Elmer Effect

Elmer, the colorful elephant, is a friendly, multi-colored pachyderm known to children around the world. He's terribly uncomfortable juxtaposing the loneliness of his rainbow skin with the sad gray of his many trunk-wielding companions.
Elmer even treats himself with elephant-colored berries to gain acceptance among his peers, and only becomes a harlequin again after a sudden storm, discovering that no one can resist his infectious laugh and that those colors represent his uniqueness. We could call it the "Elmer effect": it's a diversity that inspires tenderness, curiosity, and sympathy. Elmer is unique, and everyone competes to be kind and gentle to him, to the point of holding a great annual celebration where everyone paints their skin with every possible color and marches in a parade in his honor. But if one day, colored elephants equaled the gray ones in number, or even outnumbered them, would they continue to be welcoming and friendly, or would they cry foul at the invasion of their fellows, who aren't so similar because of their color? Would signs like "No rent to colored elephants" start appearing against those pachyderms who eat, wear, and do strange and frighteningly different things?

In Italy, there is approximately one immigrant for every ten inhabitants, sometimes even of our own color, with a higher concentration of people of foreign origin in the north of the country and, particularly, in large cities, where in some neighborhoods their presence has a significant impact on the total population, to the point of making us seem a bit like the little colored elephant. Seen from a multiethnic neighborhood where the alarm is raised against the Maranza culture and is full of Elmers, both small and large, regardless of our color and that of those around us, it seems clear that we all strive differently toward the same complex goal: happiness. And when I watch my children take their first steps and fall, I hope they can grow up in a beautiful and safe neighborhood, full of lovely gardens to play in, clean air to breathe, a warm home where they can spend time doing nothing, a beautiful school where they can learn many things, and a thousand places to do what they love most without the cost of participating in activities being higher than our money. We want the best because we hope the best things happen for them, but isn't the same true for other dads and moms, regardless of their color?

When my sense of protection forces me to suddenly back up the stroller because someone raises their voice or smashes a glass bottle on the ground as a rudimentary weapon to fight back, I think I feel the same sense of annoyance, discomfort, and anger as every other parent, black, white, or yellow: would anyone be happy to raise their children seeing them afraid or in danger even just walking from home to school? And standing here, you understand how all points of view have their reason to exist, especially that of those who are afraid even to leave their homes. You experience firsthand how precious the freedom to choose what to believe in, who to love, and what clothes to wear is. And the problem isn't skin color, the veil over one's head, or the Maranza culture, but once again happiness, which is made up of many little pieces, which everyone would like but not everyone can, including a decent living and economic situation as much as freedom and security.
And so perhaps, as Elmer teaches us, more than the color of our skin, we should all pay attention to the color of our hearts.

Marco Grossetti
NP December 2025