KAI WRIGHT: I often say that the black liberation struggle is a gift we've given to the United States. I mean that literally. Because so many of the rights Americans take for granted today grew out of black people's effort to claim, and define freedom in this country. Probably the most consequential chapter in that story comes right after the Civil War, when the US rewrote its Constitution. We've talked about this period a lot on the show -- the Reconstruction amendments: the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Arguably the most consequential one, legally speaking, has been the 14th. It established the idea of equality before the law. And in its very first sentence, it did something radical. It said anybody born in the United States, is a citizen of the United States. That's called birthright citizenship  and, in the Trump era, it's suddenly up for debate.

[MUSIC]

KAI: So in this episode, we ask, “What's it like to live in a country without birthright citizenship?” And a warning: the episode contains some profanity, including a racist slur -- in both Italian and English. So heads up if you don’t wanna hear that kind of thing right now. I'm Kai Wright and this is the United States of Anxiety, a show about the unfinished business of our history, and its grip on our future.

[THEME MUSIC]

KAI: Ngofeen Mputubwele is a reporter for the New Yorker Radio Hour and Ngofeen, you're also a lawyer. 

NGOFEEN MPUTUBWELE: I am a lawyer (laughs) and relevant to this story, I also sing opera. 

[NGOFEEN SINGING OPERA]

NGOFEEN: I studied Italian in college. I sang classical singing, opera. So I like to keep up with Italy stuff. And like there was this certain point in my life where I was like confronting the whiteness of my spaces. The spaces that I was in. And the fact that in Italy, like, all my friends were white and that bugged me. And so I remember at some point kind of being like, I actually haven’t even heard a black Italian.

KAI: Like literally hadn't heard in your ear a black Italian.

NGOFEEN: I have never heard a black person speaking Italian.

KAI: I'm going to have to ask you, Ngofeen, to speak some Italian for me here.

NGOFEEN: (laughs) Ciao, come stai? Cosa stai facendo in questo momento? (laughs) [ITALIAN: Hi, how are you? What are you doing right now?]

KAI: Ok, so you had to meet some Black Italians and you set out to do so.

NGOFEEN: I started following a bunch of them on YouTube and Instagram, et cetera. And there was this one woman in particular. Her name is Bellamy Ogak. 

[SOUND OF BELLAMY OGAK TALKING AND MUSIC]

NGOFEEN: She has this blog and like YouTube page and stuff called AfroItalian Souls, an aggregating site for Black Italian stuff that's going on. And without fail, when Bellamy and others talked about their lives as black people born in Italy, one thing always came up.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: It was just this feeling that they aren’t treated as Italians, and that someone else gets to decide whether or not they belong to the country that they’re from. And Bellamy’s story isn’t just a Black Italian story. It’s a story about-- what does it take for your home to claim you as one of its own. 

KAI: So Ngofeen is gonna take us on a bit  of a journey through time and through space -- first to Italy two years ago, then to the United States, and then back to a new, changed Italy.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

NGOFEEN: So, like two years ago, I reach out to Bellamy and Bellamy's like, ‘You should come- a couple of my friends, we meet every once in a while and talk about these kinds of things.’ 

NGOFEEN ON STREET: Testing 1, 2, 3…

NGOFEEN: I'm like, Oh, sweet.

NGOFEEN ON STREET: Just walking through the streets of Milan-

NGOFEEN: So like, I go to this address... 

NGOFEEN ON STREET: To get to this little meeting--

NGOFEEN: And then I show up and it's like...

BELLAMY OGAK: We’re still all arriving.

NGOFEEN: The arty-ist art studio apartment.

NGOFEEN: Nice to meet you too. Thanks for inviting me.

NGOFEEN: It felt like a salon. 

BELLAMY: We usually go for wine -- because we are bougie like that.

NGOFEEN: They have like jollof rice and plantains or whatever. These pieces of African culture that make me feel at home. 

