Afropunk: How can we Reform an Already Eclectic Community?

 

Image from NPR CodeSw!tch, 2016

I really enjoyed this week’s documentary about the origins of the Afropunk movement! The film detailed the appeal of punk as a sense of freedom that allowed members to step outside of poverty and other restrictive labels. One of the primary issues addressed was punk as an overwhelmingly white community. Even within this counterculture movement, many interviewees emphasized how isolating it is to be the only Black person in their punk communities. Beyond this, many spoke about the tokenization they felt in white-dominated punk and the simultaneous isolation they faced in African American communities for participating in white-dominated groups. 

I am more acquainted with Russian punk, so I appreciated getting a new perspective after watching. Russian punk was largely cultivated after the fall of the Soviet Union and became an outlet for many young people whose worlds turned upside down. The abrupt change to a market economy left many people impoverished, and crime skyrocketed. Through my own family’s background, I was able to resonate with punk as an escape from social unrest and poverty. My sister was an avid punk rocker in her youth and had a similar experience escaping from a small, poor mountain town. For her at the time,  punk was also a way to assert a sense of belonging and agency in a life she otherwise felt forced into. The difference between my family’s punk-related experiences and that of the documentary was that my family is white. It is hard to imagine still feeling like an outsider in a community as eclectic as punk. It gave me a new perspective on the movement as a whole, and I agree with the message that we need to work to make punk a more diversified community.