Contact: Linda Granell[email protected](909) 335-5195Ref. # 00-72
Dec. 5, 2000
UNIVERSITY OF REDLANDS HISTORIAN DESCRIBES ROOTS OF FRENCH BIGOTRY
When African-American soldiers went to France during World War I, they were treated as equals by French society. That treatment has led to a pervasive mind-set that the French harbor no racial prejudice.
Jennifer Keene, assistant professor of history at the University of Redlands, offers another perspective. It is true, she says, that African-Americans were treated well. It is not true that this was because the French weren't prejudiced. They simply weren't prejudiced against Americans; color had nothing to do with it. The experiences of West African soldiers forced from French colonies to serve in the war were quite different.
"In France, a black man's nationality erected barriers and opened doors in an analogous way that skin color dictated opportunities in the United States," Keene says. "The French identified African-Americans with the positive associations of the power of America. West African troops experienced the negative effects of a prejudice based on national origin, as the French saw them alternatively as savages or as big children."
Keene's work has been supported by a Senior Fulbright Research Award, Graves Award, Albert J. Beveridge Research Grant and the American Historical Society. Among her publications on the subject is an article on "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Wounded World: Seeking Meaning in the First World War for African-Americans" in an upcoming issue of Peace and Change.
Keene's public and classroom presentations make use of dozens of visual images she has discovered in archives, books and personal collections. One example she uses extensively is the cover of the magazine La Vie Parisienne with an illustration of an African and Frenchwoman at a restaurant table.
"The cover enraged the American military leadership," she says. "They said, 'Our soldiers are going to buy this, send it home and use it to say that it's okay for white women to have affairs with black men.' And, indeed, the African-American soldiers interpreted it as evidence of the lack of prejudice in France."
Keene suggests taking a closer look at the image. The West African solider, identified by his cap on the floor, is a caricature, with over-sized hands, a wide grin and eating with a knife. And is the woman offering a gesture of sexual invitation or chucking him under the chin as though he were a child?
The caption is ambiguous as well. "L 'enfant du dessert," it reads: "Child of dessert."
"It may be true that the French did not object to fleeting wartime liaisons," Keene says, "but they were not as nonchalant about interracial romances as the Americans often assumed. French officials worried that after too much familiar contact with French women, colonial troops were losing their respect for the white race, which could have serious postwar consequences in the colonies."
French authorities consequently removed French nurses from Senegalese hospitals, restricted their leaves and sent secret instructions for mayors to obstruct West-African-French marriages.
Documents show that the French also had dramatically different views about the intellectual capacity of their colonial objects, particularly when it came to learning the cherished national language.
The French considered the Senegalese incapable of learning the complicated language and devised a "pigeon" French called "petit negre" to speak with their colonial inferiors. African-Americans conversely were praised for their intelligence and efforts to learn the true French, even when their words were incorrect.
Keene notes that African-Americans still go to France to escape racism. At the same time, West Africans in the country will dress in American clothing so they can "pass" as Americans.
"America is still grappling with the legacy of slavery," Keene says. "France, on the other hand, sees itself as a leader in racial democracy. How true is that? Or should they be dealing more honestly with their own legacy of colonialism?"
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