Rebecca Pavan’s Story of Common Racism: “They Asked Me for a Ticket Because I Have Black Skin”

Rebecca Pavan he is in the company of his mother Cristina, I am returning from the Nave de Vero shopping center in Marghera (Venice). They are stopped at the bus stop, waiting for the arrival of the vehicle from line 85, which works for a private company. They board the vehicle one after the other, her mother preceding her. The woman passes in front of the driver and the inspector goes to sit down.

Then something strange and very unpleasant happens. Not her, the 21-year-old Veronese sportswoman who is part of the Italian athletics team is stopped by the man checking the travel tickets. He asks if she has her ticket, to show and stamp it or to show her the pass. He just asks her to return the title before he sits on the bus.

Why? The blue jumper (in the altitude specialty) was adopted and is Italian for all intents and purposes, but her fault – she will tell in the story given to the Venetian edition of the Corriere della Sera – is that she has black skin unlike her mother. “He didn’t ask my mother, but only me, who was behind her – admitted Pavan -. It’s fair to ask that the ticket be validated but what made me feel bad was the look of disgust and the annoyed tone of a person who, upon seeing a black woman getting on the bus, left with the idea that she wanted to be smart and not pay”🇧🇷

It wasn’t the first time she was faced with a situation like this. In most cases, her reaction is only one: he chooses “to ignore them”🇧🇷 But her mother didn’t, when she realized what happened, when she understood that the employee’s attitude on board the bus goes beyond the work environment, she got up from the seat she was occupying and protested.

Bitter, disappointed, annoyed, she walks up the short aisle to the driver’s seat and asks for an explanation. The answer given to her is as objectionable as it is disarming. “I know you, but I had never seen the young lady so I asked her for a ticket, that’s all…”it was the controller’s response that fueled the woman’s anger. “Has she seen me before? That’s a lie because I never come up here… So what does that mean? Just because she’s black?”🇧🇷

Pavan performs a high jump test wearing the uniform of the Italian athletics team (image from instagram).

On Facebook, the lady had described everything in a post that accompanied that day: “How to spoil a beautiful morning… On the way back from the Neve de Vero Shopping Centre, at 11:40 am we took bus 85, the inspector only asked Rebecca for a ticket… we sat down… after two seconds I got up and asked for an explanation!!! The friendly controller told me that Rebeca might not have a ticket, he had never seen her on the bus, while he had seen me!!! An absurd lie, to which I told him that the request made to our daughter, this is called racism and that sucks, just because she’s not white!!! It won’t end there.”

The story generated an uproar and reached the top of the company, which, in its official position, was cautious while waiting for the verification of the facts through internal investigation to then take the most appropriate decisions. “If our employee’s responsibilities are cleared – informs Arriva Italia – we will act accordingly on the disciplinary front. Obviously, we condemn any form of racism and discrimination and our greatest solidarity goes to the girl and her mother in any case, but we would like to clarify that this type of checks takes place for any claim or dispute filed by one of our users”.

Disconsolate, Rebecca Pavan published an eloquent post on Instagram: “Don’t be racist, having black skin is not a crime”🇧🇷 And he commented on the episode with the spirit of someone who knows deep down that it won’t be the last. “These are things that happen since childhood – added the jumper – but they always hurt and it is unacceptable for anyone and even more so for a public transport employee, in 2022. It is an unjustifiable attitude”.