BELLAMY: Now that I think about it, it's kind of a bougie group...

NGOFEEN: And Bellamy is like, classically Italian.

BELLAMY: I like clothes, you know, I like doing my makeup. I like going out and being, you know, put together…

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: Her dad was a doctor. 

BELLAMY: I attended Catholic private schools from kindergarten up to high school. 

NGOFEEN: This was like a very preppy, fancy Catholic school. 

BELLAMY: Kids wearing Gucci belts, Louis V belts, Louis V shoes. 

NGOFEEN: Bellamy was only, she was like one of two or three Black people at the school. 

BELLAMY: When you are the only one of your kind, you are extremely visible all the time. I wanted to be as invisible as possible. 

NGOFEEN: But we started talking about her experience and she tells me like-

BELLAMY: I was so blessed to live in a place where I never faced overt  racism. Like at all, it was very, very rare.

NGOFEEN: Anything that happened was subtle.

BELLAMY:  Subtle.

NGOFEEN: What was the kind of thing that  would happen to you in high school that you put in the category of like a racist thing?

BELLAMY: Well, the N word. They used to say, negro di merda. Negro di merda means dirty n-word, you know? All my friends were like, ‘Oh, F African people, F Black people, F immigrants. We hate them. We despise them. They're trash. But you, you're different because you were born and raised here, you are eloquent. You don't act like them.’ And because of the representation and the negative things I heard of growing up about African people, I absolutely wanted to completely separate myself from quote unquote, 'them.’

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

NGOFEEN: I'm so curious that like… that doesn't sound like- that doesn't sound like subtle racism. 

BELLAMY:  Well, that to me was subtle because I've heard that word since I was like five years old. Yeah. I go to a cafe with my godparents, who are white, and you see other elder white Italian people coming to me, caressing me and say, ‘Oh, Que bella Negreta,’ which means, ‘Oh, you're such a cute little n-gger.’ Like ‘you're such a cute little n-gger, n-gger girl.’ Since I was like three, four, five years old.

[MUSIC CRASHES]

NGOFEEN: In the beginning-- when I first enter this Black Italian universe-- it's just me, Bellamy and about four or five of her friends.

BELLAMY, IN SALON: We’re just waiting for a few people in the meantime, feel at home.

NGOFEEN: But then people start filing into this room in Milan. Bellamy’s close friend David walks in.

BELLAMY, IN SALON: There he is! I was just talking about you! (whoo/laughing)

NGOFEEN: By the time everyone's there, there's like 20, 25 people. 

BELLAMY, IN SALON: We have two more singers arriving, actually. 

NGOFEEN: Cool. I’ll just like throw out questions and I’ll move around and like come to you. Like, I’m trying to get at, what is it- what does it look like to be a Black Italian in Italy. Anyone feel free...

NGOFEEN:  There’s this lull…

NGOFEEN, IN SALON: Do not be shy. 

NGOFEEN: Someone even says, ‘oh my gosh, guys-- we’re so timid.’ 

Ambi in Italian. (laughs)

NGOFEEN:  But as they loosen up, everyone has stories that are the various ways that white Itaians have told them they're not supposed to be here as Black people in Italy.

KAI: Mmhmm.

FABRIZIO:  It’s ah, jokes… humor… that’s the one of their stronger weapons to let you know that you’re Black, that you’re different.

LORETTA GRACE: Of course my parents, they are African but I was born here. I have both of the cultures.

DAVID BLANK: Whenever they see me, they try to enunciate Italian. I’m like, ‘how can -- how do you assume that I am not Italian?’

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN, IN SALON:  And so within the group --

NGOFEEN: There's a point in the thing where I'm like-

NGOFEEN, IN SALON: Can I get a show of hands of if you were raised here?

NGOFEEN: People start raising their hands and are like born and raised, born and raised, born and raised. 

KAI: They're all Italian. Despite the fact that everybody's telling them they're not Italian. They, they are literally Italian.

