A Colonialism no longer Racist? The Unsustainable Aspirations of African Subjects after World War II

Abstract

The history of the transition to independence of the Italian colonies was also a history of anti-racism which, not surprisingly, has often been associated with anti-colonialism and with the history of nationalist movements in Africa. The case of the decolonization of the Italian colonies represents a special case not only for the strongly international trajectory of the postcolonial order that the United Nations General Assembly agreed to, but also for the strong competition on the African side among the nationalist movements and the African elites who supported the continuity of the colonial system. It is precisely from this competition that an anti-racist instance emerged. This phenomenon is at the centre of this article, emphasising how anti-racism could not be necessarily or merely seen in reference to nationalist movements. Those colonial subjects who had declared themselves supportive
towards the hypothesis of Italy’s return to Africa claimed the need for a colonial reform in order to obtain a wider participation in the government of the colonies and the real relinquishment of the Fascist segregationist regime. This article therefore does not intend to investigate the anti-racism and anti-colonialism of nationalists, but the project of a form of colonialism that was supposed to be no longer racist, or in any case more inclusive, for the benefit of the African subjects who intermediated with the colonial politics and propaganda of the Italian Republic. This project was doomed to failure, insofar as colonialism and antiracism were ultimately irreconcilable terms. It was the independence of the colonies that finally put racism into question, when the very end of colonialism was achieved.