To mark Black History Month, Vis A Vis spoke to Maboula Soumahoro, one of the leading transatlantic thinkers on race, racism and the African Diaspora. While French and American societies struggle against racism, intolerance and discrimination take different forms on each side of the Atlantic. The French republican tradition emphasizes “laïcité” (or secularism) and color-blindness, and a strict separation between the private space and the public space. In the United States, however, racial, religious, or cultural forms of belonging have a legitimate place in the public debate. How do these differences affect the reality of racism in France and the United States? What impact do they have on efforts to tackle racism?
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Maboula Soumahoro is a French writer, scholar, and current fellow at the Columbia Institute for Ideas and Imagination . She is an associate professor at the University of Tours and president of the Black History Month Association in France. A specialist in the field of Africana Studies, Maboula Soumahoro has conducted research, and taught in several universities and prisons in the United States and France. She is the author of Le Triangle et l’Hexagone, réflexions sur une identité noire (La Découverte, 2021), translated in English by Kaiama L. Glover as Black Is the Journey, Africana the Name (Polity, 2021). Last year, Maboula Soumahoro was a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.
Credits
Host: Dr. Emmanuel Kattan
Editor and Producer: Monica Beatrice Hunter-Hart
Producer: Georgia O’Neil