NGOFEEN: Well, that is the question. 

KAI: Mmmm.

NGOFEEN: So. Okay. My parents are from the Democratic Republic of Congo. My parents are Congolese. Their parents and my parents, they all left the African continent in the same decade. Right? Like in the eighties, Their parents landed in Italy. I was born in a hospital in Indiana. Like we're all born, you know, the same years, except that there's this key difference between me and them. I'm born and I'm automatically an American citizen. They're born and they're an immigrant. They’re a citizen of the country that their parents are from. So in my case...

KAI: You were born here on American soil and our constitution says that makes you a citizen.

NGOFEEN: No questions asked. It's like, that's it.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

KAI: So take note. What Ngofeen is talking about here is birthright citizenship.

NGOFEEN:  in Italy... 

KAI: Mmhm.

NGOFEEN: If your parents are not Italian citizens when you’re born, you are not an Italian citizen. You have to wait until you're 18 to apply for citizenship and you have to apply between your 18th and 19th birthday. If you don't apply in that one year, you lose your right to citizenship. You're like as Italian as you, Kai or me are. You're just like straight up a foreigner. 

KAI: Wow.

NGOFEEN: And when you apply, it’s this super detailed application - there are all these records you have to provide, like every address you’ve ever had in Italy.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: Any criminal record -- and you and your family have to prove they make enough money. Even Bellamy - she’s a citizen now but she didn’t get it when she was 18 because of this bureaucratic detail. Uh, a missing record from when she was a kid. So -- there is nothing guaranteed about this whole process. 

DAVID: Not every parent has the knowledge to tell their children that you might lose the opportunity to get the citizenship.

LORETTA: I had to go on TV to let Italian people solve my situation. And so I could get the Italian citizenship. Probably, if I wasn't a singer, I didn't even cut it.

LESLIE: I want to be straight. I don’t think Italy is a racist ---

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

NGOFEEN: They start having this kind of like back-and-forth where someone's like, ‘I don't know if Italy is a racist country.’

LESLIE: I strongly believe I think Italy is an ignorant country.

NGOFEEN: ‘I feel like Italy is an ignorant country.’

LESLIE: They don't want to learn. They don't want to know... 

NGOFEEN: And this one guy, David -- this is Bellamy's friend. He's like:  

DAVID: The fact that I am born here. I've lived my whole life here and you don't consider me Italian makes Italy a racist country, not an ignorant country. (CLAP)  Cause… huh? No, it's a fact. That's what racism is. Racism is not just about, ‘Oh, um, they're making me feel a certain way.’ Racism is about system. It's about society. So, the fact that a person is born here and immediately they come out the womb, they have to live their whole life until they're 18 as an immigrant, what does it say about the country and about yourself? You're lost.

NGOFEEN: As everyone is going back and forth, I’m recording but I’m also watching. Having this kind of out-of-body experience. Every single person that I've ever seen as a Black Italian -- they’re in this room. Like the first Black Italian to win a show like American Idol, the first Black Italian musician to get signed to a major label, Universal Records. Everyone is Black. Everyone is young. 

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: Artists, intellectuals. And they’re debating about being Black in their time. Imagine if you could get into a room with like a young Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman. It’s like the start of the Harlem Renaissance. And they haven't become famous yet.

ADAMA SANNEH: For every nation, there is a generation that is the generation to start a fight.

NGOFEEN: I am in the room with all of the people. This group, they're like mapping out what it is to be Black Italian for like the rest of that country's history.

ADAMA: This is the generation that has to do this. Because we all like first generation Black Italian. All of us.

NGOFEEN: But like none of them are born citizens. They're not considered Italian.

[MUSIC ENDS]

KAI: So Ngofeen, what I don't understand is --

NGOFEEN: Yeah--

KAI: I hear these stories about people in the United States who were like, I, you know, I have, I hold Italian citizenship ‘cause I applied. And, and so I am really Italian. 

