African by Design: self-styling and authentication among Afro-Dutch youth in Amsterdam

This paper presents my new research project on ‘Afro-Dutch’ youth in Amsterdam, a new category of self-identification that includes Afro-Caribbeans and second-generation Africans. Dutch-born youth of different African backgrounds show an emergent sense of (and search for) a shared African heritage, and a growing desire for public exposure and recognition of this Africanness. Manifesting in, for example, media initiatives, performing arts, cultural festivals, bodily fashions, and DNA testing, 'Afro-Dutchness' is characterized by an aesthetic emphasis on African styles and political struggles about the inclusion of African heritage in Dutch imaginations of nationhood and citizenship. As such, it is a direct negotiation of dominant definitions and designs of Dutchness that are becoming increasingly exclusionary, mono-cultural and mono-racial. At the same time, this new search for a shared Africanness has itself essentializing tendencies, seeking to ground indentity in 'incontestables' such as blood, race, or DNA. The project compares and explores the convergence between the renewed interest in African roots and self-styling among second/third-generation Afro-Caribbeans (Surinamese, Antilleans) and the ways in which second-generation Africans (predominantly Ghanaians) engage with African heritage. It asks how Dutch-born Ghanaians and Afro-Caribbeans design Africanness in media and expressive culture and what resources they employ to authenticate being African as natural.