Suchergebnisse

"[Keaton] provides the most in-depth analysis of the predicament of French Arabs and Africans living in the suburbs of Paris.... [O]ne can read the book through the lens of such great African American writers and activists as Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Malcolm X.... [It] contains an implicit warning to you, France, not to repeat the American racism in your country." -- from the foreword by Manthia DiawaraMuslim girls growing up in the outer-cities of Paris are portrayed many ways in popular discou

'The "exceptional" nature of the French cultural and political tradition', as scholar Catherine Raissiguier sees it 'resides … in its ability to foreground a strong discourse of universal inclusion and equality along with its unique resistance to acknowledging exclusionary and discriminatory discourses and practices both in its past and in its present' (2010: 1). In keeping with Raissiguier's conceptualisation, les contrôles au faciès (which translates as 'racial profiling') fit squarely within this model at this moment when politicised discourse racialises diversity and defines it as a threat to personal and national security. The French Republican model functions in this context as an authoritarian mode of assimilation and universalism that seeks to destroy difference at the expense of equality and inclusion. These 'controls' are only, however, the surface of a deeper and more insidious problem in French society that continues to go misnamed and thus mishandled: race.

AbstractThe discourse of "race-blindness" in contemporary France cannot help but engender what it seeks to evade, "race" consciousness. Nowhere, is this dynamic better illustrated than by the current public debate on "Black" consciousness, "Black" identity discourses, and "French Black" activism that have emerge in response to an avoided "race" question in hexagonal France where "Blacks" have now reached a critical mass. In examining these issues, I argue that "French Black" activists are, however, limiting their own effectiveness when its adherents also retreat from a critical concept of "race" in their anti-black struggles. While the potent ideals of French republicanism are intrinsic to "race" avoidance, this stance unwittingly contributes to the prevalent practice of camouflaging the very discrimination and racism that such activists seek to document through controversial ethno-racial statistics, presently proscribed in France. Negated with "race" is the under-stated significance of the semantic particularity of the notion of "black" and its relevance in anti-black discrimination, also explored in this essay. By this, I am referring to those stigmatizing meanings of "black" prior to its incorporation into social categories used to designate and rank people so-perceived and so-denoted in Europe where those meanings crystallized and migrated beyond its shores. The critical use of "race" by these activists, then, would force the recognition, presently occulted, that this construct has played a fundamental role in structuring belonging and opportunity in France, and thereby buttress demands for statistics to demonstrate and analyze that lived reality towards its undoing. Ultimately, the existence of anti-blackness and anti-black struggles serve to illustrate that France has not escaped its "race" question or fulfilled it promises of "race-blind" equality.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Foreword Black . . . A Color? A Kaleidoscope! -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction Blackness Matters, Blackness Made to Matter -- Black France: Myth or Reality? -- The Lost Territories of the Republic -- Eurafrique as the Future Past of ''Black France'' -- Letter to France -- French Impressionism -- The Invention of Blacks in France -- Immigration and National Identity in France -- ''Black France'' and the National Identity Debate -- Paint It ''Black'' -- The ''Question of Blackness'' and the Memory of Slavery -- The New Negro in Paris -- The Militant Black Men of Marseille and Paris, 1927–1937 -- Reflections on the Future of Black France -- Site-ing Black Paris -- Coda: Black Identity in France in a European Perspective -- About the Contributors -- Index

In Black France / France Noire, scholars, activists, and novelists address the paradox of race in France: the state does not acknowledge race as a meaningful category, but experiences of antiblack racism belie claims of color-blindness.

Intro -- Cover Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Foreword -- Notes -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: The Empire Strikes Back -- The Decline of the British Empire -- Conceptualizing "Black Europeans" and "Black Europe" -- Class, Inequality, and the State -- Gender Ideologies and the Experiences of Black Women -- (Dubious!) Comparisons with the United States -- Establishing Our Priorities -- The Structure of the Book -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Section 1. Historical Dimensions of Blackness in Europe -- 1. The Emergence of Afro-Europe: A Preliminary Sketch -- Transition from Africans in Europe to Afro-Europe -- The Challenges and Responses -- The Question of Identity and Future Prospects -- Notes -- 2. Blacks in Early Modern Europe: New Research from the Netherlands -- African-European Encounters: The Repetition of Surprise -- African Men, Women, and Children in Middelburg in 1596 -- "All Baptized Christians" -- Exhibition Day in Middelburg -- Most Likely from Angola -- What Became of Them? -- No Traces in the Archives -- Shipowner Pieter van der Haegen and Captain Melchior van den Kerckhoven -- Carte Blanche: Obtaining Permission from the National Government -- Slavery: Not Here in Europe -- Keeping Slavery an Ocean Away -- Temporary Stay -- Africans in Amsterdam: Rembrandt's View -- Notes -- 3. Now You See It, Now You Don't: Josephine Baker's Films of the 1930s and the Problem of Color -- Notes -- References -- 4. Pictures of "US"? Blackness, Diaspora, and the Afro-German Subject -- Diasporic Vision: Visualizing Black Europe and the Indexicality of Race -- Family Matters: Race, Gender, and Belonging in Black German Photography -- Acknowledgments -- References -- 5. The Conundrum of Geography, Europe d'outre mer, and Transcontinental Diasporic Identity -- Anxious Identities and Black European Diasporic Subjectivity.