People of color and the French language: an ambivalent relationship
On the occasion of the 19th Summit of la Francophonie, which took place in France last October 4 and 5, La Converse and the Bondy Blog co-organized a conference entitled “Parlons Français” on October 3, 2024. This event highlighted testimonies and reflections on the French language and its appropriation by racialized communities.
The expression “parlons Français” means that you express yourself correctly, clearly and comprehensibly in the language. In contrast, we say that someone “speaks French like a Spanish cow” when they have trouble being understood. But, in everyday language, “parlons Français” is also used to say that you want to have a candid, honest discussion, as did the three panelists at the conference.
For this first joint event around the Francophonie, carried out thanks to the financial support of the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications, a panel of committed personalities was brought together: Emeline Odi, freelance journalist at Bondy Blog and member of the Association of Antiracist and Racialized Journalists (AJAR); Anina Ciuciu, lawyer and founder of the collective L'École pour Tous ; and Fatima Hammouch, manager of Narrations within the feminist association Lallab.
The moderators, Sarah Ichou, director of Bondy Blog, and Lela Savić, founder and editor-in-chief of La Converse, animated this dialogue around the racial and linguistic issues of French in front of an eclectic audience.
The Bondy Blog is an online media that was born at the time of the urban revolts of 2005, after the death of Zyed Benna and Bouna Traoré, two teenagers electrocuted inside an electrical substation where they hid to evade a police check. Nearly 20 years later, The Bondy Blog continues to “tell the daily life of those we do not hear or whose speech is distorted, stigmatized, minority”. On both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, the Bondy Blog And La Converse thus share the same mission of representing marginalized and invisible communities in the media.
“It's initially a survival language for me”
If the question of Francization is often the one that comes up the most when it comes to immigrants or communities, in reality, the specific challenges that racialized people experience with regard to the French language are much wider. In France as in Quebec, the first of these is the encounter with a language that is foreign to them.
Fatima Hammouch, whose parents emigrated to France, experienced this painful experience. “It was initially a survival language for me. These were the administrative letters we received at home, where we didn't speak French. My parents only spoke Amazigh, not even Arabic, so we were already a minority in Morocco. It is a language that I learned by the administrative end in order to be able to read these papers and explain them to my parents, or make appointments at CAF by pretending to be an adult on the phone when I was seven and a half years old... I had to master French, because it was the link between my family and the outside world, doctors and teachers, I did not have time to appreciate it. I didn't really enjoy it until much later with books,” she says. It is through a vocabulary that is ultimately very “useful” that Fatima Hammouch meets French.
This first impression is only strengthened when she feels the rejection of her mother by French society. “At the age of 12 I saw an abject debate on TV about the headscarf while my mother is wearing it and I love it! I was angry to see her being insulted and humiliated because of the representation that was made of her and that she could not defend herself, because she had a poor command of French,” she recalls. This traumatic episode founded the commitment of Fatima Hammouch, who describes herself as a “French and Moroccan Muslim woman”. Today, the woman who has learned to love French literature is responsible Narrations At Lallab, a feminist and anti-racist association whose “aim is to make voices heard and defend the rights of Muslim women.”
Anina Ciuciu also encountered the French language in the administrative forms after leaving Romania where she lived with her family in a Roma neighbourhood. “It's my third language, because I am Roma, then I learned Romanian, then I learned Romanian before immigrating to Italy and finally to France”, testifies the writer and lawyer. Her parents in fact made the decision to leave the country after having suffered racist discrimination and were dismissed.
Arriving in France after a trying exile of several months across Europe, Anina Ciuciu discovers the stigmatization that her community is also subject to in France. “My commitment began a bit like Fatima, as I describe in my autobiography, when I saw my mother hiding when she picked me up at school, because she did not want the other children to know that I am Romani. It's violent, it's an injustice! ” she whispers.
Anina Ciuciu has thus transformed shame and anger into an engine for denouncing that prejudices that The Roma people are still subjected to today. “To change the reality of people like me, I decided to study law. When I passed the bar, I felt the need to go further, because racism is structural and change must be too. That's why we founded L'École pour Tous which is an advocacy tool in order to achieve concrete institutional changes. For example, we changed the law to fight against the refusal of racist school enrolments by going before the Council of State, which proved us right,” explains Ciuciu, who founded this association that supports children and young people from marginalized groups (Roma, unaccompanied minors, residents of slums or squats...).
