Triangulating Racism: French and Francophone African Reactions to the African American

311 Pages·2017·2.38 MB·English

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History Dissertations Department of History
8-11-2015
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Allyson Tadjer
Georgia State University
Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss
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Tadjer, Allyson, "Triangulating Racism: French and Francophone African Reactions to the African
American Freedom Movement (1954-1968)." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2015.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/7286532
This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @
Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator
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TRIANGULATING RACISM: FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN REACTIONS TO
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT (1954-1968)

by

ALLYSON TADJER

Under the Direction of Denise Davidson, PhD, and Michelle Brattain, PhD

ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the meanings and significance of the African American
freedom movement for the French and Francophone Africans at the momentous juncture of
decolonization. By analyzing the French and Francophone African press, as well as the writings
of French and Francophone African intellectuals, this project demonstrates that American racial
events of the 1950s and 1960s allowed both communities to begin a reflection on the
phenomenon of French racism. In particular, the French historical traditions of universalism and
egalitarianism, important pillars of French colonial discourse, shaped the French and
Francophone African responses to American racism. French and Francophone Africans’ frequent
comparisons between the American racial context and the French colonial and national contexts
reveal that while American racial events were evocative of French racial prejudice, a deep
attachment to the France of 1789 precluded the two groups from assessing French racism fairly.
Marxism, a political theory that found its way in French colonies in the late 1930s and a major
intellectual current in postwar France, largely influenced French and Francophone African
reactions to the African American freedom movement. The French and Francophone Africans’
adherence to a Marxian metanarrative of oppression especially allowed them to build parallels
between American racism and French colonial and racial oppression. However, the global and
systematic dimensions of a Marxian, if not Marxist, analysis of these phenomena also precluded
the French and Francophone Africans from engaging in a particularistic evaluation of French
racial prejudices. By highlighting the ways in which the French nation-state shaped both the
French and Francophone African responses to American racial events and reflections on French
racism, this dissertation adds a line in the scholarly story of the “French imperial nation-state.” In
addition to offering a revisionist take on French popular and academic narratives regarding the
rise of French racial awareness, which those narratives locate at the turn of the 21st century, my
analyses and conclusions shatter the mythical, and still widely held, assumption that the global
“race war” of the 1950s and 1960s had created a powerful sense of racial identification among
blacks of Africa and the African diaspora.

INDEX WORDS: African American civil rights movement, Black Power Movement, Racism,
French colonialism, Francophone African decolonization, Black diaspora
TRIANGULATING RACISM: FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN REACTIONS TO
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT (1954-1968)

by

ALLYSON TADJER

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in the College of Arts and Sciences
Georgia State University
2015
Copyright by
Allyson Marie-Madeleine Tadjer
2015
TRIANGULATING RACISM: FRENCH AND FRANCOPHONE AFRICAN REACTIONS TO
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT (1954-1968)

by

ALLYSON TADJER

Committee Chairs: Denise Davidson
Michelle Brattain

Committee: Jacqueline Rouse
Tyler Stovall

Electronic Version Approved:

Office of Graduate Studies
College of Arts and Sciences
Georgia State University
December 2015
iv

DEDICATION
Although many more people have played an important role in the completion of this
dissertation, I wish to give a special dedication to my parents and my husband for their financial
and moral support throughout this process.
v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To begin, I want to express my utmost gratefulness to my parents, whose support and
sacrifices have allowed me to attend Georgia State University and successfully complete this
dissertation. I also wish to give a special thanks to my husband for his patience and his valuable
help in this, at times, trying intellectual experiment. Without my parents and husband’s financial
and moral support, this task would have been far more arduous, if not impossible. I was also
fortunate to work with wonderful scholars and fellow graduate students. I would like to start by
acknowledging my academic advisor and chair of my dissertation committee, Dr. Denise
Davidson. Her availability and intellectual and professional guidance have played a monumental
role in this enterprise. Dr. Davidson has been far more than an academic mentor; her kind
encouragements throughout this process have allowed me to keep faith in my project and to
brave some of the psychological discomfort that is more often than not a part of this experiment.
I also want to thank the co-chair, Dr. Michelle Brattain, and members of the dissertation
committee, Dr. Jacqueline Rouse and Dr. Tyler Stovall. Through seminars and various
discussions with Dr. Brattain and Dr. Rouse, I have obtained precious insights on the subjects of
racism and the African American freedom movement and enjoyed their kind support. Finally, I
want to express a special thanks to Dr. Stovall who kindly accepted to serve as an external
member of my committee and whose scholarship significantly inspired my own research.
Members of my dissertation group, Dylan Ruediger, Sara Patenaude, Mindy Clegg, and Lauren
Thompson, all deserve heartfelt thanks for reading and commenting on multiple chapter drafts
and for being supportive friends. In conclusion, I am also grateful to all the faculty and fellow
graduate students at Georgia State University who have provided me with intellectual guidance
and moral support.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................. v
LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ vii
Introduction: The African American Freedom Movement and the French “Racial
Question” ............................................................................................................. 7
Chapter 1: French Leftist Intellectuals and the American Racial Context: From a
Theorization of Colonial Racism to a Revolutionary Thirdworldism ......... 26
Chapter 2: The African American Freedom Movement in Antiracist Droit et
Liberté and Nationalist Rivarol ...................................................................... 76
Chapter 3: Debating the African American Freedom Movement: The French
Mainstream Press and Decolonization ......................................................... 125
Chapter 4: Between Afrocentrism and Marxism: Francophone African
Intellectuals’ Engagement with the African American Freedom Movement
.......................................................................................................................... 182
Chapter 5: Building a Nation or Re-building the World: The Francophone African
Press on the African American Freedom Movement .................................. 238
Conclusion: Double Tragedies? ................................................................................... 287
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................. 294
vii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: “Piscine: Ceci nous amènera-t-il cela?” Droit et Liberté, July-August 1964. 124
Figure 2: Rivarol, August 29, 1963. ............................................................................... 125
Figure 3: L’Humanité, September 25, 1957.................................................................... 180
Figure 4: Jacques Kamb, L’Humanité, July 21, 1964. .................................................... 181
Figure 5: Jacques Kamb, L’Humanité, March 13, 1965. ................................................ 182

INTRODUCTION: THE AFRICAN AMERICAN FREEDOM MOVEMENT AND THE
FRENCH “RACIAL QUESTION”
In 1957, African American author James Balwin, who had resided in France for almost a
decade, decided to return to the United States. Like black American authors Richard Wright and
Chester Himes, Baldwin’s exile to France was largely motivated by the desire to escape racist
America.1 The onset of the Algerian war of independence quickly transformed Baldwin’s view
of French racial exceptionalism. Observing Frenchmen’s treatment of Algerians in Paris,
Baldwin concluded that the latter were France’s “niggers.”2 The shocking presence of racism in
France and the ongoing struggle his black compatriots were waging in the U.S. in the name of
racial equality ultimately convinced Baldwin that his place was across the Atlantic.3 The story of
Baldwin’s exile in France and later return to the U.S. is symbolic of the changing racial context
in France in the 1950s and 1960s. Following World War I, when African American soldiers
experienced France’s supposed color-blindness, a number of black Americans made France,
especially Paris, their home. With decolonization four decades later, however, this mythic
perception of French exceptionalism suffered a few bruises.

1 Tyler Stovall, Paris Noir: African Americans in the City of Light (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2012), 132.
2 James Campbell, Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin (New York: Viking, 1991), 107.
3 Tyler Stovall, “The Fire This Time: Black American Expatriates and the Algerian War,” Yale French Studies, no.
98 (January 1, 2000): 190.