[FA Worldmusic] NY Times (Last Week) Article: "For Blacks in France, Obama's Rise Is Reason to Rejone, and to Hope"

[Evangeline Kim]

This a good report in the NY Times by Michael Kimmelman, one of the Arts
critics.  Having spent many years working throughout all of Africa, I'm
pleased to read this!

Best,
Evangeline



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June 17, 2008
Abroad
For Blacks in France, Obamas Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
PARIS  When Youssoupha, a black rapper here, was asked the other day what was
on his mind, a grin spread across his face. Barack Obama, he said. Obama
tells us everything is possible.

A new black consciousness is emerging in France, lately hastened by, of all
things, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
An article in Le Monde a few days ago described how Mr. Obama is stirring up
high hopes among blacks here. Even seeing the word noir (black) in a
French newspaper was an occasion for surprise until recently.

Meanwhile, this past weekend, 60 cars were burned and some 50 young people
scuffled with police and firemen, injuring several of them, in a poor minority
suburb of Vitry-le-Frangois, in the Marne region of northeast France.

Americans, who have debated race relations since the dawn of the Republic, may
find it hard to grasp the degree to which race, like religion, remains a taboo
topic in France. While Mr. Obama talks about running a campaign transcending
race, an increasing number of French blacks are pushing for, in effect, the
reverse.

Having always thought it was more racially enlightened than strife-torn
America, France finds itself facing the prospect that it has actually fallen
behind on that score. Incidents like the ones over the weekend bring to mind
the rioting that exploded across France three years ago. Since it abolished
slavery 160 years ago, the country has officially declared itself to be
colorblind  but seeing Mr. Obama, a new generation of French blacks is
arguing that its high time here for precisely the sort of frank discussions
that in America have preceded the nomination of a major black candidate.

This black consciousness is reflected not just in daily conversation, but also
in a dawning culture of books and music by young French blacks like
Youssoupha, a cheerful, toothy 28-year-old, who was sent here from Congo by
his parents to get an education at 10, raised by an aunt who worked in a
school cafeteria in a poor suburb, and told by guidance counselors that he
shouldnt be too ambitious. Instead, he earned a masters degree from the
Sorbonne.

Then, like many well-educated blacks in this country, he hit a brick wall. I
found myself working in fast-food places with people who had the equivalent of
a 15-year-olds level of education, he recalled.

So he turned to rap, out of frustration as much as anything, finding
inspiration in nigritude, an ideology of black pride conceived in Paris
during the 1920s and 30s by Aimi Cisaire, the French poet and politician from
Martinique, and Liopold Sidar Senghor, the poet who became Senegals first
president. Its philosophy, as Sartre once put it, was a kind of antiracist
racism, a celebration of shared black heritage.

Nigritude and Cisaire are back. When Cisaire died in April, at 94, his funeral
in Fort-de-France, Martinique, was broadcast live on French television. The
French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his rival Sigolhne Royal both attended.
Just three years ago, Mr. Sarkozy, as head of a center-right party and not yet
president, supported a law (repealed after much protest) that compelled French
schools to teach the positive aspects of colonialism. The next year, Cisaire
refused to meet with him. Now here was Mr. Sarkozy flying to the former French
colony (today one of the countrys overseas departments, meaning he could
troll for votes) to pay tribute to the poet laureate of nigritude.

That said, as a country France definitely sends out mixed messages. Nigritude
is a concept they just dont want to hear about, Youssoupha raps in Render
Unto Cisaire on his latest album, @ Chaque Frhre (To Each Brother). A
regular short feature on French public television, Citoyens Visibles, hosted
by a young actress, Hafsia Herzi, celebrates French artists with foreign
origins.

At the same time, its against the rules for the government to conduct
official surveys according to race. Consequently, nobody even knows for
certain how many black citizens there are. Estimates vary between 3 million
and 5 million out of a population of more than 61 million.

