French blacks demand their place in history

By Clare Byrne Feb 8, 2012, 6:06 GMT

Paris - Veteran US civil-rights activist Katherine Cleaver looked bewildered by all the attention.

She had spent more than an hour fielding questions from a rapt Paris audience about her involvement with the Black Panther Party in the 1960s, and there was still many raised hands and expectant faces.

'I'm astonished to see the Black History Month model being appropriated by France!' said Cleaver, who was the first woman on the ruling council of the 'black power' party.

'It was time,' Michele Beltan piped up from the middle of the packed conference room at the Overseas Affairs Ministry.

Every February in the United States, the roles of black Americans in shaping history are celebrated in schools and communities, often through events events with a particular focus on the civil rights movement.

But in France, black people's struggle for equality and their contributions to society have been largely overlooked by the history books.

'I was born in France of West Indian origin,' Beltan, the woman who declared 'it was time,' told dpa.

'Growing up, I never learned the history of France's overseas territories or of the 'indigenes (meaning indigenous people, the term France used for people in its African colonies),'' the 35-year-old journalist said.

'But colonialism and slavery are as much a part of French history as World War I. We should learn about it - even if it makes people uncomfortable.'

The black history event on February 1, which featured discussions and slam poetry performances on being black and French, came in a week in which the stereotyping of black people by French magazine Elle made international headlines.

In an article in its January 13 edition entitled 'Black Fashion Power' an Elle writer had praised US First Lady Michelle Obama for making 'chic ... a plausible option for a (black American) community that was hooked until now on its streetwear codes.'

America's new 'black-geoisie has integrated all the white codes,' while retaining some ethnic flourishes, she wrote.

The article triggered a torrent of indignation from women on both sides of the Atlantic.

'We are not one monolithic group to be written about like zoo animals,' a columnist on US urban style website Fashion Bomb Daily declared.

Elle editor-in-chief Valerie Toranian apologized and withdrew the article from the website, insisting 'good intentions' had been badly expressed. Her response was inadequate for a group of 30 prominent French black journalists, authors, historians and other opinion-makers.

'Black people, men or women, don't need benevolence, they need equality,' they wrote in Le Monde newspaper on January 31, challenging Elle to hire more black reporters and put more black women on the cover.

There are no official statistics on the number of black people in France - where collecting statistics about racial or ethnic origin is forbidden - but most estimates put the number at 5 million, or 8 per cent of the population.

Yet, only one of the 555 members of parliament representing mainland France is black, there is no black head of a major company, and it was 2005 before national television got a black news anchor.

Franco Lollia, head of the Anti-Negrophobia collective, told dpa that discrimination against black people was rife, particularly in employment and housing, but often hard to prove. So when a high-profile case of stereotyping or racism comes along, activists jump on it.

One such case, which comes to court Thursday in Paris, involves star perfume maker Jean-Paul Guerlain, elderly heir to the Guerlain dynasty. He is charged with racial insults, after telling a French television channel in 2010 that he 'worked like a nigger' to produce one of his fragrances. The remarks provoked threats of a boycott of Guerlain.

Guerlain apologized for the 'slip-up,' which he said in no way reflected his thinking, but a trio of anti-racism groups still pressed charges.

Patrick Lozes, a Benin-born pharmacist, activist and centrist politician who has announced a bid to become president in April elections, says people like Sonia Rolland and Lollia are fighting the wrong fight.

'Yes, there's racism in France, but it's no more racist than anywhere else,' Lozes, who has yet to secure the 500 endorsements he needs from mayors across the country to run for president, told dpa.

As proof, he points to the election of Gaston Monnerville as Senate president, the second-highest office in the land, in 1958, and to surveys showing that two of France's three favourite personalities - actor Omar Sy and former tennis pro and reggae star Yannick Noah - are black.

He highlights his own experience in 2002 National Assembly elections. Although he did not win a seat, he made a decent showing in Paris's wealthy 1st district.

For Lozes, who founded a council representing black associations in France, the biggest problem facing French blacks reaches beyond race and is shared by women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups.

'France is run by a white, male, Parisian elite,' he said. 'That's the main problem.'