CW: xenophobia

I wanto to elaborate on this. Italians were considered unwanted immigrants in the US till not so long ago. They were lynched, imprisoned, killed. They were, similarly to Japanese people, forced into internment camps during WWII both in the US and the UK 1/? https://twitter.com/jackdaw_writes/status/1380198682092507141

Now, in the US, things are different and white Italians and Italo-americans benefit from white privilege. But this kind of prejudice against Italians still exists, to some extent, in some European countries. Southern Europe, as EE, is often considered... unworthy. 2/?

I'm a European federalist, and I'm far from thinking that Evil Northern/Western Europe is oppressing us, like many fellow Italians think. But it's undeniable that prejudices against Southern Europeans exist in other areas of Europe 3/?

It's... complicated. Way more complicated. You can reduce so much history, so much baggage, to 'a person of this heritage is an oppressore, a person of this heritage is a victim'. Italy had done so much wrong. But so much wrong has been done to Italic people as well. 4/?

The fact that *in this moment of history* white Italians have privilege in the US doesn't erase the fact that we're still considered lazy at best, criminals at worst in many parts of Europe. White people in the US may be on the same level but it's not the same in Europe. 5/?

Of course I'm not comparing this to what BIPOC go through. But European society is not a monolith, and often it doesn't work the same way USian society does. Discrimination works in many, many ways in Europe. 6/6