Scholar-Activist Dr. Mame-Fatou Niang On Overcoming The Erasure of Black French Women’s Radicalism in France and Beyond
Dr. Mame-Fatou Niang. Photo Credit: Siegfried Forster / RFI.
By Jaimee A. Swift
Dr. Mame-Fatou Niang is undoing historical and contemporary revisionist French history that has tried to erase the contributions, leadership, and political achievements of Black French Radical Women in France and in the French Empire.
The historical and contemporary erasure of Black women’s leadership has nationalist and global implications –– and France is not excluded from this. Despite the country’s attempt at trying to promote the “white French only” aesthetic, Dr. Mame-Fatou Niang is refusing to allow the continual whitewashing and attempted eradication of Black people, particularly, Black women in France and in the French Empire. Niang, who is a scholar, activist, writer, and film director born in Lyon, France, is also an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the Department of Modern Languages at Carnegie Mellon University, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. With her research focusing on race, immigration, national identity in France and postcolonial and transnational studies, Niang also co-directed Mariannes Noires (2016), a documentary that explores the experiences, livelihoods, and perspectives of seven Afro-French women unearthing what it means to be Black in France and Black and French.
I spoke with Dr. Niang about her scholarship; her film, Mariannes Noires, and the hate mail she received because of it; and how Black French and immigrant mothers shaped the landscape of radicalism in France.
JS: When many people think about France, they think about the stereotypical imagery and culture of France: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum, wine, and cheese. Many do not often think or even think Black people exist in the country. What are some misconceptions about Blackness in France that people may have?
MFN: “One of the first misconceptions is that Blackness is not French or France is not Black. For example, this misconception is not only what many of my students have but what many people have in general. While I am in the United States and I introduce myself as a French person, many people are always shocked or give an odd look. Because when we talk about this ‘postcard image’ of France––and this works both from inside France as well as outside––has built inside itself the idea of it being white and has protected this image from the rest of the world. This imagery came at the expense of centuries of Black settlements and racialized people being erased from the history of France. With my work, what I am doing is providing information about the realities of millions of French people––mainly Black French. For me to explain my presence in France is to discuss colonialism. You know how have the debate in the United States where people tell Black Americans to stop talking about slavery or to get over slavery, and you are like ‘No, because it explains how millions of African Americans are here.’ The the same is with France.”
“I would like for people to see Black French as a mosaic of multiple pieces. People need to unveil these pieces to see how rich our experience is, how diverse our experience is, and also how French our experience is because we are French and France is us.”
“I cannot explain my presence in France without explaining colonialism and how France went from being a nothing-country to one of the richest countries in the world thanks to its empire. Point, blank, period. France used their empire, used the men and women of the empire, and used the bodies of the empire for its work. France decided sometime in the 1960s, ‘Well, we don’t need you anymore, go home” and so they tried to cut the link of Black descendants of their empire. But it doesn’t work like that. It is very complicated. And this is why I am building this genealogy of trying to explain to people that one of the ways you can understand my presence in France is colonialism but at the same time, colonialism doesn’t explain my entire experience. I would like for people to see Black French as a mosaic of multiple pieces. People need to unveil these pieces to see how rich our experience is, how diverse our experience is, and also how French our experience is because we are French and France is us.”
JS: In what ways do you think Black French feminisms, Black French women activists, and feminist thought and behavior been overlooked in transnational Black Politics?
MFN: “It is funny, we often don’t think of that question in that way. We often think about how the Black Atlantic circulations of activism or feminism has helped Black French see ourselves. For example, I grew up in a country that told me race didn’t exist. I was told that race was used by Hitler for his discriminatory project and because of that, we are going to remove every single occurence of the word “race” in political documents. With this, the French state tried to make race non-existence. However, I know from my daily experience that my race and what I look like commands so many of my interactions with people. So I am living in this world, where we do not have words for race. For example, right now, many Black French are pushing for people to say Noir which means Black but people cannot do it. When we say blanc which means white, white French people get upset. We cannot use words for race. It is forbidden by the French state to gather numbers or statistics about people in general. Black French particularly are not only invisible in numbers, we are invisible in vocabulary, invisible in the political fabric, and with this, there seems as if there is nothing to really help define yourself.”
