Is Paris Blurring: When talking Race in France, same problem, different accent
by Mariah Hill with photos by Sabine Dundure Photography.
“In many ways, African Americans came to France as a sort of privileged minority, a kind of model minority, if you will — a group that benefited not only from French fascination with blackness, but a French fascination about Americanness.” — Tyler Stoval
During my year in Paris, Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro came to French cinemas. In the film, James Baldwin discusses his decision to move to France, the great racial hideaway for famous black Americans like Josephine Baker, Richard Wright and many others. Baldwin emphasizes the racial terror he had to endure in the United States and how being in France allowed him to survive and write.
I watched this documentary with a group of black French feminists at their apartment in the 20th arrondissement and I was struck and confused that a person could live two such strikingly different realities. Baldwin went from living in a fear that was a defining characteristic of his life to living as a celebrated figure of culture. I was experiencing a similar phenomenon myself, existing in France as a model minority. People were curious about me and my thoughts in a way that wasn’t familiar.
I spent a lot time trying to recognize precisely what had changed even though the only thing that was different was the country. It was a hard question to answer because I looked at it through an American lens. I knew about the black thought developed in France, movements like Négritude and the works of Senghor, Fanon, Césaire and Glissant. I learned about their theories through an American context, though, and had trouble understanding them and most social relations in my French reality. I thought immigrants had no freedom to live in communities similar to ones I’ve seen in New York City and Texas; I thought that French people uncritically absorbed rhetoric around race in France and America, and then made assumptions about my experiences with racism in the U.S. I ran into problems I couldn’t solve within an American context and I quickly learned that French people attempted to do the same thing. They not only tried to apply a French framework to America, but to me as well. They tried to understand me through their lens. This framework didn’t fit quite so perfectly and I could see this tension through France’s perception of three things: African Americans, national culture, and race.
French fascination with black culture still exists today. Many young men I went on dates with there were fascinated by rap and R&B, wanted to show off their knowledge of Michael Jackson and Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill and Frank Ocean. The leftists I met were enamored with the Black Panther Party, the Black Power Movement, Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael and others. Young folks of all races constantly asked me what it’s like to be an African American in the U.S. and be a part of the legacy created by the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil Rights Movement. French people were always excited to hear that I was African American with an intrigue that bordered on fetishization. In Paris, I escaped the American black/white dichotomy that has shaped my world and was suddenly living in Baldwin’s. I was explicitly valued because of the same identity that devalued and dehumanized me in the U.S. It was was unsettling realization that my reality and what it meant to be me was entirely transformed without my permission or a change in myself and that I was supposed to find this liberating.
In Paris, I escaped the American black/white dichotomy that has shaped my world and was suddenly living in Baldwin’s. I was explicitly valued because of the same identity that devalued and dehumanized me in the U.S.
I was constantly reminded that I had the same color skin — people interacted with me a one way when they thought that I was an African immigrant and another way upon hearing my accent and realizing that I was American or English. The most shocking moment was when I was at the park with the girls I babysat and an old French man approached to ask where I was from after hearing me speak English. He then told me in detail why he didn’t like Africans in France, but loved African Americans and our culture and music and way of life. His stereotypes of Africans were same ones I frequently hear about African Americans.
Despite this curiosity, though, I noticed that not many people outside of the United States really understand what being African American means. They know the phrase and that people with this identity have black skin but Europeans — both old and young — would ask me what my origins were and what part of Africa my parents were from. Only after I told them that even my great-grandmother was born in the U.S. and that African Americans do not generally know our country of origin in this way did they maybe start to truly understand that we are a people whose history and culture in some ways begins in the U.S. Many white Europeans consider their countries to be very homogenous, and most of the people of color in their countries are recent immigrants or their parents are, or their grandparents are. They don’t understand that an entire non-white population has existed in the U.S. almost from its inception and because this population was stolen as slaves, we may not have any direct cultural ties to any other country.
