In 2013, bananas were hurled at Italy’s first black cabinet minister, Cécile Kyenge. The same year, a local councilor for the Northern League, a regionalist party, said she should be raped, and a senator for the same party likened her to an orangutan. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, is Italy’s interior minister and deputy prime minister, working to make good on his nativist promises. Not lost in Salvini’s portfolio is his long-standing effort to obtain a legal judgment against Kyenge for criticizing his party. That year, she was named minister of integration by Prime Minister Enrico Letta.

Source: National Post September 21, 2018 13:30 UTC