Edited by Azizi Powell
Pancocojams Editor's Note:
Most of the content of this post was published in July 2013 http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/07/what-afro-european-afropean-mean.html
That 2013 post has nine comments which might be of interest to readers of this post. One of those comments which I wrote is given as an Addendum to this post. This post also includes an excerpt about the 7th Biennial Afroeuropean Network Conference in Lisbon, Portugal on July 4-9, 2019.
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This pancocojams post provides information & commentary about the group referents "Afro-European" and "Afropean". Links to additional posts about this population & two videos that feature persons from this population are also included in this post.
The content of this post is presented for cultural, sociological, educational, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publishers of these videos on YouTube.
Disclaimer: As I am an African American living in the United States, I wouldn't dream of speaking for Afro-Europeans/Afropeans, although, according to my understanding of the definitions of "Afro-European" and "Afropean", if I were to move to Europe, I would be considered a member of that population.
Additions & corrections to the information & commentary in this post are very welcome.
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DEFINITIONS OF "AFRO-EUROPEAN" & "AFROPEAN"
"Afro-European" is a referent for persons of Black African descent who were born in or who live in European nations. A second definition of "Afro-European" is that it refers to mixed racial persons of Black African & White European ancestry.*
"Afropean" is a shortened form of that same referent.
The term "Afro-European" follows the same structure of such population referents as "Afro-American", "Afro-Cuban", and "Afro-Caribbean". Each of these terms are formed by combining the prefix "Afro" (meaning "African") with the word "European".
*I wrote "White European" because I think that the world is moving away from a time when the term "European" is a synonym for "White".
Some could maintain that "African American" could be a referent for a person of any race from Africa who now lives in the United States of America [notwithstanding the fact that "America" actually refers to much more than the USA]. Therefore, I suppose "Afro-European" could also refer to White people from Africa who now live in Europe. (Or maybe the referent for White Africans would be "Euro-Africans". However, I've never seen "Euro-African" used & I'm not promoting its use.)
But defining "Afro-European" as a person of any race from Africa now living in Europe" doesn't appear to be the usual meaning of the term "Afro-European". However, it's the reason why in the definition above I added the word "Black" before the phrase "African descent".
And would "Asian Africans" be a generalized referent for Asians living in Africa or who were born in Africa? There are, after all, White people and other People of Color besides Black people living in or who were born in most African nations. I wonder if there are any generalized, pan-African referents for that population which includes those who are racially mixed and/or who aren't racially mixed. Given the rising number of Chinese in Africa, it seems to me that such a racial referent may be needed now or in the immediate future.
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Here are two definitions of "Afropean" from urbandictionary.com :
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=afropean (Note: These examples are presented in chronological order with the oldest date first.)
1. Afropean
Person who relates both to Africa and Europe. Usually a person of African descent who lives in Europe and has European tastes and tendencies. Also children of both African and European parentage.
"English is your first language and you don't speak an African language, not even your mother tongue? You're so Afropean!"
"Khaki pants? This is a city not the bush - you're not African anymore. You're Afropean."
"His father's Dutch and his mother's Namibian, the boy's Afropean."
by Mutaleni Nadimi Aug 9, 2006
2. Afropean:
Term to describe the trans-cultural influences of (..usually...) mixed race individuals, or members of the black diaspora living in Europe. First coined by Talking Heads singer David Byrne, to describe the music of Belgo-Congolese group 'Zap Mama'.* Later popularized by Afro-French sister duo Les Nubians.
"They burst onto the international music scene more than a decade ago, with a blend of European and African styles they call "Afropean."**
-An Afropean, Feb 25, 2012
*Read more about Zap Mama & David Byrne in the online examples section below. I'm not certain whether Zap Mama or David Byrne coined the album title "Afropea" or if that form of the referent "Afropean" was used prior to the involvement of Zap Mama with David Byrne's record company. Also, click http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2013/07/zap-mama-erykah-badu-bandy-bandy.html to find an example of a later Zap Mama song entitled "Bandy Bandy".
**This is a quote from a 2011 NPR program about the duo
“Les Nubians”. http://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/134822770/Afropean-Soul-Sisters-Bring-A-Nu-Revolution
A video of "Les Nubians" is found below.
Additional definitions of "Afro-European:/"Afropean" are found throughout this post.
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A FEW ONLINE EXAMPLES OF THESE REFERENTS
Note: My sincere thanks to the editors & authors of these blogs, websites, facebook page, and other online examples.
