Black Feminism and Transnational Solidarity: Mobilization against Police Violence in France

Abstract

On the basis of about three years of ethnographic research, including interviews with activists, I discuss the role of black feminist activism and transnational solidarity in the movement against police violence, and the resonance of Black Lives Matter in France. I focus on how men of Black and Maghrebin origin are predominately killed at the hands of police, and how women of Black and Maghrebin origin women, including Assa Traoré and Ramata Dieng, are leading this burgeoning movement. This current movement of Black feminist activism is in conversation with earlier periods of Black feminist activism in France as well as with the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States. Black women activists navigate how to respond to police violence that disproportionately targets particular ethno-racial populations in a context that does not acknowledge the relationship between police violence and racism. They do so by locating the specificity of their identities as both Black and women. Black women’s activism is not only motivated by their particular positionality, but it is also shaped by it. Their unique standpoint (Collins 1986) as Black women, sisters, mothers and daughters also characterizes the transnational solidarity these women activists share with Black Feminist activists around the world. I argue that such a Black Feminist perspective is essential to understand racism in postcolonial France. In Part 1, I introduce the specific context of Black Lives Matter and police violence in France and the United States, including the deaths of Adama Traoré and George Floyd and the need for a Black Feminist interpretative reading of this context. In Part 2, I discuss Black feminist ethnography and the methods for this study, including my positionality as a Black American woman. I further articulate how the French Republican context silences discussions of race and racism, and relegates these concepts as “imports” from the United States. In Part 3, I provide a background on Black feminist activism, including intersectionality and the history of Black feminism in France and the rest of Europe. In Part 4, I discuss notions of transnational blackness, and how to consider the connections between blackness in both France and the U.S., as well as connections among racialized populations in both societies. I also discuss the relevance and resonance of Black Lives Matter in France, and how Black feminism provides a way to analyze these connections. In Part 5, I provide examples from my ethnographic research and interviews of Black women activists mobilizing against police violence. In the conclusion, I consider what it means to center Black women in our analysis of racism, not just in the United States, but also in France.