Can you imagine if French officials said, Well, were not sure, the
population of France may be 65 million, or maybe its 30 million? declared a
somewhat exasperated Patrick Lozhs, founder of Cran, a black organization
devised not long ago partly to gather statistics the government wont.

When he sat down to talk the other morning, the first two words out of his
mouth were Barack Obama. The idea behind not categorizing people by race is
obviously good; we want to believe in the republican ideal, he said. But in
reality were blind in France, not colorblind but information blind, and just
saying people are equal doesnt make them equal.

He ticked off some obvious numbers: one black member representing continental
France in the National Assembly among 555 members; no continental French
senators out of some 300; only a handful of mayors out of some 36,000, and
none from the poor Paris suburbs.

To this may be added Crans findings that the percentage of blacks in France
who hold university degrees is 55, compared with 37 percent for the general
population. But the number of blacks who get stuck in the working class is 45
percent, compared with 34 percent for the national average.

Theres total hypocrisy here, Lionora Miano said. Shes a black author, 37,
originally from Cameroon, whose recent novel Tels des Astres Iteints (Like
Extinguished Stars) is about race relations as seen through the eyes of three
black immigrants.

For me it was really strange when I arrived 17 years ago to find people here
never used the word race, Ms. Miano said over coffee one afternoon at Cafi
Beaubourg. Outside, African immigrants hawked sunglasses to tourists. French
universalism, the whole French republican ideal, proposes that if you embrace
French values, the French language, French culture, then race doesnt exist
and it wont matter if youre black. But of course it does. So we need to have
a conversation, and slowly it is coming: not a conversation about guilt or
history, but about now.

The Black Condition: An Essay on a French Minority by Pap NDiaye, a
42-year-old historian at the School for Advanced Study of the Social Sciences,
is another much-talked-about new book here. We are witnessing a renaissance
of the nigritude movement, Mr. NDiaye declared the other day.

The surge in popularity of Mr. Obama among French blacks partly stems from the
hope that his rise will highlight our lack of diversity and put pressure on
French politicians who say they favor him to open politics up more to
minorities, Mr. NDiaye said. We in France are, in terms of race, where we
were in terms of gender 40 years ago.

He laid out some history: French decolonization during the 1960s pretty much
pushed the original nigritude movement to the back burner, at the same time
that it inspired a wave of immigrants from the Caribbean to come here and fill
low-ranking civil service jobs. From sub-Saharan Africa, another wave of
laborers gravitated to private industry. The two populations didnt
communicate much.

But their children, raised here, have grown up together. Mutually discovered
discrimination, as Mr. NDiaye put it, has forged a bond out of which
nigritude is being revived.

The watershed event was the rioting in poor French suburbs three years ago.
Among its cultural consequences: Aimi Cisaire started to be rediscovered by
young people who found in his work things germane to the current situation,
Mr. NDiaye said.

Youssoupha is one of those people. He was nursing a Coke recently at Top Kafi,
a Lubavitch Tex-Mex restaurant in Criteil, just outside Paris, where he lives.
Nearby, two waiters in yarmulkes sat watching Rafael Nadal play tennis on
television beneath dusty framed pictures of Las Vegas and Rabbi Menachem M.
Schneerson. A clutch of Arab teenagers smoked outside. In modest neighborhoods
like this, France can look remarkably harmonious.

Cisaire is in my lyrics, and I was upset when people misinterpreted what I
wrote as anti-white because nigritude is the affirmation of our common black
roots, Youssoupha said.

Ms. Miano, the novelist, made a similar point. There is no such thing as a
black community in France  yet  partly because we have such different
histories, she said. An immigrant woman from Mali and another from Cameroon
view the world in completely different ways. You also shouldnt think there
isnt racism among blacks in France, between West Indians and Africans. There
is. But ultimately were all black in the face of discrimination.

Then she smiled: Too bad I forgot to wear my Obama T-shirt.


Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company