Yep, slightly less now because of internal migration ( lots of people from the South moved and still move to the North to work) but yeah, they used to call us Africans or "terroni " ( like "land peasants "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrone).
Cesare Lombroso, the father of modern criminology, had a theory according to which many of us were "natural born criminals " also because of our African and Arab ancestry ( very offensive, I m cool with the natural born criminal thing but I m no Arab! just kidding in case you are wondering)
Btw one of my best friends back home is almost 2 meters tall blonde with blue eyes ( yep, even I had kinda a crush on him, imagine the ladies

) while another friend of mine from Calabria looks basically like an Arab ( he did his PhD with me in the UK and the security at Heathrow and Stansted were very fond of him ) so again, this race thing is BOLLOCKS