Olympic volleyball champion Paola Egonu is one of the very best. A political issue in her home country of Italy because she is black.
Paola Egonu won the gold medal in volleyball in Paris Photo: Annegret Hilse/reuters
At the age of four, Paola Egonu realises that she doesn’t belong. She is detained in the Italian daycare for a trivial matter and is not allowed to go to the toilet. Paola Egonu wets herself. The teacher laughs at her: “You stink, you stink!” She refuses to clean the child.
This is what Paola Egonu, one of the best volleyball players in the world, told us. 2023 of the Italian edition of Vanity Fair. To this day, Egonu says, she is hesitant to go to the toilet outside of her home. Her parents demanded that she adapt to the racist world. They taught her to be clean because she would be told that black people stink.
And not putting your hands in your pockets in shops so as not to be accused of stealing. She still sticks to that today. Has Italian racism improved since then? “No,” Paola Egonu answered briefly. And she talked about everyday racism against her mother, for example. “What hurts me most is that she doesn’t even get angry: ‘That’s normal,’ she tells me.”
Italian celebrity
The interview with Vanity Fair has caused a big stir in Italy. Like so many things that Paola Egonu says. Egonu is also being talked about in Germany: An Italian mural celebrating her Olympic victory in Paris was sprayed over – her skin color was made pink. But the act has a long history.
Paola Egonu is very famous in Italy. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants has won everything in volleyball: European champion, Champions League winner, Italian champion and cup winner, and now she is also an Olympic champion. But even in the volleyball nation of Italy, you don’t get on the talk shows just because you play volleyball well.
Paola Egonu’s career has always been accompanied by political debates, a lot of hatred and hostility, but also admiration. Because she is black, queer and doesn’t mince her words. She symbolizes the hope for a new, better Italy. And for others, its downfall.
Racism off the field
“Italy is a racist country” – that is one of Egonu’s simple sentences that caused an outcry. She often speaks in talk shows with a smile and quietly, not at all rowdily. She speaks because at some point she could no longer remain silent about the massive racism against her. And now she talks about much more.
The exceptional athlete openly addresses her panic attacks, her divided relationship with elite sport, and the prejudices she experienced from her family and outsiders because of her bisexuality. “How dare you judge me or a homosexual couple who lovingly raise children when the world is full of dysfunctional traditional families?
It’s a world full of shit. I hope the apocalypse comes soon.” And about Giorgia Meloni: “If a party led by a woman doesn’t have the courage to defend other women, then there is no hope.” For a section of the white, heterosexual Italian public, this is far too much criticism and drastic action. Especially for a migrant’s daughter who should be grateful.
The first major rift came after the 2022 World Cup. After the match for third place, a recording was made public in which Paola Egonu tearfully told her agent about the racism of the media and fans. “They asked me why I was Italian. That was my last game for the national team.”
She later publicly retracted her announcement of her resignation, but made no secret of her divided relationship with Italy: “I ask myself why I have to represent such people.” Some members of the Italian public took this very badly. The athlete later reported on host Gianluca Gazzoli’s podcast about the hostility she had received: she had been welcomed and was turning against Italy.
Egonus Mural
The defaced mural by artist Laika is named Italianness – which can be translated as “Italianness”. Paola Egonu hits a ball against hate and racism.
This Italiannessalso a fighting term of the New Right for a rather vaguely defined Italianness, was used by Roberto Vannacci, former major general of the army and now a member of the European Parliament for the right-wing populist Lega, in his racist and anti-queer rant “Twisted World” to deny Egonu.
The court unsuccessfully appealed against the ban. Post-fascist Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni tried to calm the waters earlier this year and had herself publicly photographed playing volleyball with Paola Egonu. The unknown vandals have now again Italianness agreed.
In Italy, this sparked major debates, including about the right-wing government’s failures in Italian civil rights. Politicians from across the political spectrum rushed to condemn the incident – ironic, given that it was the parties that created such a climate in the first place with their anti-immigration policies and courting of Vannacci.
Vannacci himself expressed a grotesque non-pology: The attack on the mural was an attack on freedom of expression – similar to the “cancel culture ideology” in which books are rewritten and Juliet (Romeo’s role) is played by a black woman.
But there was also huge solidarity with Egonu. The Press headlined: “Why we are all Paola Egonu”. Paola Egonu is very present in society, models for Armani, was a voice actress and hosted the big Sanremo Festival in 2023. The mural has since been painted over with black skin paint by an unknown passerby.
What is striking, however, is the loud silence of Giorgia Meloni. The neo-fascist, who had previously lobbied loudly for boxer Angela Carini against Imane Khelif, who was described as intersex, had nothing to say about the attack on the Olympic volleyball champion.
Paola Egonu has always had to find her own words and will certainly continue to do so. Vanity Fair she has announced a future as an activist. “We athletes are diplomatic so as not to upset the clubs and not to create tensions in the team. When I stop playing, maybe I can tell the whole truth.” The Italian right has reason to be afraid.
