The Italian soccer first division, Serie A, has faced intense public backlash over the past few months for its handling, or mishandling, of instances of racism with fans and the media.
It’s a major problem, one that Serie A officials have seem hesitant to address, or even acknowledge. Behavior of fans has been dismissed as the actions of a few bad apples, or not really that bad, or just Italian fans’ way of expressing themselves.
When a soccer newspaper labeled a matchup between two black players as “Black Friday,” it was again dismissed as people not being able to take a joke.
Finally, this week, Serie A announced that it was going to start taking things seriously. The league finally announced it was launching an anti-racism campaign and … they chose monkey imagery.
Seriously.
These paintings will be on display after the Napoli vs Inter game on Boxing Day… pic.twitter.com/hwL55FVFAu
— Gilles (@_Grimanditweets) December 16, 2019
It’s a shockingly tone deaf response, and yes, it is real.
The artist is Simone Fugazzotto and he says he created the pieces to ‘change people’s perceptions’.
He said: ‘For an artist, there is nothing more important than trying to change people’s perceptions via their work.
‘With this trio of paintings, I tried to show that we are all complex and fascinating creatures, who can be sad or happy, Catholic, Muslim or Buddhist, but at the end of the day, what decides who we are is not the colour of our skin.’
Fugazzotto, it should be noted, is white.
Serie A apparently tried to get edgy here, or tried to re-appropriate the imagery that has been used to spread vile messages of racism at their games. It’s not the time, and they aren’t the people to do it. I’m sort of dumbfounded that this could even happen, but here we are.
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