From Africans to “Blacks”: The Making of a Racial Identity in Contemporary France

The purpose of this project is to analyze the construction of black identity in 21st – century France. It questions the premises of a whole body of knowledge that still subscribes to the French Republic’s race-blind ideology and consequently discards the relevance of studying racial differentiation in France. Focusing on 21 st – century organizations founded by French citizens of African descent, the project sets to unveil the mechanism by which these collectives of activists delineate the racial boundaries confronting the African-descended population and strive to convince French authorities to recognize the legitimacy of racial self-identification as black. This study will show that these organizations of African-descended activists manage to bring to existence a black French identity by deploying two parallel strategies. On the one hand, they have built a propagandist movement that seeks mostly to persuade French of African-descent of the benefits of identifying as black French instead of “French of African immigrant origin”. On the other hand, these organizations have been pressuring state authorities, especially the lawmakers, to implement an affirmation action-like program whereby racial categories will be institutionalized, and black (as well as white, Arab, etc.) will be recognized as legitimate group identities in the French society. Aiming to be a watershed contribution to the emerging literature on black French, and the extensive literature on race, this project will take the study of race to a higher level of sophistication.