Simone Fugazzotto’s painting was supposed to help Serie A in anti-racism campaign among Italian fans, but using monkey illustration clearly showed the lack of understanding behind the meaning of it.
The use of monkey is by far, inappropriate. History told how monkey or any kind of ape was used to compare with black or African people, presumably to taunt and humiliate them.
Dealing with racism, has been improving since the turn of millennium but football scene particularly in Italy are still struggling to find a way to stop fans from doing a monkey chanting, hurling a banana or acting like an ape.
The artist’s intentions: paint a western monkey, a black monkey & an Asian monkey to show that humans are all the same.
Okay, great.
Serie A commissioning the project shows how utterly tone deaf they are. Good that there’s this initiative, but once again poor execution. pic.twitter.com/aL0cTeJu4w
— Matteo Bonetti (@BonettiESPN) December 16, 2019
The key in anti-racism campaign is, no one should ever use monkey reference to address the issue. Instead they need to put a strict regulations, caught the racist offender, or anyone who are trying to monkey chant should be ban from coming to the stadium.
It might be easier said than done, but if only they take more action to the racism.
When action was taken, it will set an example to every fans out there, racism has no place anywhere, not even football.
Fugazzotto defends his artwork, as he try to create a debate for the use of monkey, so people are more aware that monkey imagery is offensive.
That means he is fighting racism with racism.
Rather than throwing criticism, this should be an eye-opener to Italian football, to take more action against racism in the future.