The first use of a form of the referent “Afropean” that I found was from 3/1991 (the title of a Zap Mama album). "Zap Mama" is a Belgium neo-soul singing group & also the stage name of its lead singer Marie Daulne who is of Belgium/Congolese ancestry:
EXCERPT #1
"....In 1989, she [Marie Dauline] founded the group Zap Mama to merge the African and European aspects of her identity.[15] Daulne auditioned scores of female singers looking for the right combination of voices for an a cappella ensemble.[16] "When I did my first album, I was looking for girls that were the same mix as me--African and European," she says.[10] "I wanted to put these two sounds together to prove that to have blood from white and black was perfect harmony on the inside."
In 1992, Zap Mama came to the United States for the first time to perform at New Music Seminar in New York. There, they met David Byrne and agreed to let him reissue Zap Mama's first recordings as Adventures in Afropea 1[9] on Luaka Bop Records.[17] By the end of the year, Billboard announced it was the top seller for "world music."-From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zap_Mama
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EXCERPT #2:
http://www.caar-web.org/fileadmin/user_upload/files/call_for_contributions_encyclodedia_of_afro-european_studies.pdf
“The project Afroeurope@ans: Black cultures and identities in Europe funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science & Technology, is pleased to circulate this call for contributions to its exciting new project – the creation of the first online multilingual Encyclopedia of Afro-European Studies. The Encyclopedia constitutes a seminal step in a series of activities undertaken by the Afroeurope@ans Project since 2004, including the organization of biannual conferences, the publication of the e-journal AFROEUROPA: Journal of Afroeuropean Studies and a collection of essays Afroeurope@ans: Culture and Identities (Cambridge Scholars, 2009) and expanding the network of scholars, artists, and activists through academic exchange and cultural events.
The Encyclopedia will cover a range of topics related to the presence of Africans or people of African descent throughout Europe from the shores of the Atlantic to the Ural mountains including Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Russia, the Nordic countries, etc".
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EXCERPT #3
http://afroeuropeansistersnetwork.blogspot.com/2009/10/2010-conference-about-women-and-control.html
“Welcome to the Afro European Sisters Network (AESN). A site that focuses on networking black women in and outside of Europe. As women tell their stories it allows others to learn lessons from their lives. Sharing this knowledge will also empower women with the ability to become one.”
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EXCERPT #4
http://afroeurope.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-is-afroeurope-who-are.html "What is Afro-Europe? Who are the Afro-Europeans or black Europeans?"
Tuesday, September 1, 2009 by Sibo Kano*
*Pancocojams Editor's Note: Sibo Kano is Afro-Flemish [from Belgium]
"...The central question is what a Nigerian in Italy, an Angolan in Sweden, a Jamaican in the UK and a mixed race Congolese in France or Germany have in common. Europe is not even united so how would black people coming from different nations feel united within Europe? We don’t even have a common language. Below I will give my opinion on this issue.
...What we have in common is the western and European experience, and the way we are categorized within Europe as a certain kind of people. Whether you are in France, Germany, Italy or any other European country, the majority white people of Europe perceive people of African ancestry in quite the same way. This categorization isn’t entrenched in the laws of European nations, but for centuries in the past it was. It isn’t something we can easily describe nor can we demonstrate it through clear facts and figures. However, through a history of relations between Europe and the darker peoples of the planet, the ‘black man’ has received a certain place. Although racial slavery has been abolished, and racist laws eradicated from law books, the concepts and ideas inherited from more than 5 centuries of African-European relationships are still there. Whatever the colour of our skin, we are part of this history...An anomaly
Black people in Europe, whether with brown or black skin, whether born there or not, whether having a white parent or not, whether adopted or not, whether they speak the national language or not, whether integrated or not, ...are all perceived as a certain kind of foreigners. They are not supposed to be there. But in reality most black people in Europe have built their homes in Europe, have adopted European cultures as their own and are perfectly integrated. If not the first generation, then certainly their children...
This experience; being perceived as foreigners from a common continent (whether being really a foreigner or not), is central in the creation of our identity. Identity is based on the relationship you have with others. I do think that most Europeans of African ancestry, i.e culturally integrated black people, would prefer just to be seen as part of the country where they are living, fully accepted as members of that society. In reality it is not so. Even when they have actually forgotten the cultures and languages of their ancestors and only know the Western world as their world, they will still be seen as an anomaly within the Western world, even after generations...
The presence of black people in Europe is a logic consequence of the African-European history. Europe seems not to accept this logic."...
-snip-
Sibo Kano wrote me in 2013 that he "meant the African Diaspora as a whole".
Unfortunately, the afroeurope.blogspot is no longer active.