“This is where Black activism, Black international activism, and especially, African-American activism has been so important for us because first of all it gave us visibility on and about other Black people. For example, I remember the first Black doctor I ever saw was Cliff Huxtable. And a lot of Black French people will tell you that. For us, the first Black person we saw of importance, wasn’t a singer or a sportsman, but it was an American. It was in America for the first time we saw Black doctors and lawyers, and it gave us an idea of what a Black person could be. It is interesting how white French seem to hate us and discard us, but they have this fetishzation with African-Americans. This goes back to their love and fetishization with the Harlem Renaissance, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright. Because of this, you realize that Black could be actually a good thing in France but if it was Black American. So many Black French, we started mimicking Black Americans as a way to acceptance.”
“African-Americans definitely helped us with the language on race and racism. However, there was a moment we realized there was an issue because we were putting all these words in English, and the construction of identity in France is so peculiar that if you do not discuss it in French terms, in the French language, in the context of French history, and France’s relationship with its colonies, you are missing so much.”
“African-Americans definitely helped us with the language on race and racism. However, there was a moment we realized there was an issue because we were putting all these words in English, and the construction of identity in France is so peculiar that if you do not discuss it in French terms, in the French language, in the context of French history, and France’s relationship with its colonies, you are missing so much. We also realized that many Black movements were geared toward the Anglophone world and were forgetting Blacks in Europe. And this is for good reason: Europe did a great job at trying to erase Black people. I have met many people in the United States and they did not know there were significant Black settlements in Denmark and in Sweden. European countries as a whole did such a great job promoting themselves as white countries that when you thought of circulations of Black movements, it is easier to link movements in the Americas to Africa and forget Europe. To me, I think this is something that has been corrected by social media: as what you and I are doing now, talking to one another, we are building transnational Black networks. But what I have learned is that we have the experience of Blackness but we also have nationalist differences that we simply cannot just copy.”
Watch the film trailer for Mariannes Noires by Dr. Mame Fatou-Niang.
JS: Can you please discuss more your film, Mariannes Noir, and what was the process of piecing together stories of Black French women? What was the reaction to the film?
MFN: “I wanted to make the film for a long time but I just started my work at Carnegie Mellon but tenure, you know? [Laughs]. Then on October 24, 2014, I decided to make the film because a movie came out that day called, Bande de filles (Girlhood) by Céline Sciamma. It was the first major feature made in France with an all-Black female cast that was made by an important studio, and directed by a filmmaker who I absolutely loved who is known to make beautiful films about coming-of-age stories. This was supposed to be France’s “Wakanda” and it was horrible! I was in the United States and I was in my office grading. My sister and my cousin went to watch the film and we were Skyping and my sister was so mad. She said, ‘No one is ever going to get it right about us.’ I have a book coming out in three weeks where I discuss how the film used every single stereotypical trope about Black women. Sciamma said the film was going to be universal and she was going to humanize the Black woman on the French screen. But she didn’t humanize them. I decided to make my own movie because I was tired of seeing films that never showed me, my sister, my cousin, my mother, and my friends. I just wanted to show our truths along with our strengths and our limitations.”
“The funny thing is that every year in France, since the Revolution, a woman from the people is chosen to be Marianne. Her bust is sculpted and her face is plastered on official stamps. Guess who is Marianne? A white woman. All the Mariannes have been white. What is worse is in 2013, a Ukrainian woman who doesn’t even speak French, was chosen to be Marianne. So my question is: how can a foreign woman be something I cannot be in my country?”
