ROME — When Cécile Kyenge accepted the post of minister of integration in Prime Minister Enrico Letta’s center-left government, she knew that as Italy’s first black national official she would be breaking new ground. What she may not have expected was the stream of racial slurs that have accompanied her first eight weeks in office.

Death threats have been posted on Facebook, and in one case this month, a City Council member in Padua called for Ms. Kyenge to be raped so that she could “understand” what victims felt. The councilor, Dolores Valandro, who made the comment in a discussion about a woman said to have been raped by an African man, was subsequently expelled from her party, the anti-immigrant Northern League.

The verbal attacks have been worrying enough that Ms. Kyenge, 48, who was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo and moved to Italy at 19, now travels with heightened security. She has so far chosen not to respond directly to her detractors but instead has praised the many who have spoken out in her support to underscore the need for Italians to strive for civility.

“It’s up to the institutions, to the population, to give a response to these attacks,” Ms. Kyenge said in a recent interview in her stately office in central Rome. “I don’t respond because the stimulus for discussion emerges from that. You see the best of Italy when there is a response in the public domain.”