A Cold Civil War?

Abstract

On February 1, 2022, the American Library in Paris launched its Black History Month program with a conversation between two well-known figures in France’s international Black community. Pap Ndiaye is a historian of French and Senegalese descent. As a professor at Sciences Po, he popularized the study of race and identity in French academia, most notably with his book La Condition noire. In 2021, he was appointed direc- tor of the National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris. Jake Lamar is an African American writer who has lived in Paris since 1993. He is the prize-winning author of a memoir, seven novels and a play and teaches creative writing at Sciences Po. What follows are edited excerpts of their exchange.