NGOFEEN: So ok so let me -- I’m going to back up and explain the system, right? There's basically two main systems in the world and they use Latin terms. So there’s ius soli-- law of the soil and there's ius sanguinis-- law of the blood.

KAI: Whew!

NGOFEEN: Right? We have ius soli in the US, like law of the soil. You're born on the soil. You have the citizenship. Um, in Italy, they have ius sanguinis, right? This idea of lineage, descendancy. Initially, that meant like you're descended from another Italian man. 

KAI: Mmm hmmm.

NGOFEEN: So an Italian man's seed brought you into the world. (laughs) You are Italian. What that means is that if you’re the offspring or the descendant of Italians, anywhere on the planet, you have the right to citizenship. You know, Bill de Blasio's kids could apply for citizenship and get it as a right, any time in their life.

KAI: Because the mayor of New York is descended from an Italian seed.

NGOFEEN: Exactly. While Bellamy, who was born in Italy, has only ever known Italy, wasn't born a citizen and had to apply for it.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

Bellamy: I realized that I wasn't a citizen… when I think I was 15, 14 or 15 ish. I wanted to apply for studying holidays in England. I went to this website and you have to indicate your nationality. 

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

BELLAMY: So that's when I realized there was like, ‘Oh, my nationality is technically Uganda.’ And since it's Uganda, I could see that I had to apply for a visa. And then I went to the website of the Ugandan embassy and the British embassy. And when I realized all the steps that I had to take in order to attend that course, that's when it hit me. That's when I went to my parents and was like, ‘wait, why are things like this?’ And that’s when they explained to me.

NGOFEEN: And do you remember at all, like how your parents explained things to you?

BELLAMY: Well... (laughs) African parents… (laughs) are very particular. They're very particular. Well, first of all, no empathy at all.

NGOFEEN: I feel like this is an important point where I should say: I love you mom and dad!

BELLAMY: Like they were like, ‘Listen, this is the way it is. White people are trash. African people cannot go anywhere because that's just the way-- that's just the way it is. And until you become an Italian citizen, that's what you have to go through.’ They could see that I was devastated by it, but you know, it was literally, ‘Listen, white people do not like us. White people do not want people from African countries there, in their own state.’ And I was like, ‘Wow, so even though I was born and raised HERE, I cannot do the same things that my friends can do. What the hell? Why? 

[MUSIC FADES IN]

I couldn't understand. I couldn't even talk about it with anyone because I was ashamed. I was honestly ashamed and embarrassed. 

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

NGOFEEN: The fact that I, with my American passport, am able to be like, ‘Oh, I'm going to Milan. Alright, passport. Going,’ without having to do a visa or anything is because of our history here.

KAI: Because we fought and won a war (laughs)

NGOFEEN: Yes (laughs) 

KAI: To make it possible for you to have an American passport. 

NGOFEEN: So I went to law school. I studied con law- constitutional law, like everyone does in law school, your first year. And I knew, I knew that birthright citizenship was like a constitutional thing. I didn't realize until I was talking to you that it came from the Civil War. 

KAI: Yeah, you know a lot of Americans don't understand that our notion of citizenship was developed explicitly for the purpose of saying that formerly enslaved black people are in fact citizens. That is the whole reason we have citizenship of the soil. 

ERIC FONER: So before the war, it's not just birthright, it's your race also, which determines whether you are eligible for citizenship or not.

KAI: Historian Eric Foner is one of the world’s leading experts on this era, and his most recent book “The Second Founding” has guided a lot of our thinking in this season of our show. You’ve heard from him a lot. 

[MUSIC FADES IN]

FONER: Anybody born, in the country, black or white, whatever, is a citizen of the United States with basic rights that the federal government has an obligation and the power to protect. Before the civil war, there was no such thing as that. Who is a citizen, before the war civil war, it varied from state to state. There was no national standard.

