Razzismo e difficult heritage: il ruolo delle memorie coloniali

The paper intends to reflect on the racial question in the light of the historiographical debate on the return of race in public discourse (Graziosi, 2025). The thesis discussed in the contribution adopts the methodology of the Public history of education (Bandini, 2019) to analyze the controversial Italian colonial memory, considered as an incubator of the race stereotypes still widespread today. The heuristic suggestions of the Public history of education prove invaluable in dealing with the complex legacy of colonialism, which can be defined as a difficult heritage (Macdonald, 2009) that evokes opposing feelings in public opinion. The aim is to develop a credible and, for this very reason, necessarily complex historical narrative of colonialism (Deplano, 2023b).