Many white Europeans consider their countries to be very homogenous, and most of the people of color in their countries are recent immigrants or their parents are, or their grandparents are. They don’t understand that an entire non-white population has existed in the U.S. almost from its inception and because this population was stolen as slaves, we may not have any direct cultural ties to any other country.
I came to realize that most Europeans didn’t understand this concept because the way they think about their own countries. Aside from meeting French people, I met people from Russia, Finland, Denmark, Germany and other European countries. Through conversations about food and traditions and life in general, I began to notice that most white Europeans (there were very few other au pairs of color and I met even fewer expats of color) imagine their country to be quite homogenous. Even if they’re from a larger and more visibly diverse country like England, they still believe all the people of color to have recently arrived. The smaller and more isolated their country is the more they believe this view of their country. Europeans will then try to fit this framework of sameness onto the U.S. Just like it was hard to get French people to understand the concept of “African American,” it was as hard to get them to understand that, in my view at least, there really isn’t an American culture in the same way that there’s a French or Russian or German culture.
For example, I spent Christmas with my host family and the entire week we cooked dishes for the Christmas Eve apéro. My host mother’s father — a literal storybook grandpa who carries a handkerchief and fixes things around the house — made three different types of Christmas cookies. He made ones from Alsace, ones from where he grew up down in Burgundy, and ones from where my host dad was raised in Normandy. They all tasted different and my host grandpa told me a bit about each of the areas of France and their influences. Then he asked me how we made Christmas cookies in America and if there was a difference in the way folks made them in New York versus Arizona. It was difficult answering him. I had to explain that culture doesn’t really work the same way in the U.S. Everyone I know who has unique Christmas traditions and pastries are Mexican or Salvadoran or Vietnamese or African American and their traditions center around this identity. My family makes sweet potato pies, which may be differently made in the South than they are in the North, but I would consider them an aspect of African American culture and cooking traditions (like soul food) that form a part of the larger American cultural tradition.
During moments like these I realized that there really isn’t a single tangible (white) American culture in the same way that Europeans and French people (however falsely) believe there to be in their own countries. America for me is black, Mexican for my Mexican friends and Vietnamese for my Vietnamese friends. Though these identities may be “othered” in the mainstream, I don’t consider them to be “other” or non-American. Instead, they’re different cords that weave together and form the American culture. Distinctly American forms of music like jazz and hip-hop and even rock-n-roll and country are rooted in black and Latino experiences of American life. During the time I spent living in New York, I noticed the influence of Jewish culture and comedy and how embedded itself to the idea of NYC itself. Little Italy in the Bronx is studded with cafes and bakeries where people still speak Italian, and markets advertise themselves as both authentically Italian and authentically New York. These personal experiences about different communities living together made me realize that most “culture” in the U.S. is a combination of different groups of people living their lives and creating, something most white French people and Europeans couldn’t consider.
Most “culture” in the U.S. is a combination of different groups of people living their lives and creating, something most white French people and Europeans couldn’t consider.
French people were also fascinated with American racism. Most folks would cringe and smile when they heard that I’m from Texas. Then the Trump jokes would come and they’d ask me about my experience growing up in the South. Or rather, they’d assume what my life was like. French people, both young and old, all would say things like “how terrible.” This bothered me constantly because in France, people talk about race in a very particular way.
There’s a core concept of the nation called “laïcité,” or separation of church and state, defined as “the neutrality of the state towards religious beliefs, and the complete isolation of religious and public spheres.” It’s a word I heard often when I’d discuss politics with French people. It interestingly always came up when discussing the ban of wearing religious symbols in schools. Muslim girls cannot wear their headscarves and Jewish boys can’t wear their yarmulkes, for example. I arrived in France around the time of the infamous “burkini ban” and the word showed up here as well. It was an odd concept for me to fully comprehend because I viewed it as aggressively assimilationist. Growing up in a very diverse city in Texas and living in NYC, seeing people at school in religious garments was normalized. It was shocking to be a country where this, as well as collecting government data or conducting any studies that use race, was illegal.