KAI: This is a crucial point about our history as a country, and it’s part of what set the stage for Civil War in the first place. Because without a national standard for citizenship, a Black person in the United States could be a citizen in one state, while still being considered a slave in another.   

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

NGOFEEN: So like in 1834, a slave owner, he moves from a slave-state to a free state or free territory. He brings his slave with him. They live there for 10 years. The slave and his wife are there. The slave and the wife, they have kids that are born in this free land, the free territory. Slave owner dies. And you have this slave, wife, kids that are like, ‘We've been living in free land for like a decade.’ ‘Our kids were born free. Like we are free!’ They sue. And--

KAI: No, in fact, you're not.

NGOFEEN: The slave that I'm talking about is Dred Scott. Dred Scott is the first time that like the highest court in the land, the official rule is Black people are not citizens.

FONER: Citizenship is for whites only, you know?

NGOFEEN: You're not a citizen. Because you're black. And so you don't have the right to sue.

KAI: And it's a real wake up call to everybody. Dred Scott is really the beginning of the road to the Civil War, and the Civil War nominally resolves the question (laughs)

NGOFEEN: Mm hmmm.

KAI: And the 13th and 14th and 15th amendments then are a response to all of those laws that were meant to make the constitution support slavery. These were an opportunity to say no, no, no, no. This was never a pro-slavery document.

[MUSIC FADES IN] 

KAI: It was the first sentence of the 14th amendment. 

NGOFEEN: Yea.

FONER: Section one: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

KAI: It's the thing that everything else hinged upon was the idea that ‘Ok, first off, everybody born in the United States is a citizen.’

FONER: Except Native Americans who were citizens of their own tribal sovereignties. Today, this is a very unique thing. No European country has automatic birthright citizenship.

KAI: And that is a radical thing that we agreed on 150 years ago, but is no longer in agreement in American politics.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

[CLIP: CBS REPORTER MAJOR GARRETT: A week before the midterm elections, president Trump said he could end so-called birthright citizenship with the stroke of his pen.] 

KAI: It's an explicitly racist debate as the whole point of the amendment was to deal with this racist idea that black people weren't citizens.

DONALD TRUMP: A person comes in, has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States for 85 years with all of those benefits. It's ridiculous. 

MIKE PENCE: We all know what the 14th amendment says. We all cherish the language of the 14th amendment. But the Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on whether or not the language of the 14th amendment, subject to the jurisdiction thereof, applies specifically to people who are in the country illegally.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: So in Italy, this same fight has been going on, but in reverse. When I was there in 2018, Black Italians were pushing to get birthright citizenship. But they were losing the battle. This nationalist politician named Matteo Salvini was the face of Italian politics and he had just pushed through a law that Bellamy and people in her world were freaking out about. It severely restricted the rights of immigrants - but also the language around it was all about the threat that undocumented immigrants posed to Italy. And in Italy, the face of undocumented immigrants is Black people.

BELLAMY: And when the law passed, I remember I started to cry in, out of, out of- out of disbelief. So you can imagine how hard it became. Life became for us. Of course, when you see me, you see a Black person and I do not have, you know, my ID card with Italian citizenship written on my forehead. So you think I'm an immigrant and so you fear me.

NGOFEEN: These kind of subtle things that have been boiling, a politician helps to channel that and now it becomes more explicit. 

Bellamy: Every week or so, you could read in the newspaper, Black people being physically attacked. Black people being killed. Uh, it was crazy. That's when I started really being afraid of being a black person in Italy.

NGOFEEN: And then, in August of 2019, a very, very big unexpected thing happens. This Trump-like leader of Italy gets ousted from power. And so I'm following the news and I see on Facebook, this group of black Italians in Rome is trying to seize the moment and change Italy's laws on birthright citizenship. And I just buy a plane ticket.

KAI: So Ngofeen, we’ll be back with you in Rome, I guess.

