This research investigates the making of a black movement in late 20th century France. It is grounded in a comparative perspective which embraces a long time span split up into three different periods namely: 1930s-1950s; 1960s-1980s; and 1990s onward. It aims at pinpointing the internal and external factors that have enabled Blacks to stir up, in the last decade, a race-driven movement without precedent since de-colonization, and whose very possibility has been theoretically called into question in French social sciences.
France has been witnessing, in effect, the fulfillment of Du Bois’ prophecy about the ‘‘color line’’. In 1998, about 40,000 African-descended demonstrators commemorated, in Paris, the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. In 1999, Collectif Égalité appeared and denunciated the absence of Blacks on French television. It organized in 2000 the ‘‘Black People March for Dignity’’. In 1999, Africagora demanded the implementation of Affirmative Action. In 2003, black academics and politicians founded Capdiv to fight for the improvement of the status and condition of Blacks. To harmonize these actions, and institutionalize a collective ‘‘black subjectivity,’’ a coordinating organization, CRAN (Representative Council of Black Organizations) was founded in 2005.
This study addresses the contemporary black movement as evidenced by the aforementioned initiatives. It departs from the ‘‘state-centric’’ approach characterizing the French scholarship on minorities’ movements; an approach that postulates that some groups are naturally unable to mobilize. Not considering the French state discourse as the principal bearer of meaning, this research rests on a ‘‘thick observation’’ of contemporary black organizations, in combination with an in-depth analysis of their discourses and archives. The following questions guide the reflection: What transformations undergone by the black fragment in France made possible the emergence of a black movement in the last decade? To what extent do indigenous (i.e. black-owned) resources rival exogenous means in the generation of this movement? How and why the changing characteristics of this population favor a race-driven movement? On what ground does the ongoing movement divert from or intersect with colonial black movements such as the Negritude movement?
French social sciences are poor in regards to Blacks as a research subject. This dearth is well-reflected particularly in the study of black French mobilization. The above ternary periodization of the black presence in France reveals a status quo. In effect, research on Blacks per se, in the first period, consists in a handful of studies among which Dewitte’s Les mouvements nègres en France, apparently the most comprehensive one. Albeit informative, this book lacks systematic theoretical apparel. Other studies, mostly by literary critics, mainly investigate the Negritude movement, and favor a formal analysis of its initiators’ writings. Post-Negritude black French movement has not yet benefitted from a comparable scholarly investigation. However, recent articles in newspapers, intellectual journals, and books by black activists can be credited for certifying the reality of the current movement, and, in the case of the books, providing insider’s testimonies.
Though French scholarship has not addressed the current black movement in its own right, it encompasses few studies accounting for the mobilization of groups like the Beurs, or dwellers of territories labeled ‘‘cités’’ [urban projects] that are socially as much ‘‘raced’’ as Blacks. These studies require worthy attention as they underscore the concept of integration crisis for these groups’ mobilization, even though it is not relevant to the analysis of Blacks. Defined either as the social incorporation of in-migrants or the dissolution of their culture into the mainstream, integration is applied to a foreign body. Touching on its economic dimension, as most studies do, seems insufficient to make it relevant in regard to the Black movement. For I contend, on the basis of statistics, that Blacks have been more successful in the late 1990s than they were in the 1970s. Why then the absence of a black movement in the 1970s if integration crisis justifies their movement? This concept, actually, addresses more the downfall of France’s political agenda than the characteristics of the protest groups.
I argue that the black movement is in line with a project of self-government sustained by two major trends of the black population: a) the intellectualization of a growing black population accelerated by the socio-economic evolution of African and Antillean societies, and 30 years of restrictive immigration policies combined with a shrinkage of low-skilled job opportunities; and b) the making of a black consciousness.
