{"id":38256,"date":"2014-11-11T15:53:10","date_gmt":"2014-11-11T15:53:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=38256"},"modified":"2014-11-11T15:53:10","modified_gmt":"2014-11-11T15:53:10","slug":"on-the-cusp-of-dual-identities-dispatch-afropean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=38256","title":{"rendered":"On The Cusp of Dual Identities #Dispatch: Afropean"},"content":{"rendered":"

On The Cusp of Dual Identities #Dispatch: Afropean<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Everywhere All The Time<\/a>
\n2014-11-10<\/p>\n

Bani Amor<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Johny Pitts<\/a> is a writer, photographer, and broadcast journalist interested in issues of Afro-European identity. He won a Decibel Penguin Prize for a short story included in the \u2018The Map of Me’; a Penguin books anthology about mixed-race identity. He recently collaborated with author Caryl Phillips on a photographic essay for the BBC and Arts Council England dealing with London and immigration, and curates the online journal Afropean.com<\/a>, for which he received the 2013 ENAR foundation (European Network Against Racism) award for a contribution to a racism free Europe. He currently hosts a youth travel show for the BBC and recently finished the first draft of a travel narrative about a five month trip through \u2018Black Europe\u2019, due to be released in 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n

Bani Amor:<\/strong> Tell us about yourself. How would you describe your work and the impetus behind it?<\/p>\n

John:<\/strong> Well, I hold American and British passports, I was raised between London<\/a> and Sheffield<\/a>, in the UK. My Father is black, my mother is white, and I was born on the cusp of Capricorn<\/a> and Aquarius<\/a>, so even my star sign dual! So I identify with W.E.B DuBois\u2019 double consciousness<\/a> stuff. I feel as though I kind of grew up in that liminal terrain between cultures, races and spaces, and I suppose my work is all about trying to find some kind of coherence in that liminal space. Instead of seeing myself as half-this or mixed-that, I try to solidify the cultural ground I walk on as something whole. And that is where this term \u2018Afropean\u2019 comes in.<\/p>\n

It is a platform to engage with-and acknowledge the duality of- my influences, whilst bringing them together as something new. I didn\u2019t create the term Afropean, so in a way I\u2019m working off the backs of a Generation X<\/a> who came of age in the 90\u2019s. People like Neneh Cherry<\/a>, Zap Mama<\/a>, Stephen Simmonds<\/a>, Les Nubians<\/a>\u2026 artists and musicians who brought forth new aesthetics that were a mix of African and European influences. The word was being used, but it hadn\u2019t really entered the popular lexicon, so I snapped up afropean.com and tried to create a community around that. See if there was a way for Afro-Europeans to get a sense of themselves in the same way I feel African Americans did…<\/p>\n

Read the entire interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On The Cusp of Dual Identities #Dispatch: Afropean Everywhere All The Time 2014-11-10 Bani Amor Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer, and broadcast journalist interested in issues of Afro-European identity. He won a Decibel Penguin Prize for a short story included in the \u2018The Map of Me’; a Penguin books anthology about mixed-race identity. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1649,12,395,28,125,13743,10],"tags":[18400,18402,18401,17264],"class_list":["post-38256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anthropology","category-articles","category-autobiography","category-europe","category-identitydevelopment","category-interviews","category-uk","tag-bani-amor","tag-everywhere-all-the-time","tag-john-pitts","tag-johny-pitts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38256","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38256\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}