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Dec 3, 2013 · The African American Experience in Italy, 1852 to 2013. In the following article longtime BlackPast.org contributor and San Diego State University Librarian Robert Fikes discusses African American emigrants to and visitors in Italy. Since the 1850s, African Americans have gone to Italy as tourists, students, soldiers, writers, musicians, opera ...
Feb 14, 2018 · In this Dialogue, Mauro Valeri will remind us of the contributions of black and ‘mixed race’ Italians and will discuss new forms of racism in Italian society and why anti-racism movements have been late to confront them.
- Black Italians Erased from History
- The Rise of Afro-Italian Voices
- Embracing Dual Origins
- Italians Without Citizenship
African Italians are frequently cast as outsiders in Italian society even though their history goes back decades -- the country had been experiencing waves of arrivals from Africa long before the refugee crisis. Yet, according to sociologist Mauro Valeri, this is “a history that still needs to be written". In a lecture for NYU Florence, Valeri pres...
But a backlash against anti-immigrant sentiment in Italian society has also been growing in parallel and protests erupted across the country after the killing of George Floyd in the US. Campaigners then not only expressed solidarity with those suffering racial abuse in the US but also brandished banners reading "I am Italian too" or listing names o...
The continued reluctance of some Italians to accept the non-white Italian identity has also prompted some Afro-Italian creatives to consciously celebrate their dual origins. Awa Fall Mirone, a reggae singer born in Bergamo to an Italian mother and Senegalese father, travelled to her father's native country to learn more about her roots. “I went bec...
This growing cultural reckoning is putting pressure on the political system to help this demographic cement its place in Italian society. Mbengue is one of over one million second-generation migrants who do not have citizenship. Those born in Italy or who arrive at a young age and do not have at least one Italian parent must wait to be 18 to apply ...
Oct 12, 2019 · Library of Congress. The penalties of blackness went well beyond name-calling in the apartheid South. Italians who had come to the country as “free white persons” were often marked as black...
Afro-Italians (Afroitaliani) are Italians born and are raised in Italy, citizen of African descent or of mixed African and Italian roots. In 2014 over 170,000 migrants arrived which represented the biggest influx of people into one country in European Union history. A large percentage of them arrive via Africa.
Sep 16, 2018 · Sun 16 Sep 2018 04.00 EDT. Last modified on Tue 23 Oct 2018 10.50 EDT. I n 1979 a homeless Somalian by the name of Ahmed Ali Giama was burned alive in the Piazza della Pace, right in the centre of ...
Jul 13, 2021 · These histories, unreckoned with in many ways, mean that racialized experiences of Blackness in Italy are simultaneously at the forefront and invisible. Even before the transnational Black Lives Matter movement, Black Italians have pushed Italy to confront its colonial past and engage with its present diversity.
