(Transcript from World News Radio)
Should people of African background, born either in Africa or Australia, be known as African Australians or Australian Africans - or simply Australians?
These are some of the questions of identity explored at a recent forum in Melbourne, sponsored by the Wheeler Centre.
Harriet Conron went along.
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For many people of African heritage growing up in Australia, finding a way to identify themselves poses a great challenge.
For some, the answer is to call themselves African-Australian.
But what does it mean to be African-Australian today?
Kirk Zwangobani is an academic at the Australian National University, studying issues of African-Australian identity.
He says even he struggles with being asked whether he is African or Australian.
"As soon as you choose one, you sort of automatically dimiss another one. So I guess that's why I started, even with my research, adopting the term African-Australian, just purely to be able to explore what is that identity. As someone who was born here, and who has been witness to the ongoing migration since the 70s, I had to ask myself whether we could use this identity, and is it something that I can lay claim to?"
Soreti Kadir was born in Ethiopia but moved to Australia when she was just two years old, growing up closely connected to Melbourne's ethnic Oromo community.
When she was younger, she felt she had to leave her Oromo roots behind in order to adopt an Australian identity.
"I always tried to strive for what I interpreted to be an Australian identity. And I thought that in order to do that I had to distance myself from my Oromo identity, my African identity. In the context of talking about African-Australain identity, what does that Australian actually mean? I feel like, when you're a migrant or a refugee, and you're asked to identify with an Australian identity, a lot of the time that Australian name or concept doesn't include the entirety of Australian society."
This negotiation of African-Australian identity can be especially difficult for young people who were born in Australia.
In his research, Kirk Zwangobani sees many young Australian-born Africans who feel like they are caught between two worlds.
"Young people who were born here, they wanted to identify as African-Australian but they just didn't understand or know that much of the rituals, the tradition, the family with their African identity, be it Nigerian or Eritirean or the like. They'd spent most of their life here, and so they didn't feel they could make claim to having that as part of their actual cultural makeup. But at the same time, purely by colour of skin or language or the like, they knew that in this white Australian culture, they couldn't quite align with that either."
But not all Australians of African descent want to call themselves African-Australian.
For Soreti Kadir, being African-Australian has more to do with the way other people understand her background, than her own personal identity.
"Personally, I identify as an Oromo living within the Oromo diaspora, and then at other times I identify as a black woman living in the black diaspora. But other people identify me as being an African-Australian based on the way that I speak, based on where I live, based on where I came from. And so that construction of identity really doesn't have much to do with how I want to be identified. It's more so what me makes more negotiable for others, what makes me more understandable for others, and how do they want to digest all of this."
Monica Forson is the co-founder of the Afro-Australian Student Organisation.
She agrees that growing up as an African-Australian can pose difficult questions of identity, especially for young people of mixed race.
But she says they're questions she shouldn't be pressured by others to answer.
"Being mixed race, you're always trying to identify yourself, trying to fit into a box as such, because a lot of the time you're left out of that box. A lot of African people are like 'are you black or are you white?' or 'are you African?' or whatever, and I don't know yet. I don't think I should have to make that decision. I don't think someone else should be trying to get me to figure out who I am or what I am."
The forum revealed that for some white people who have grown up in Africa, negotiating identity can be just as complicated.
One audience member described the difficulty in understanding her own Zimbabwean identity.
"Being a white, or a mostly white person from a post-colonial country, I find it really difficult, or I feel like I don't have the right to call myself Zimbabwean. And I've certainly met a lot of Africans who have talked to me and who have looked at me and who have not seen anything that is anything like what they are."
The forum on identity was one of a series by the Wheeler Centre on African issues.