I'm glad that I happened upon that afro-europe blog in 2012. My first comment on that blog was in response to a 2009 post by Sibo Kano about being Afro-European. Excerpts of that post are found in this pancocojams post and that comment that I wrote is found in the Addendum to this post.
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EXCERPT #5
http://afroeurope.blogspot.nl/2010/12/break-blogging-black-from-netherlands.html "The break: Blogging Black from the Netherlands and how I became an Afro-European" by Erik K. [lead editor of Afro-Europe International Blog]
"...my Afro-European element what I perhaps share with other Afro-Europeans is that I want to have a piece of the country where I was born and raised in. It’s position I don’t even have to defend. Being black and European means that I also have an Afro-European connection on issues like race, black success and other specific black issues. But there is one issue that I consider very important, I don’t only have connection with Afro-Europe, but also with Africa."
-snip-
Note from Pancocojams editor:
In the one year that I started blogging on afro-europe.com, I've noticed that there have been some other African American commenters on that site, as well as some South American commenters. For that reason, I think that Erik K would probably now amend his comment above to write "I don't only have connections with Afro-Europe, but also with Africa and the rest of the African Diaspora". That's certainly how I feel.
Update: Afroeurope blog editor Erik K. confirmed my guess in a comment that he added to this post on July 4, 2013.
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EXCERPT #6
http://afroeurope.blogspot.com/2013/07/photo-book-afropean-odyssey-black.html July 1, 2013 Photo book: "An Afropean Odyssey" - A Black European Travel Narrative
This post includes selected photographs and a video of photographs from award winning writer, photographer, and London television host Johny Pitts.
"Video: A photo-montage from my travels around Europe looking at Afropean/ Black European culture with Joy Denalane's 'Vier Frauen' (Sara Tavares, Chiwoniso, Déborah, Joy Denalane) as a the soundtrack.
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EXCERPT #7
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Afro-European-Sisters-Network/112233385459365
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EXCERPT #8
http://blog.blackwomenineurope.com
"English - Blackwomenineurope, Afroeuropeans, Expatriates
A place to celebrate women of the African Diaspora living in Europe."
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FEATURED VIDEOS
Example #1: Faces of Afro-European people
AfroPrideTV, Uploaded on Jan 14, 2012
Here's the words that are found on the screen in the beginning of this video:
“Black people in Europe (Sometimes referred to as Afro-Europeans), although this term is also used to describe people of mixed African and European descent, especially in the former European colonies, are black people who are residents or citizens of European countries. They include immigrants as well as European-born people of Black African descent.
A council of European parliamentary assembly report on immigration from sub-Saharan Africa gives the number of sub-Saharan African migrants to Europe as between 3.5 and 8 million concentrated mainly in Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The report also notes that these figures are likely underestimated because of illegal migration.”
Notes:
This video features photographs of famous movie stars, athletes, singers and other famous Afro-Europeans. Most of the examples are from the United Kingdom. This video also includes people of African descent from Turkey.
As one might expect from a YouTube viewer comment thread of a video of this subject, many of the comments about this video are argumentative & racist. Nevertheless, there are some interesting comments on that comment thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVHHQOikZpY
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Warning for public school use: There's a very brief photograph of topless women in this video. Pancocojams usually doesn't include videos of such scenes.
Example #2: Les Nubians- Sugar Cane (What is Black Beauty?)
Nina513, Uploaded on Aug 8, 2010
A video dedicated to the beauty that is Les Nubians has been LONG overdue on youtube. This video is dedicated two these two sisters and the African ancestors who shine through them. They inspire so many people around the world through their music, style and honesty.
This song is off of their debut album "Princesses Nubiennes" and happens to be one of my favorites from them. Play close attention to the meaning of this song and the pictures included.
God bless!
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EXCERPT FROM THE May 2018 NOTICE: "CALL: “AFROEUROPEANS: BLACK IN/VISIBILITIES CONTESTED”
"7th Biennial Network Conference, Lisbon (4-7 July 2019)
The 7th Biennial Network Conference: “Afroeuropeans: Black In/Visibilities Contested” is an important platform for the production of knowledge in the pertinent field of transdisciplinary research on racism, black cultures and identities in Europe. It also offers the opportunity to strengthen and widen networks between scholars, activists and artists that question structural racism and are critically engaged with the production of postcolonial knowledge on european blackness and the african diaspora. This dialogue and networking is promoted through keynotes and panels, round-tables, individual speakers and artistic and cultural activities.
