You will change

One of the demonstrators in Milan was Kelly Aboa, a 21-year-old nursing student at the University of Milano Bicocca.

Kelly was born and raised in Bergamo to parents from Ivory Coast who immigrated to Italy in the 1990s. She is also part of the local branch of the Black Lives Matter movement in her city. For black Italians like Kelly, watching Tale e Quale was "horrifying", considering that "seeing any black person in any Italian programme is really difficult," Kelly said.  

The blackface criticism was picked up on a massive scale when actor Sergio Muniz imitated Tunisian-Italian rapper Ghali on November 20, 2020. The 28-year-old artist condemned the practice on social media, calling it "unnecessary." As a result of this, black Italian activists and allies empowered by the Black Lives Matter protests that year, created the campaign #CambieRAI on 5th April 2021.

The initiative- a play on the broadcaster’s name which translates as ‘you will change’- was founded to "educate about the implications of discriminatory choices on RAI." A letter was also sent to RAI calling for an end to the blackface practice on Tale e Quale.

Kelly was part of the #CambieRAI campaign. She said RAI often disregarded its own code of ethics to promote entertainment in an inclusive way.

Rai Per il Sociale is a department of RAI which focuses on promoting social issues in the company's programmes. To find out why blackface was allowed on the show, I reached out to Roberto Natale, the Director of Sustainability in Rai per il Sociale.

Alessia Reyna was one of the signatories to the #CambieRAI letter.

Alessia was born in Rome and raised in Milan to parents from America and Peru who migrated to Italy in the 1970s and 80s. Now living in London, the immigration consultant and law student, founded D.E.I Futuro Antirazzista (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion), formerly known as Black Lives Matter Italy.

Her Instagram page, with over 16,000 followers, has been keeping track of offensive content across Italian media, including RAI. Her page helped to raise the issue of blackface on the Tale e Quale show to a wider audience.

The use of blackface in Tale e Quale show has been linked to the different ways black and white people are represented, which derives from Italy’s colonial empire.

Angelica Pesarini, an assistant professor in Race, Diaspora and Italian Studies at the University of Toronto, said: “Italians have a romanticised version of colonialism, of the ‘brava gente’ (Italians are good people)."

For this, Italy's “romanticised” colonial view has remained in the representation of black people in Italian television, leading to prejudices and stereotypes. The use of blackface on The Tale e Quale show has been branded as a “harmless celebratory act to the impersonated artists. "

Pesarini said: “It is very difficult to explain what blackface is in Italy where we are starting from a completely different concept of what race is. Such a thing in the UK is inconceivable. In Italy, everything is always said in ‘good faith’ or doesn't have the intention of causing harm while doing the complete opposite.” 

In February this year, Rai Per il Sociale created a discussion table with the activists involved in raising the issue, including #CambieRAI.

The Action Plan consists of proposals to increase the network’s diversity and representation on "the contents of programmes, the training of operators, and in hiring of a diverse staff," Director Roberto Natale said.