“The movie premiered in May 2016. The reactions were great. However, I received a lot of hate mail because the word, Marianne, represents the human personification of France. I called the film, Black Mariannes or Mariannes Noir, because I wanted people to say Noir––I wanted people to say Black. It scorches white people’s mouths to say “Noir” and they cannot say color, so I am forcing them to say color. It is interesting because what some of he French media do is they say Black in English but they will not say the word, Noir. We are not African-American. We are are Afro-French. So when we force them to say the word Noir, they say it is racist because I am identifying by my color and not my nationality. I received thousands of hate mail and hate tweets because the title of the movie, with one including ‘Marianne cannot be a nigger because Marianne has no color––the Republic has no color.’
“The funny thing is that every year in France, since the Revolution, a woman from the people is chosen to be Marianne. Her bust is sculpted and her face is plastered on official stamps. Guess who is Marianne? A white woman. All the Mariannes have been white. What is worse is in 2013, a Ukrainian woman who doesn’t even speak French, was chosen to be Marianne. So my question is: how can a foreign woman be something I cannot be in my country?”
JS: Who are some Black Women Radicals in history you admire?
MFN: “We often think we are standing on the shoulders of giants when we say all these amazing names like Toni Morrison and Christiane Taubira but what is important to me and what is essential to my work is that some of the heroines whose shoulders we stand on are people we do not never talk about: our mothers, our aunts, and all these people who have never been in history books, who don’t receive prizes, and are rarely discussed in politics. However, the important thing to note is: they did the work. This is what I talk about a lot in my work, which is the quotidian––the everyday instances of the networks of resistance that Black women have created in their daily lives.”
“…but what is important to me and what is essential to my work is that some of the heroines whose shoulders we stand on are people we do not never talk about: our mothers, our aunts, and all these people who have never been in history books, who don’t receive prizes, and are rarely discussed in politics. However, the important thing to note is: they did the work. This is what I talk about a lot in my work, which is the quotidian––the everyday instances of the networks of resistance that Black women have created in their daily lives.”
“It is interesting because when I grew up, I never read about a Black person––never. Nor were Black people taught in school. The first time I read about a Black thinker was at Brown University. If we were reading about Black thinkers, they were always African-American. I also realized when I was growing up, I did not know any Blacks in France of importance. I think about my parents. They were beautiful but they were discarded by French society and looked down upon because they were immigrants––even though they were there for sixty years, 100 years and yet they were outcasts. You grow up thinking to be Black, you try not to act like your parents. The first time I read about a Black woman was Zora Neale Hurston and I thought, ‘Wow, who is this woman and where has she been all my life?’ The more I read about Zora, I realized behind this woman was another woman I know, which is my mother. In my research, I asked other Afro-French women who were ‘Black Woman Radical’ they looked up to, and nine times out of ten they were African-American. We didn’t know any Black French Women Radicals.”
“Now, we have tried to build radicality in our everyday lives by seeing how the women in our lives were articulating radicalism. I could read works by Audre Lorde and Toni Morrison but I needed to enter that experience with my daily life as a Black French person and the only way I could do that was if I could build a bridge of these amazing Black American mothers, like Assata Shakur, with women who looked like them but in my immediate life like my mother. I say this about my mother because if you look at my film, the point of reference for many of the women featured in the film were our mothers because our mothers were radical. French society discarded them; said they spoke French with a crazy accent; and believed they were only good to be maids. However, while French society never realized that through their racism and bigotry, they created radical women.”
“I am now apart of a generation of scholars who are going back, looking at our daily lives, in our homes, and also looking at the public history of France, and seeing that Black radical women have always been there---they were just erased from the history. For example, Jeanne “Jane” and Paulette Nardal, Jane Léro, Jeanne-Martin Cissé: Afro-French foremothers whose names were carefully redacted out of French history and the French history of feminism. That "return" home brought me even closer to women that I never thought of as being radicals: the women in my family: mothers, aunts, and others whom France always treated as second class, invisible, and docile citizens but whose every day actions were anchored in resistance. Black French women have been here. Through finding these Black Women Radicals in France, we have learned to love our Blackness, love our Africanness, and therefore, love our Frenchness. All this brings us back to our mothers because they were and are here.”
You can follow Dr. Mame-Fatou Niang on Twitter.
For more information about Mariannes Noir and to watch the trailer, please visit here.