously ignored colonial traces trigger reactions among members of the national majority, sculpting or transforming social representations of colonialism, the unveiling of a possible colonial meaning hidden in the wrapping of a sweet also allowed the participants—especially the younger ones—to take a deeper look at this ephemeral object.

It can be noticed that young participants showed a stronger reaction to the association of the candy image with Italian colonial history. More than the older respondents, they expressed negative moral emotions and many of them were puzzled by the marketing decision to keep the same image until now. While acknowledging that today the meaning of the image is probably not the same because only a few consumers know what is behind it, the younger participants nevertheless stated that this lack of perception does not justify keeping the image of the African boy on the packaging. For the group of participants older than the median age, on the other hand, the responses in the second part of the interview were much less harsh and critical. None of them wanted to shun the product completely and, above all, none of them made it clear that they would not buy it again. When asked about the emotions they felt toward the product after having grasped a possible association with the colonial era, they never managed to express them explicitly. In addition to the vague responses, the declaration of nostalgic reminders associated with the declared image by some older respondents seemed to reinforce the marketing strategy of predicting more sweet than bitter reactions to this “traditional” choice (Kessous, 2015).

In sum, two different types of reactions, observed among older and younger respondents, seem to both confirm but also challenge the findings of a large study conducted on collectibles such as porcelain figurines, enamel plates, and “nostalgic” tin cans, all of which depict stereotypical colonial images of African Moors:

“The collection of artefacts depicting indigenous cultures of former European colonies as well as images of racialized individuals as cultural commodities serve as vehicles for constructing white Western identities. Juxtaposed with a racialized other, in this case the black servant or slave, Western identities have taken on the position of the normalized subject who, by virtue of being positioned as the norm, loses his or her equally racialized status. As a result, race becomes something that exclusively concerns people of color, but is in fact held by white people” (Cserno, 2008: 69–101; 81).

While this racialization of food that made certain products successful is still detectable among our research participants, confirming the link between white respondents’ nostalgia and the reassuring associations of racialized advertising (Hackenesch, 2014), the taste of these nostalgic reminders seems to change from sweet to bitter when younger generations come to discuss this issue in the civic forum.

Conclusions

In this chapter, we have addressed the theoretical question of conflicting moral reactions to traces of the community’s past by discussing a specific case concerning the ephemeral traces of colonialism left in everyday consumer objects. We focus on one such material artifact, still present in many nostalgic settings in European spaces, related to food advertisements recalling past colonial domination. While chocolate and coffee advertisements often refer to colonial exchanges in many European countries (Hackenesch, 2014), they are particularly significant in the Italian context, where coffee is not only a food consumer product, but also a symbol of Italian culture (Garvin, 2021). In order to understand the consequences of awareness of the colonial meaning of such ephemeral objects, the results of a qualitative research were discussed, comparing the reactions of Italian respondents of different generations to the unveiling of a possible colonial reference hidden in the packaging of a candy still showing the image of the African boy. Although still at a preliminary stage, these data seem to suggest that generational turnover can change the reaction to these nostalgic objects, from the sweet taste of familiar memories to the bitter recognition of the violent past enacted by one’s own group. Understanding and confronting these reactions will help us to build a more welcoming place for young Europeans and young foreigners who choose to live in our cities.