The title of the conference incorporates the tensions, ambiguities and paradoxes of Blackness in Europe. At the same time as black histories, cultures and social conditions are made invisible in hegemonic accounts on Europe, there is a hypervisibility and presence of black stereotyping in European popular culture. Also, while the concept of race has largely disappeared from political, sociological and administrative discourses (in continental Europe), and while the disengagement with institutional and structural racism has been reframed in new capitalist post racial rhetorics, racial markers still have currency, and black bodies continue to be invoked as either tolerated guests at best, or threatening intruders at worst. The consequence is the practice of “embodying an identity that is declared impossible even though lived by millions”, namely as non-white Europeans, and specifically as Black Europeans. This identity has become even more conditioned by a new mainstreaming of right-wing discourses and the tightening immigrant and refugee policies that affect people of African descent.
The conference addresses not only these relations of domination, and racial modes of exclusion, but engages primarily with the continuous contestations and resistance these in/visibilites have gone by. We turn our gaze to the disregarded histories and cultures, and inquire past, new and continuous forms of Afroeuropean political, social, cultural and artistic interventions and resistance. This implies taking into account the different positionalities within European Blackness, linked for instance to diasporic origins, language, gender, social class, citizenship status, sexuality, dis/abilities, as well as the varying geo-spatial and post-colonial historical formations.
Call for panels
The organizing committee of the 7th Biennial Network Conference seeks panel contributions that speak to one or more of the following agendas:
[...]
> Black Cities: Public Space, Racism, Urban Cultures and Segregation: We invite panel proposals that address black racialization in urban life and the experiences (and insertions) of people of African descent. We are interested in broadening the debate both on the problems that affect black people in the contemporary cities – segregation, racism, subalternity, stigmatization, ghetto –, as well as analyzing the Afroeuropean interventions into the public space: lifestyle, artistic expressions, urban cultures and identities.
[...]
> Theorizing Blackness and Racial Europe: Panels in this thematic area address the theoretical questions that shape the whole of social relations and the social experience of Afroeuropeans, discussing the very definition(s) of Race, Racism, Blackness as well as Whiteness and how this co-produces Europe as a spatial-temporal formation.
Deadline for submission of proposals: 30.09.2018 (extended)
Further information: Afroeuropeans209: https://afroeuropeans2019.wixsite.com/afroeuropeans2019"
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ADDENDUM: Republished comment that I wrote in 2009 and posted to the comment section of the 2012 pancocojams post on this topic (whose link is given)
"Here's a comment that I wrote to http://afroeurope.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-is-afroeurope-who-are.html about the "Afro-European" referent:
"Greetings!
I've just read this 2009 post & the comments and want to commend most of those who have written thus far, but particularly you, Sibo Kano. Your January 20, 2010 11:49 AM post was so on point. It should be required reading and processing for all those people trying to understand the transition Europe and other places in the world are going through with regard to race/ethnicity.
I'm African American and grew up in the 1950s when "White" and "European" were considered to be synonymous referents. Even in that decade there were Europeans who were People of Color (mixed White/non-White or otherwise). But now as you wrote, Sibo, as a "logical consequence of Western history" and as a natural result of globilization, there are even more People of Color in Europe, some born there and some immigrated there.
As an outsider looking in, I suppose that those persons who live in Europe (and elsewhere) who are biologically White/non-White could advocate for a change in the definition of who is "White". But even if that was the path that one wanted to take, it seems to me (again as an outsider), that given the realities of racism in the world, it would be pyschologically healthier and more realistic for those persons in Europe to consider themselves as Black or Brown and as part of the larger referent of "African Europeans" or "Afro-European", with the specific applicable referent such as "Afro-Belgium"; "Afro-Italian", "Afro-British" etc.
In my lifetime we African Americans went through a number of self-referents before "African Americans" became our largely accepted formal group & individual referent (with "Black American" still being used as an informal referent for the same population, and more people of African descent who live in the USA- not to mention more people of African descent who live in the Americas apart from the USA).
In the USA, over time, the hyphens are usually dropped in group names so African-American is almost always written as "African American".
In my lifetime (around the 1970s), the term "Afro-American" was used but was later rejected. I think that was in part because "afro" didn't reference any geographical place like "African" does, and in part because an "afro" was a hair style. That said, if "Afro-European" is the accepted general term for people of African descent in Europe - which it appears to have become - then that referent is the one I will use.
As was and is the case in the USA, people have "the right and the responsibility to name themselves and speak for themselves rather than to be named and spoken for by others". [That quote is from the "Kawaida" philosophy of Maulana Karenga, the founder of the Black holiday, Kwanzaa.]
Thanks for what you are doing to make the world a better place for Black people, for Brown people, and for all people."
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