Arising Africans: Blackness, Identity, and Education in a Changing Italy

• In Event: The Back of Blackness: Critically Examining the Construction of Blackness in Educational Research and Practice

Abstract

With all the existing research conducted on first-generation African immigrants in Italy, significantly less strengths-based research exists that focuses on the experience of Black youth born or raised in the country. Most prevailing educational research on Black Italian youth has taken a deficit-based approach. That is, emphasizing academic and social vulnerabilities, issues, and shortfalls. Yet currently, these Italians(?) [See footnote in references for more on this “?”] are deeply involved in a vast array of actions addressing racialized citizenship, while simultaneously grappling with the process of building collective community centered on their Black identity. This simultaneous construction of a collective Blackness that is deeply respondent to their Italian-ness directly aligns with what Frantz Fanon’s (1967) calls the fact of Blackness as written in Black Skin, White Masks. As these Black Italians endeavor to claim for themselves an identity that gives them claim to both their own and their parents’ country of origin, as well as recognizing their lived experience in Italy, they also directly experience Du Bois’ theory of double consciousness.

This paper draws from a year-long qualitative ethnographic Fulbright project in Italy guided by a “situation-based inquiry process” (Erickson, 1984). The research was conducted from September 2016 to August 2017 in Padua, Rome, Florence, and Genoa, Italy. It involved participant observation at a primary school in each of the aforementioned cities, alongside semi-structured interviews with eight young Black activists organizing to reform the restrictive Italian nationality (jus sanguinis) law in Padova, and participation in anti-racism protests in response to Italy’s rapidly rising neo-fascist political movement. The study was guided by the following questions: “How do Black Italian youth grapple with what it means to be both Black and Italian in a country that continues to be violent towards Blackness?; and how are schools creating fair social and academic outcomes for immigrant students in Italian schools?” Critical Race Theory and Culturally Relevant Teaching (Ladson-Billings, 1994) framed the research. Data was logged in the form of field notes, as well as through video and audio recordings, and photos.

Findings from the research shows that within schools, few educators understand or seek to use culturally relevant pedagogy in their classrooms and often actively limit the educational trajectory of their Black Italian pupils. Thus, Black Italian youth are creating platforms to promote awareness of their experiences and to address the nuances of identity, culture, and power as people who exist between Blackness and Italianess. As Black youth born or raised in Italy seek to more fully understand their positionality in the space of both Blackness and Italian-ness, this work is critical as it not only analyzes how race and power converge in the making of Black Italians both inside and outside educational spaces, but it also seeks to highlight how Black Italian youth are constructing their Black Italian identity and navigating the presumed inherent Whiteness of Italian-ness.

Author

• Barbara Ofosu-Somuah, 1991