4 - Growing Up Black in Postwar Italy

Summary

Drawing on institutional records and oral testimonies, Chapter 4 shows that racial beliefs and prejudices did not just exist among the educated classes, but were present also among ordinary Italians. It reconstructs the difficulties that the children had to face as they entered adolescence in the late 1950s in a society that was not particularly kind to people who looked “different” or did not profess the dominant religion. This chapter describes the attempts on the part of some social workers to shelter these children from social hostility and marginalization in the communities in which they lived, and the rather mixed results of these attempts. The difficulties of adoption are also examined, along with stories of mothers who kept the children, and who were stigmatized along with them.