NM: That's right. I'm just, I'm just doing the tour of Italy. That's what this story is about (laughs).

KAI: That’s next.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

[AIRPORT ANNOUNCEMENTS IN ITALIAN]

NGOFEEN, on scene: I am very sleepy.

NGOFEEN: So it's now November of 2019. I fly to Rome.

NGOFEEN, on scene: I just flew over from New York.

NGOFEEN: To meet the people who are organizing these protests.

NGOFEEN, on scene: I’m realizing that my American passport makes me- I get to go through the express line. 

NGOFEEN: So I'm here to follow this political moment, but I stopped by a bookstore in the train station and I find this book that's come out since I was last in the country.

NGOFEEN, on scene: It's got a kid who seems to be- who's like Black Italian. He’s got an afro, dark skin. Well, dark skin for a white person. 

NGOFEEN: And it’s written by an Italian named Sonny Olumati, which is a Nigerian last name. 

KAI: Ohhh.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: On the back it says [ITALIAN]. “After that night, I and Primo would never be the same.” In that period that I'm gone, this network of Black Italians are making a lot of Black Italian art. One of the people that we hear from writes a novel. Someone writes a very James Baldwin-esque manifesto. They're making these things that are like articulating the contours of what it is to be Black in Italy. 

KAI: And I'm thinking about when you first got to Italy and the whole thing was that you saw no blackness. 

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

NGOFEEN:  Yeah. I mean, I think these folks, by making new stories, they're like collectively changing the story of the country. The hair company, Pantene Pro V?

[SOUND OF BELLAMY OGAK TALKING AND MUSIC]

NGOFEEN: They approached Bellamy and they're like, ‘Will you be our hair ambassador?’

BELLAMY: With my own 4C Afro hair like... let's put that in mind. 

NGOFEEN:  And Bellamy's like, 

BELLAMY: Never, never, never, ever in a million years, I would have imagined that the day would come, that you would see like, you know, an ambassador of Pantene with Afro hair.

[ADVERTISEMENT: Stop hair shaming! Pantene.]

BELLAMY: They finally started giving us a chance to express ourselves.

KAI: Why?

NGOFEEN: So, that is a great question. And I think the honest answer is... we don't know, but I have theories. There's parallels to the US, right? Where it's like here, Trump came in and suddenly- obviously, it's not like we've never been talking about representation and those kinds of things before. Obviously we had. But like, there's this way in which like both communities of color, Black communities, are being more vocal. There's also like more education happening in white communities, a little bit. 

KAI: It forces people to take sides. I mean, when you have such divisive political figures force people to decide which side of that divide do I stand on?

NGOFEEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think that's a really great way to say it.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: So I'm here to follow this political moment, but I realized that there's like two levels of work going on. There's like this cultural work. And there's this political work that these people I'm talking to in Rome are trying to do.

[AMIN SPEAKING IN ITALIAN]

NGOFEEN: The head guy, his name is Amin Nour. He is Somali Italian. He's a filmmaker. 

[CONVERSATION IN ITALIAN] 

NGOFEEN: We talk and his friend Paolo is there. He's in government. Uh, local government in Rome. And what they think they can pass is a tempered birthright citizenship: Ius Culturae. So not the law of the soil, but the law of the culture. It would grant them a path to citizenship that’s way easier and people could get it long before they turn 18. 

Ngofeen, in scene: Are you hopeful? Or how do you feel?

NGOFEEN: At one point I asked, like, ‘How are you feeling? Like, do you think that this can happen?’

PAOLO:  No no, siamo sempre speranzosi... (laughs)

NGOFEEN: And he's like, ‘No, we’re really hopeful.’ And Amin says, 

AMIN: Noi, non e siamo speranzosi, noi crediamo e a prescindere lottiamo...

NGOFEEN: ‘We don’t hope. We believe and we fight no matter what!’ They’re talking to legislators and trying to get this on the agenda. They organize a protest.

