Books like 20 Questions and Answers on Black Europe are not usually reviewed in Nationalities Papers. This book is short, footnote-free, and has a 21-item bibliography. But it is nonetheless a very important new publication for scholars, students, activists, and professionals interested in Black Studies, Racism Studies, Race and Ethnic Relations, Decolonial Studies, and European Studies. It is a pioneering work in Europeanizing Black Studies (ironically, just as Europe seems to be falling apart), it is written for use inside and outside academia, and it is based on extensive ethnography. The author, a sociologist at Berkeley, has lived, taught, researched, and worked with Black community organizations in Liverpool, Berkeley, Amsterdam, Bordeaux, Madrid, and Rio de Janeiro, among other cities.
20 Questions and Answers on Black Europe is the most recent addition to Amrit Publishers’ “Decolonizing the Mind” series. A small, independent publisher based in the Netherlands, Amrit’s mission is to print manuscripts on Black and Decolonial Studies that are rejected as too radical by mainstream publishing houses. Each of the 20 chapters of this book responds to a question about Black Europe: its history, demography, dimensions, and politics, among other characteristics. The first ten chapters define, describe, and locate Black Europe and its problems. Chapters 10 to 20 elaborate strategies and initiatives to support Black Europe, to decolonize minds, and to promote social justice. Using this question and answer format, Small outlines his vision for Black Europe, which he defines as “an interlocking system of mutually supportive nations, that shared a great deal in common and advocated for their collective colonial enterprise, despite their obvious differences” (10). And he explores some of the important issues and choices facing Black Europe today.
The book starts with a two-point “framework” that summarizes its message to non-Black Europeans: “There’s no you without me” and “we are here because you were there” (11). It then lists and addresses four dimensions of Black Europe: (1) race thinking and racist thinking; (2) the institutional pillars of racialization; (3) the Black cultural presence; and (4) the Black human presence in Europe. On the basis of his definition and these dimensions, Small argues for shifting the scholarly approach to Blacks in Europe from local and country-based studies, which, until now, have constituted the academic literature, to a Europe-wide view. And he focuses on Blacks in Europe, not as immigrant and refugee add-ons to European society, but as citizens and as people whose exploitation has formed the basis for Europe’s prosperity and many of its central institutions.
20 Questions and Answers on Black Europe points to some major differences between the experiences and social locations of Blacks in Europe and in the USA; these include Europe’s smaller Black population, Black Europeans’ linguistic and religious diversity, higher proportion of immigrants, and lower proportion of descendants of people who were enslaved. These differences have convinced him that the US-based analyses and strategies provide inspiration, but not necessarily solutions, for Black communities in Europe.
As strategies to improve the situation of Blacks in Europe, Small foregrounds mobilizing and forming alliances with non-Black groups that promote social justice within and outside the academy. He advocates campaigning for reparations (payments to descendants of enslaved people), for the return of stolen artifacts, and for the rewriting of European history within a decolonial framework. He prioritizes challenging stereotypes and promoting access to citizenship, getting Black people’s problems on the political agenda of each European state, and rejecting the perception of Blacks in Europe as immigrants who need to adapt to European society.
This book does not pretend to be and is not encyclopedic. And some topics are addressed in more and others in less detail and depth. To the delight of this reviewer, Small provides an extensive and interesting analysis of the racial politics of major European museums, as well as the changes to these politics that have been achieved through Black mobilization. While large sections of the book are devoted to identifying external barriers to the advancement of Blacks in Europe, much less attention is given to the internal fissures and tensions, along class, linguistic, and gender lines (among others), that impede Black political organizing. But the book’s passion, and Small’s work teaching at and developing Black summer schools for academics and activists, for which this book was originally written, should motivate Black and non-Black scholars to extend Small’s work by taking up where the book leaves off.
20 Questions and Answers on Black Europe is informative, analytical, and clear. My only reservation about using it in university courses is that the editing is a bit loose—not a good example for students. According to the author, the text is about to be re-edited and expanded for an electronic edition scheduled to appear in summer 2019 and a second print edition shortly thereafter. The expanded edition will include new material on the social media, young people, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, and Brexit. As a non-Black scholar who teaches and does research on social inequality, political sociology, race and ethnicity, and human rights, I recommend this book, and I am assuming that by the time this review is published, the second edition will be available.
