The Commemoration of Slavery in France and the Emergence of a Black Political Consciousness

Abstract

The abolition of slavery after the Revolution of 1789 has always been hailed by the French secular State as proof of the progressivist nature of the Republic. Nevertheless, there has never been any attempt to seriously confront the French involvement in the trade of slaves, which lasted for two centuries. France, a colonial power until the 1960s, which still retains several overseas possessions with an Afro-Caribbean population, has a large resident black population in the mainland which feels it has been deprived of its memory and history and seeks official recognition of the role of the State in the trade of slaves. This article tries to show how a black collective identity and consciousness emerged around the fight for the recognition of slavery as a crime against humanity and the claim for financial compensation. This black collective identity competes with the Jewish community, which was granted financial compensation for the Shoah and which successfully lobbied the State to recognize that it was partly responsible for the genocide in World War II. While some radical black activists seek an alliance with part of the Islamic movement, they are also competing over the recognition of their collective identity by the State with the growing Muslim community whose memory is that of colonization and second-class citizenship.

Acknowledgement

The author thanks Ilan Moss for reviewing his article.

Notes

NOTES

1. Such as the Comité marche du 23 mai.

2. Christiane Taubira's popularity was evident in the 2002 presidential elections, in which she received more than 600,000 votes.

3. Raphaëlle Branche, La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie (Paris: Gallimard, 2001).

4. The “Indigènes de la République” (the Republic's native people) is a loosely organized movement which brings together, since 2003, anti-globalization activists, radical left thinkers and Muslims close to the thinking of Tariq Ramadan. Launched in response to the law that banned the hijab in public schools, it evolved into a much broader movement which seeks to challenge the underlying racism, paternalism and anti-immigrant bias prevalent in French society.

5. According to COFFAD, which first used the word in its publications, Yovodah is a compound of Yovo, a European white man in the Fon dialect of Benin, and dah, which means evil.

6. Serge Bilé, Noirs dans les camps Nazis (Paris: Edition du Rocher, 2005); and Claude Ribbe, Le crime de Napoléon (Paris: Editions Privé, 2005).

7. So far, the French courts have cleared him of all charges of anti-Semitism. On the Dieudonné case, see Anne-Sophie Mercier, La vérité sur Dieudonné (Paris: Editions Plon, 2005). He was a candidate on the Euro–Palestine ticket in Paris, in the June 2004 election to the European Parliament.

8. For an interview with Kemi Séba, dated 24 November 2005, see http://www.africamaat.com/article.php3?id_article=479.

9. Cf. Libération, 26 November 2005. One of the guests at this congress was the newly formed “Amitié Judéo–Noire,” an organization close to the CRIF, which promotes friendship between the black and Jewish communities.

10. According to a 1999 opinion poll by the IPSOS institute, 65% of the people in the overseas territories thought that this commemoration was “positive in that it told about a past hidden for too long a time.” See http://www.ipsos.fr/CanalIpsos/poll/82.asp#07.

11. In the 2004 regional election, the Mouvement Indépendantiste Martiniquais still polled 37.29% of the vote, but in 2001 it lost the city council of the capital, Fort de France, to the autonomist Parti du Peuple Martiniquais. In Guadeloupe, the movement for independence is almost nonexistent. In Guyana, the Mouvement de Décolonisation et d’émancipation sociale (MDES) polled 6.55% in the 2004 regional election. Both MIM and MEDES consider the memory of slavery as a major part of their people's history and as a strong component of their “national” identity. See http://www.mdes.org/article76.html and http://www.gensdelacaraibe.org/recherche/articles.php?id_story=45 for the position of MDES and MIM on the issue of commemoration, respectively.

12. Cf. Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières: Essai d’histoire globale (Paris: Gallimard, 2004). The trial was held on 30 November 2005. He was found not guilty.