ITALIAN GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: Bene ci siamo. Possiamo proseguire con le nostre audizioni. 

NGOFEEN: A couple months later, Paolo and the group are testifying before Parliament.

[PAOLO BARROS AND DIANA PESCI TESTIFY IN PARLIAMENT: ... DI JUSTIZIA E DI UGUALIANZA…]

NGOFEEN: The nationalist Salvini government is gone. So 2019 is over. And the feeling was like ‘This thing, if it's going to happen, it's gotta happen in 2020.’ (pause) 2020 comes in Italy--

KAI: 2020 comes.

NGOFEEN: And something bigger happens in Italy.

[CLIP: ABC CORRESPONDENT LINDSEY DAVIS: In Italy, a terrible milestone: the death toll from COVID-19 in that country now more than 3,400, surpassing the death toll in China despite Italy’s much smaller size…]

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: And so the moment passes. Bellamy, right, our woman--our woman in Milan. She's in isolation, right? Quarantined, like all of us. And she says this really interesting thing. She's like, ‘Even when things are getting better, in that things are reopening…’

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

BELLAMY: I literally got an anxiety attack because I was like, ‘I did not have to face any racism at all.’

KAI: Wow. 

NGOFEEN: I didn't have to deal with white people for three months.

KAI: And that was peaceful.

NGOFEEN: And that was peaceful.

BELLAMY: Oh my God, I have to face- I actually have to deal with white people again.

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: That's March and April. May. In May... 

BELLAMY: Ahmaud Arbery. 

[CLIP: CBS CORRESPONDENT NORAH O’DONNELL: An African American man being chased down and killed.] 

NGOFEEN: The story of Ahmaud Arbery breaks.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

BELLAMY: I remember feeling extremely, extremely overwhelmed and just defeated.

NGOFEEN: Then... George Floyd.

BELLAMY: I refused to look at the video because I was like, ‘No, I can't. I cannot. I cannot. Uh... I can't.’ But it was pretty much impossible to avoid seeing the pictures. And then of course, you know, when you read about how he was assassinated and him yelling, “I can’t breathe” and it's like... it's so (pause) brutal. 

NGOFEEN: I think like that... is just like bottom. Rock bottom. So when the protests start here in the US, very quickly in Italy, you had all these white Italians, denouncing in solidarity this act of racism.

KAI: This racism over there.

NGOFEEN: Over there.

BELLAMY: I have never, ever, in my life seen Italy as a country, take a stand against racism in such a unanimous and visible way. Never in my life. So that shocked me, but in a bad way. (pause) Why do Black American lives matter more than Black Italian lives?

NGOFEEN: So, Bellamy the folks in that room, the folks in Rome--

BELLAMY: When we noticed that there was an open door to discuss racism, we started yelling. This is how racism takes place in Italy. This is what we have been going through all these years. This is what you need to FIGHT for, with us. If you ignore us now, it means that you really are NOT anti-racist.

NGOFEEN: She's like, I have the stuff on deck! (laugh) She's like, ‘I have a video that I had been holding onto about racism in Italy, that I was just waiting for the right time to publish. 

BELLAMY: -where they talked about the racism that they face throughout their lives. I'm like, ‘Okay, let me edit this video quick…’

[CLIP: BELLAMY’S VIDEO: AFROITALIAN WOMAN SPEAKING]

BELLAMY: It became viral.

NGOFEEN: All this cultural work that they've been doing for the past years: the fiction book, the memoir, the novels. Like these things are like, ‘Okay, there's this moment now.’

BELLAMY: The mic was given to Black People.

[PROTESTS IN ITALIAN]

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: And at these protests, you're seeing white people and black people holding signs that say, “Black Lives Matter” and next to that sign, it says “Ius soli” -- birthright citizenship. 

KAI: Wow.

