“Are you dirty or black?”: Controversy over a book for elementary schools

The black and white boy, with a curious look, approaches the colored girl with the pigtails and asks her: “Are you dirty or are you all black?” A new cartoon – after the one published in the book by Raffaello Publishing Group in which the black boy says “I want to learn Italian well” – returns to the discussion.

This time the cartoon is contained in Ardea Editore’s book entitled “Rossofuoco” and is reserved for the first three classes of primary school.

The cartoon is in a paragraph entitled “A new friend” and begins with the narration of the white boy: “While I was in the park and looked at an insect on the ground, a girl stopped next to me. It was small and all black. He had funny braids on his head and mischievous eyes. Then the boy asks the girl: “Are you dirty or are you all black?” Then the child says: ‘She didn’t answer me, but she did a somersault, so I did one too, but I fell ill. Then she approached me. And then the child, looking at her more closely, says: “You are very black.” Then the boy smiles and runs away. A cartoon that, even in this case, provokes discussion.

To publish it on Facebook Marwa Mahmoud, Councilor of the City Council of Reggio Emilia and president of the municipal commission “Human Rights”, equal opportunities and international relations. In the post, the councilor photographs the edition of the book from a few years ago, but which is still on the market today. In her post she wrote: “An inferiorizing narrative that combines black skin with dirt is unacceptable.”

Many comments have been unleashed against the drawing, many have stated that in children’s heads there are no prejudices and that many times they do not even think about the color of their friends’ skin. “A child,” Corrado writes, “does not care about skin color, these superstructures are taught later.”