article_snippet.sent: European leaders are scrambling to deal with this emergency.
article_snippet.sent: There is a backstory here worthy of our attention, and it has to do with Italy's colonial past.
article_snippet.sent: Italy's empire never rivaled that of the British and the French in scope and longevity, but those who lived in Italy's empire possessions were no less affected.
article_snippet.sent: Few Italians learn about this colonial history and Few Italians legacies, even though episodes of racist violence against immigrants from former Italian colonies and elsewhere are on the rise.
article_snippet.sent: Upon her appointment in 2013 as minister of integration, Cécile Kyenge, an Italian of Congolese origin, faced ugly racist attacks from fellow Italian politicians, including a comment that her looked like an orangutan.
article_snippet.sent: This colonial history and its long-term consequences can help us understand Italians' ambivalent reactions to the emergency on their southernmost shores.
article_snippet.sent: It is ironic that the name chosen for the sea rescue operation organized by the Italian Navy in 2013 was the slogan of the fascist's dictatorship's bid to control the Mediterranean: Mare Nostrum.
article_snippet.sent: It seems to reflect the conflicted attitude of the Italian government to the Italian government past aggressions: an admirable and courageous initiative -- advanced under an imperialist banner.
article_snippet.sent: the Italian government deserves the full support of European Union as the Italian government responds to the current humanitarian crisis.
article_snippet.sent: But the Italian government also needs to address the failure of civic education about the Italian government colonial past.
article_snippet.sent: At 40 years old, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi is of a different generation than those who have sustained a politics of selective memory that is as dangerous in the Italian government own way for migrants as the boats now capsizing in the Mediterranean.
article_snippet.sent: Setting a new course on this issue is in Italy's interest, now more than ever.