BELLAMY: I really, really got emotional because hundreds of thousands, probably millions. I don't know. But hundreds of thousands of people... of white people… went in the street to fight against racism-- together with us. Validating our injustices and our pain. And it's something that I had never seen before in my life. It made me feel seen and it made me feel like you under-- you, you are at least trying to understand what it feels like to be in my shoes. And you want to help me dismantle the system.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

NGOFEEN: But, but, at the same time, she told this story of her friend, David, that I mentioned at the beginning of this story. The day of a Black Lives Matter protest. He's a singer and he was at the rehearsals. And these law enforcement folks came up and were like, ‘Hey!’

BELLAMY: Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Aye, you! As if it was a dog. And they asked for his documents. They ask if he smoked, if he sold drugs. They asked, what does he do for a living? 

[MUSIC FADES IN]

BELLAMY: The first thing he did was give them his documents. On the ID, it states that, you know, he has Italian citizenship and they still ask him, ‘So where are you from?’

NGOFEEN: ‘I have the paper. It says I'm born in Italy. It says I’m a citizen. I'm from here.

BELLAMY: They really wanted him to say the country of his parents. 

NGOFEEN: They keep pushing him and they keep pushing on it and like- 

BELLAMY: He insisted, in saying, ‘I was born in this town, in the, you know, in this region. I live in Italy.’ They only let him go when he told them that he works with one of the biggest singers in Italy. He showed them the pictures and then they let him go. After humiliating him. After making him feel alienated. Because Italian citizenship is not enough.

KAI: Citizenship was not enough in the United States either. Quite plainly, I mean, the president now wants to debate the 14th amendment. Maybe the problem is that the lie of white supremacy was such a total one, that it turns out to unlearn it- we need a lot more than the law. 

NGOFEEN: I have this kind of theory that I've come up with in my mind where it's like, there's like different buckets of belonging to a country. One, your physical presence there, right? You are there. Second thing, you have legal status. Like you're legitimately legally allowed to be there. And the third thing, you’re like culturally a part of the place. These are three different channels or buckets or whatever we're constantly pushing on in a country to determine who belongs. These things aren't linear. Like you're always constantly pushing on the different areas to try to assert your belonging to a country.

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

[MUSIC FADES IN]

ADAMA: For every nation, there is a generation that is the generation to start the fight. Those assets or those tools, those weapons and then hopefully, you know, current generations or future generations…

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

[PEOPLE SPEAKING IN ITALIAN AT SALON IN MILAN]

[MUSIC FADES IN]

NGOFEEN: When I was in that room, I was like, ‘I feel like this is the Harlem Renaissance.’ And I leave and I was like, ‘I don't even really know what that means (laughs) but like, I feel it, like, I feel it, like, it feels like young and exciting and black. And art.’

KAI: Yes.

NGOFEEN: And so I'm looking at the Harlem Renaissance and I'm looking at it and I'm looking at it and I'm reading the things that people are writing at the time. And I'm like, for me, I was like, ‘Oh, this is the significance of that time.’ Right? Is that we went from a physical presence in our country... to a legal presence in our country... to this moment where all these people are articulating - in the face of really blatant white supremacy - are articulating: ‘This is why we belong here. This is how we belong here. This is what it looks like for us to belong here. We've been here and this is us.’

[MUSIC FADES OUT]

  [CREDIT THEME MUSIC]

 KAI: The United States of Anxiety is a production of WNYC Studios. This episode was reported by Ngofeen Mputubwele and produced by Marianne McCune. It was edited by Veralyn Williams and mixed by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Karen Frillmann. Our team also includes Carolyn Adams, Emily Botein, Jenny Casas, and Christopher Werth. With help this week from Michelle Harris and Kim Nowacki. Hannis Brown also wrote our theme music and it was performed by the Outer Borough Brass Band. Please do keep in touch. You can follow me on Twitter at @kai_wright. And thanks for listening. Take care of yourselves.

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