Italy’s first black minister draws fury

Anti-immigrant Northern League attacks her

ROME • It was hailed as a giant step forward for racial integration in a country that has long been ill at ease with its growing immigrant classes.

Instead, Cécile Kyenge’s appointment as Italy’s first black cabinet minister has exposed the nation’s ugly race problem, a blight that flares regularly on the soccer pitch with racist taunts and in the diatribes of xenophobic politicians.

One opposition politician derided the new “bonga bonga government.”

On Wednesday, amid increasing revulsion over the reaction, the government authorized an investigation into neo-fascist websites whose members called Ms. Kyenge a “Congolese monkey” and other epithets.

Ms. Kyenge, 48, was born in Congo and moved to Italy three decades ago to study medicine. An eye surgeon, she lives in Modena with her Italian husband and two children. She won a seat in the lower Chamber of Deputies in the February elections.

Premier Enrico L e tta tapped her to be minister of integration, touting her appointment as a “new concept about the confines of barriers giving way to hope, of unsurpassable limits giving way to a bridge between diverse communities.”

His praise and that of others has been almost drowned out by the racist slurs directed at Ms. Kyenge by politicians of the anti-immigrant Northern League party.

In addition to his “bonga bonga” slur, Mario Borghezio, a European parliamentarian for the league, warned in an interview with Radio 24 Ms. Kyenge would try to “impose tribal traditions” from her native Congo on Italy.

Some of the most blatant manifestations of racism occur in the realm of Italy’s favourite sport, soccer.

Mario Balotelli, the AC Milan striker born in Palermo to Ghanaian immigrants and raised by an Italian adoptive family, knows all about it. Perhaps Italy’s best player today, he has long been the subject of racist taunts. Kazakh students Azamat Tazhayakov, left, and Dias Kadyrbayev with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

in Times Square in New York. The photo was posted to a Russian-language social network three days after the bombing.