People had the implicit assumption was that my supposed problems in Texas didn’t exist in France, but my racist experiences back home were never explicit. I was instead subjected to the a quiet, never-acknowledge form of racism that seemed invisible. Being a society where race legally can’t be talked about, where on the morning radio I’d hear that immigrants should shed their identities and identify as French instead of Algerian or Moroccan, I was appalled that French people assumed my life in Texas was way worse when it was precisely this type of racism that formed most of my racial trauma.
Black people in France are talking about this, though. Through the joys of Tinder, I matched with someone who turned out to be a member of a popular (if you’re in the right circles) afro-feminist collective whose work I followed on Facebook. They were all black, and all gay, and all the kind of people I had been searching for. Through them, I learned that today’s young black French people were living colored in a so-called “colorblind” society. They were having concrete experiences different than their white counterparts and were angry that it wasn’t talked about. Actually, it couldn’t be adequately talked about because they didn’t have the language to do so and had to use English terms such as “antiblackness” and “intersectionality.”
I learned that today’s young black French people were living colored in a so-called “colorblind” society. They were having concrete experiences different than their white counterparts and were angry that it wasn’t talked about. Actually, it couldn’t be adequately talked about because they didn’t have the language to do so and had to use English terms such as “antiblackness” and “intersectionality.”
During the time I was there, in fact, the collective was organizing an Afro-feminism festival, with certain spaces only open to black women. There was a huge uproar that this was racist and anti-white. The mayor of Paris even got involved and said that she would ban the festival and even sue for discrimination since the conference was meant to take place on premises owned by the city. Even anti-racist groups spoke out against the festival, but the Mayor eventually allowed it to take place after learning that some events would be open to everyone.
I found liberation in this group. People were creating a space to talk about their experience and make sense of their lives and weren’t afraid to do so. Their conversations were exciting and necessary. What I felt more than anything, though, was comfort. These black feminists fit neatly into my American framework — I had had these conversations at Amherst before. A little later, though, I found comfort and liberation in a different way.
One day, in June, I finished my workout class in the 18th arrondissement around Barbès — Rochechouart, a neighborhood full of black African immigrants and police and random people trying to sell you Malboro cigarettes. Many people think it’s a shady area.
This was during the month of Ramadan, and as I left my class around 9 or 10 pm, old men and women selling incense and the Quran and plates of couscous and stews and peppers and candies and baklava and other sticky sweet pastries filled the entire stretch of concrete under the bridge. I walked through the chaos and there was music and laughter. Old ladies told me to try their dishes but not this one, it was probably too hot for me. They handed me cups of fermented milk and ripe dates and beads. Men and children were laughing.
I got back to my neighborhood in the 20th district, which has a large North African population. All the kebab restaurants and halal groceries had stands outside with Moroccan pastries and more fermented milk and dates. There was music and laughter again, and I was shocked. It was beautiful, and it was survival. It was multiple scenes of people creating a home for themselves that’s perhaps different from their original home. I was blind to it all for a long time — blind to the various halal markets lining the streets and the kebab stands that’d give me free sweet sweet mint tea when I’d get my weekly kebab after a night of partying. I didn’t notice the various African and Asian shops and markets that I had to go to to find plantains and sweet potatoes and hot peppers and the good ginger and peanut butter.
The entire time I was in Paris, and right in the community where I was living, people were simply living their lives. The brasserie next to me always had a huddle of Arab men drinking tea and smoking. The bakery I bought bread from two times a day was owned by Moroccans who sold their sweets right next to croissants. People were carving out a space for themselves and enjoying that space without much day-to-day regard for the larger white French structure. And in the same way America for me is black, this was France for me. I just wasn’t aware of it. In the same way people assumed my reality as a black person in Texas, I did with people of color in France. Assuming what their experiences must be, using my background and applying its framework to their situation, and thinking that I was right. That realization helped me to understand that though I was set to leave in a few weeks, I had just begun to grasp the notion that people make homes out of anywhere, and they survive, and their survival is beautiful.
Mariah Hill is a senior at Amherst College. She’s a Black Studies major and loves bees, yoga, Solange, and is trying to accept hiking as a fun way to pass time.
