There is a considerable population of Africans in Europe. It is estimated that close to 4.6 Africans are permanent residents of Europe with France being the most-African dominated country in Europe followed by UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey in that order among other countries. Nearly 8 million Africans are seasonal occupants of Europe. The following literatures evaluate African’s presence in Europe through different lenses.
In his works, Ivan van Sertima give a historical perspective of how Africans found their way into Europe and their role in world civilization. In this book, there is major essay on the evolution of the Caucasoid, in which there is the assessment of the contemporary development scientific discoveries of essentially, the African fatherhood, as well as a shift to albinism by Grimaldi African during the European Ice Age.
In this work, the debt that is owned to not only the Araba Moors, but also to the Africans is discussed at length and their contribution to the renaissance. In addition, there is the assessment of the Afro-Egyptian impact on the great Greek philosophy and science. The book looks at the ancient Africans who lived in mainland Greece and ancient Mediterranean Isles, presence of Africans in the hierarchy of European Religions, the African dominance in Western Europe, as well as their presence, in Norther and Eastern Europe.
On the other hand, Gretcha Gerzina’s work looks at the presence of the Black community in British culture. Gerzina attempts to give a catalogue of Black communities’ existence in the British culture with the aim of assessing the cultural differences that exist between the two ethnicities, and how either adapts to the other. There is no doubt that the Black community has a significant presence in the British culture, and Britain has had a unique association with the Black Europeans when compared to other European nations. In this work, Gerzina looks at these uniqueness.
In addition, Baenor Hesse’s collection of papers illustrate how possible meanings of Black Europe both extend and exceed the geographies of the European continent. Comprising neither conventional spatiality, nor a familiar representation, it is located at the intersections of non-Europe/Europe, outside/inside, other/same, immigrant/citizen, and coloniality/post-colonialism (Hesse). Its formations are also constitutively entangled in national affinities, diasporic alignments, and their racially convulsive histories. Thus tends to suggest that Black Europe is rhetorically unsettling for the official map of Europe.
As a not yet sedimented signifier, Black Europe exposes the tracks of well-travelled human geographies of displacement and disavowed liberal-colonial assemblages of race, traditionally obscured under the historical imprint Europe (Hesse). Invocations of Black Europe gives us the certificate to account for the cultural ambiguities and racial equivocations in our contemporary postcolonial era. For that matter, any contemporary understanding of Europe ought to take into consideration recent historical series of dislocations of its meaning generetically. Since the creation of a single European market in the early 1990s, there has been a rise in national racial anxieties owing to the presence of the Black community (Hesse).
Similarly, Brown examines the use of the word diaspora on the context of Black Europeans. The sue of this term with respect to the worldwide Black kinship can render certain Black subjects, experiences, histories and identities invisible (Brown). Black Europe’s recent inclusion into the African diasporic network sets it up to represent the newest item in the global catalogue that aspires to exhaustiveness. The danger is that the newly included entity might be forced to fit into an already existing structure, rather than representing new challenges to it (Brown).
Rather than assuming we know the nature and basis of the connections and differences between Black Europe and the larger diasporic world are, students of Black Europe might adopt a diasporic approach based on the situated encounters in which people actually express some form of desire for connection. Presumably, desire for such would not exist were it not for the recognition of an operative meaningful difference (Brown).
In conclusion, this paper has examined four literatures that attempts to account for the presence and encounters the Black European Community. In his works, Ivan van Sertima give a historical perspective of how Africans found their way into Europe and their role in world civilization. On the other hand, Gretcha Gerzina’s work looks at the presence of the Black community in British culture. Baenor Hesse’s collection of papers illustrate how possible meanings of Black Europe both extend and exceed the geographies of the European continent.
Brown examines the use of the word diaspora on the context of Black Europeans. The use of this term with respect to the worldwide Black kinship can render certain Black subjects, experiences, histories and identities invisible (Brown). There is a considerable population of Africans in Europe. These authors attempt to account for the experiences of this unique European population. Invocations of Black Europe gives us the certificate to account for the cultural ambiguities and racial equivocations in our contemporary postcolonial era.
Bibliography
Brown, Jacqueline. Black Europe and the African Diaspora: A Discourse of Location, in Darlene, Hinds, Trica, Keaton and Steven Small, Black Europe and the African Diaspora, 201-211. Illinois: University of Illinois, 2009.
Gerzina, Gretcha. The Black Presence in British Culture, American Historical Association Perspective 35(May/June 1997), 13-17.
Hesse, Barnor. Afterword: Black Europe’s Undecidability, in Darlene, Hinds, Trica, Keaton and Steven Small, Black Europe and the African Diaspora, 291-304. Illinois: University of Illinois, 2009.
Sertima, Ivan. The African Presence in Early Europe. The Definition Problem in African Presence in Early Europe (1985), 134-14.
