Performing an ethos of a dominant Black woman in Paris through body and language: passing at the intersection of race, gender, and class

Abstract

This article aims to illuminate the social meanings of passing experiences through the practice of whitization (or whitening, i.e. speaking and behaving like a White person) among upper-class African Black women in postcolonial France at the intersection of race, gender, and class. I analyze the role of body and language in the process of political emancipation in a Cameroonian female activist, who is a consultant in the field of African fashion and luxury in Paris. After defining whitization as a form of passing, the article analyzes the phonetic and bodily markers of whitening processes among the Black female subject in three interactions in front of different audiences. I show how multiple semiotic forms are used by the doubly minoritized subject to perform simultaneously a dominant Black woman ethos and a cosmopolitan Black beauty, which partially conforms to Western canons of beauty so as to subvert race, gender, and class power structures.