According to her, the language of origin is a vector of identity and resistance, especially for minorities who are often invisible by the domination of French.
“We enrich the language with our slang”
Although French-speaking countries share the same language, it is clear that it varies from country to country and era. In France and Quebec, successive waves of immigration have therefore contributed to the evolution of their adopted language.
Freelancer at Bondy Blog, Emeline Odi specializes in sports journalism while campaigning for a better representation of racialized people in the media, within the Association of Antiracist and Racialized Journalists (AJAR): “With AJAR, we are reaching out to newsrooms to change the way they represent racialized people, for example by highlighting the physical traits of a Black athlete, while we are not doing it with the others. In my own way, I try to change the narrative by working with media like Bondy blog. ”
According to her, the evolution of the French language is an important but not always recognized symbol. “As young people from working-class neighbourhoods, we enrich the language through our slang, which is included in the official dictionary, and yet, society refuses the wealth that we can contribute, or sees it as a deviation while all modern languages evolve. We refuse this contribution of Romani slang, Mushi from Côte d'Ivoire or even Arabic, from all these languages from former colonies”, believes Emeline Odi.
In the audience, these words make Djibril, a young student, react: “It is mainly through French-language rap that the neighbourhoods have appropriated the language and have succeeded in winning battles. When 20 or 30 years ago, rap was considered a thing of the Zoulou (young thug, editor's note), now the rappers are rewarded at Victoires de la Musique. It may not be through literature or cinema, but we managed to reappropriate the language in our own way.”
This illustrates how popular culture can serve as a platform for voices that are often marginalized. However, the first generations of immigrants often preferred French to their mother tongue with their children, “probably so that they could integrate more easily” according to Fatima Hammouch.
Original languages to be revalued
Emeline Odi regrets not being able to express herself in her parents' languages of origin. “French is a language that I loved through literature, I used to have whims for books, not for toys when I was little, but I also have the frustration of not speaking my parents' languages. I noticed that my father made a point of speaking French at home, but never taught me the languages he speaks: Lingala and several languages spoken in Congo, as well as Russian. It's a bit frustrating for me,” says the journalist.
A feeling of losing part of their identity that resonates with the other two panelists. “French is the language I use the most since I work in French and I wrote a book in French, but it is extremely important for me to keep my mother tongue and to teach my daughter Romanes,” emphasizes Anina Ciuciu. “Historically, it is a language of resistance for Roma, because it was not understood by our oppressors (the Roma suffered a genocide during the Second World War, editor's note.), so I think we should preserve this endangered language. This is very important for all people who speak a minority language compared to French, which is the dominant language. It is a real effort to maintain our languages, because we forget that, for the majority of the millions of people in the world who speak French, it is not their mother tongue,” says Anina Ciuciu.
According to Fatima Hammouch, this return to linguistic roots can only be achieved by reviving minority cultures. “Francophonie is often perceived through a colonial aesthetic, where certain languages, such as Arabic, are devalued. Neighbourhoods and minorities are being evicted to maintain the French-speaking elite. Racialized Francophonie is about voices like those of Leïla Slimani or Tahar Ben Jelloun, who, although talented, often come from an elite that maintains dominance.” To counter negative stereotypes linked to the origins of the speaker, the valorization of linguistic diversity would therefore be a prerequisite.
Selim, a young contributor to the Bondy Blog, shares this analysis. “French is a language that evolves and is alive but typically, when some said that Aya Nakamura should not sing at the Olympics and that she does not speak French, we can see that this enrichment is rejected. We should hand over stories about languages and cultures, such as Arabic, which has long been said to be the language of immigrants and the poor, or all the other minority languages or former colonies,” says the man who is planning a career as a journalist.
Finally, this first joint conference by Bondy Blog Aand La Converse allowed for the sharing of experiences that are as diverse in terms of each person's own history, as they are similar in terms of the common patterns that link all racialized people in their sometimes ambiguous relationship with French.
In conclusion, the three speakers emphasized the importance of “intersectional solidarity” and the fight against racism within racialized communities in order to build a Francophonie that is inclusive and values all its identities: “Instead of dividing us, we must fight this fight together”, concludes Émeline.