“Vorrei la pelle nera”. Youth Culture and Anti-Racist Sensibilities in Italy, 1960s-1970s

Abstract

Starting with a reflection on the few 1960s Italian songs which expressed anti-racist feelings, this article explores the presence and the nature of these sentiments in the youth culture of those years, focusing the analysis on Ciao 2001, a popular weekly which began its publications in that period. Building in eclectic fashion on the interpretive insights of theories of cultural appropriation and of race consumption, the article shows how the consumption of African America music and the fascination for Black musicians were accompanied by an interest in the historical roots of that music and in the history, conditions, and struggles of Black Americans, to which the weekly devoted numerous articles. The essay also examines some emerging figures of the Italian musical scene of the Seventies covered by the weekly — in particular the African American-Neapolitan James Senese and the Neapolitan singer songwriter Pino Daniele — in order to underline the latter’s appropriation, not deprived of stereotypes, of the “negritude” topos to refer not only to the racism of which the Italian Southerners were victims, but also to himself. If this appropriation could be in part justified, on the other hand it impeded a fuller recognition of the specificity of Black oppression and thus a greater understanding of anti-Black racism.