African Europeans: An Untold History by Olivette Otele

Author:Olivette Otele
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: C. Hurst & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.
Published: 2020-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

6

Claiming A Past, Navigating The Present

Theodor Michael’s commitment to engaging with Afro-German communities in the last part of the twentieth century echoes the trajectory of several African Europeans. Beyond documenting aspects of the black presence in Europe, one of the most prolific aspects of black activism in twenty-first-century Europe has been a greater emphasis on the collective production of knowledge and on self-documenting African European experiences in various areas across the European continent. In Italy, Afro-Italians, alongside other children and descendants of immigrants, have been able to challenge common discriminatory practices that plague Italian society. The question of citizenship, for example, was brought to the forefront of political and societal debates when those communities mobilised and questioned the validity of the principle of citizenship based on ‘right of blood’, which states that children of immigrants born in Italy can only apply for citizenship when they reach their eighteenth birthday. This process is a race against time, as they then only have one year to gather the documentation needed to submit their application. Associations such as Rete G2 and many others have worked collaboratively to place pressure on institutions, and shifted the debate in parliament from ‘right of blood’ to birth right.269 The question was debated in the Italian lower house in 2015.

These groups have also been tackling questions that have a poignant impact on various aspects of Afro-Italian identities. Academic Annalisa Frisina and Afro-Italian academic Camilla Hawthorne have analysed how young Afro-Italian women trouble Western beauty norms in their own daily ‘aesthetic practices’, as part of an organised and collective form of resistance against discrimination in a society that has denied them citizenship. Using the work of Philomena Essed, Frisina and Hawthorne tackle the issue of ‘gendered racism’ and analyse what Anita Harris calls ‘everyday multiculturalism’. The women in the study use their bodies as sites of resistance by refusing to conform to Western hairstyle norms and adopting ‘“fashionable” Islamic veil[s]’.270 Interviewed by Frisina and Hawthorne in 2014, they candidly discussed the currency of light skin colour for women in Italian society, as well as in Africa, in the twenty-first century. The question of race central to the debate manifests itself in various ways. We are indeed conditioned to accept certain norms of beauty that work in conjunction with skin colour and follow a certain hierarchy. As argued by Frisina and Hawthorne, certain characteristics such as hair, weight, body shape and forms of movement, as well as clothing, are read according to the ‘grids’ we have been provided by society, which ‘work to reproduce racialised relations of power’.271 Using social media to connect, share their experiences and support one another, the groups of women interviewed have developed tools to claim their Italian roots.

Two different groups were interviewed. Women of North African descent born in Italy used their Facebook group Hijab Elegante to resist islamophobia, isolation and fear, and to set their own beauty standard while wearing the hijab. The second group was Nappytalia, a Facebook page mostly aimed at discussing

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