Heh, funny that richer parts of the EU say this about Italy itself.
Unfortunately that's blatantly false. Italy paid contributions to the EU in vast excess of contributions that were taken by Italians. Didn't find historical figures, but this is the most recent [0], and by memory I know that the same unbalance has been going on for a long time:
- Total EU spending in Italy: € 11.592 billion - Total Italian contribution to the EU budget: € 13.940 billion"
If your goal was instead to make a funny joke, you succeeded at being offensive to me (as an Italian).
In all seriousness, your comment feels to me as equivalent to a guy writing about how women waste money more than they earn (I would be the woman in this case).
[0]: https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/countries/member-c...
Source: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/ireland-s-contri...
Source: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-05/gst-redistribution-de...
And I don't think they do. Some people, sure. Every population has a bunch of people who would say things like that. Because they can, because they enjoy it, it likely makes them feel better, or so they think.
And there are people who enjoy listening to them and repeating what they say.
It's not about whether it's true, or accurate, it's just "funny" because irony can be funny.
Just like the "unwashed masses" have a bad impression of eg Turkey based on racism/classism towards their local Turkish-$NATIONALITY minority, they have the idea that Italy has to be a poor backward place based on racism/classism towards the local Italian-$NATIONALY minority.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_history_of_Italy
But that's beside the point. I invoked the modern use of the term "racism" that includes different ways of segregating a population and not just genetics. "Southerners are lazy, corrupt" etc. Call it cultural racism if you wish.
AFAIK most of the genetic variation in Italy dates back from ancient times. Everyone thinks "of course, it was the Islamic invasions in Sicily and the Germanic invasions in the North", but the genetic impact of those was surprisingly small. The variation was there before.
The Greek colonization of southern Italy is the one historical migration that _did_ have significant impact, according to the article.
Race is not about genetics. It's a cultural construct, which is predominantly based on historical and ethnological differences (with the inevitable, but not critical mix of genetics that comes with the latter), and has little to do with actual "races".
People from Italy and the Balkans for example where perceived as "non white" when immigrating to the US, while being caucasian. They just weren't anglosaxon, germanic, or nordic, as the dominant WASP Americans of the time. There are is lots of historical and cultural studies on this [1].
WASP Americans badmouthing Greeks or Italians were racist, even if talking about people the same race.
And it's a similar cases between Northern and Southern Italians (there are cultural, historical and ethnological differences between the two areas). The racism of north vs south comes from that -- and it even fed into actual far right / neo-fascist parties, like the Lega Nord ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega_Nord ).
Whether Southern italians are indeed "less productive" is beside the point too. Blacks in the US are also poorer and less 'productive', more likely to be convicted felons (statistically), etc, but people still consider someone badmouthing blacks to have racist motives.
[1] The immigrants from the southern part of Italy and Sicily were not considered wholly white by Anglo-Saxon standards, a notion which was reinforced by the US Immigration Department classification of northern and southern Italians as two distinct caucasian ethnic groups. In reaction to the large-scale immigration from southern and eastern Europe, Congress passed legislation (Emergency Quota Act of 1921 and Immigration Act of 1924) restricting immigration from those regions, but not from Northern European countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italianism#Anti-Italianis...
"Modern" racism can be more subtle than that, more about xenophobia or just classism.
Races do not exist biologically[0][1], but they do 'exist' as a social construct[2][3][4]. And I second your second sentence :)
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrKrGkgeww4&index=4&list=PLy...
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/race-is-a-social-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_constructionism
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/05/what-we...
[4] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/without-prejudice/20...
The latter have no problem with dividing different people into groups based on ancestry based on what continent their ancestor came from though the word race is passé.
Yes, since they were the poorest provinces, and thus the ones that produced most immigrants.
A "fun" read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Italianism#Anti-Italianis...
edit: We done fixed some grammar.