A racist caricature of Rokhaya Diallo exposes France’s enduring hostility toward Black women’s power, intellect and visibility.
A few days before Christmas, the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo featured an abhorrent caricature of esteemed journalist, author, filmmaker and activist Rokhaya Diallo. The grotesque image (which we will not reproduce here) shows a half-naked Diallo dancing on stage dressed in a banana skirt. Her features were exaggerated in the manner of time-worn racist propaganda—contorting her nose, mouth and eyes for a minstrel-like effect. Next to the image was an audience pointing and jeering underneath a sign that reads, (translated from French) “The Rokhaya Diallo Show: She ridicules the separation of church and state all over the world.”
There is no question Diallo was targeted for her widespread international success and renown as an antiracist activist, as well as her prominence as a Black feminist voice decrying racial injustice, sexism and misogynoir in France and abroad. The timing felt insidious and intentional—the magazine chose to end the year with a harmful message to Black French women, as a holiday send off.
The banana skirt purposefully recalled both the famous figure of African American performer and activist Josephine Baker, as well as the Banania campaigns popular in France during the 1900s. The irony was lost on no one that Baker is also the only Black woman to be inducted into the venerated Pantheon—a fact mainstream France loves to attribute to their supposed colorblindness, which the lived experience of Black and Brown French people routinely and forcefully disproves.
Charlie Hebdo has since responded to this controversy directly in a press release, and indirectly by publishing
a similar caricature of Brigitte Bardot.
But we must be clear: What happened to Rokhaya Diallo was a classic case of misogynoir—the term Moya Bailey coined to describe the unique forms of violence faced by Black women because of their race and gender.
It can also be read through the lens of what Koritha Mitchell has explained as “know-your-place aggression.” To Charlie Hebdo writers and readers, the place for Black women in France is to display their bodies on stage as performers, not as public intellectuals. As Diallo explained with characteristic clarity: “This hideous drawing aims to remind me of my place in the racial and sexist hierarchy.”
By mobilizing the twin tropes of racism and sexism, while also invoking the colonial imagination, the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists drew from a familiar arsenal of racist and sexist tropes.
A prolific feminist author, Diallo is a vocal critic of how discrimination runs rampant, and is often minimized in France. She has written several books including a graphic novel, writes for The Washington Post and The Guardian, co-hosts a podcast entitled Kiffe ta race (French slang meaning “to really like” or “to dig”), and is a frequent commentator in French media where she has debated many topics, including secularism—which was the actual subject of the Charlie Hebdo article. Earlier this year, she published Dictionnaire amoureux du féminisme (in English, A Lover’s Dictionary of Feminism), a tome in which foremothers like Baker are honored for their social justice work. Diallo is a sought-after speaker and admired public figure who has worked tirelessly to advance racial justice in France.
Her well-earned acclaim, respect and power in the public realm have also made her a target of misogynoir. Again, and as Diallo was quick to point out, the image of a Black woman who rises to power for her intellect not her performance is even more uncomfortable for those wishing to keep Black women “in their place.”
Familiar to most audience in the United States because of the 2015 terrorist attack on their offices which killed 12 people, Charlie Hebdo prides itself on valuing freedom of speech. The killings led to the “Je suis Charlie”/ “I am Charlie” campaign, which was met with suspicion by marginalized groups weary of the newspaper’s Islamophobia, sexism and racism.
Charlie Hebdo is no stranger to controversy, which it courts audaciously, always under the pretense of its satirical nature and commitment to free speech. This is not the first time the magazine has printed racist images of Black women. Christiane Taubira was among their favorite objects of ridicule while she served as minister of justice from 2012 to 2016. The steady rate of publications that featured dehumanizing images of the brilliant Madame Taubira included the reproduction of a cartoon drawing her as a monkey—another uninventive and preferred racial epithet the magazine has circulated.
To be clear, “misogynoir à la française” is neither new nor unique to Charlie Hebdo. We could go as far back as the 1700s for extensive examples of the French fascination with and fetishization of Black women’s bodies, in particular, but for the sake of brevity, we can just look at the past few years.
Misogynoir à la française was prominently on display earlier this year when Miss France, Angélique Angarni-Filopon, declined to identify with the “Je suis Charlie” movement and was subsequently excoriated by critics who questioned whether she was qualified to hold her title. Her point should have been well taken—especially because, as Maboula Soumahoro put it in a Facebook post expressing her solidarity with Diallo, Black women “have never been and will never be Charlie; impossible purely and simply, historically and politically.”
Last year, during the 2024 Olympics, Aya Nakamura was attacked by the far right after being chosen as the opening night headliner. The backlash confirmed what Black women in France have long known: They are routinely caught at the intersection of racist and sexist debates over who is—and is not—French, with misogynoir aimed squarely in their direction.
As Maboula Soumahoro has pointed out repeatedly, French society’s investment in racism is both tireless and tiresome. Quite predictably, in the face of these ongoing assaults, Black feminist activists, artists and intellectuals. including Diallo herself, as well as Soumahoro, Collectif Mwasi, Madame Taubira and Diaty Diallo, have been vocal forces against racism, sexism and misogynoir in France. Their efforts recall the Combahee River Collective Statement truism: “Our politics evolve from a healthy love for ourselves, our sisters and our community which allows us to continue our struggle and work.”
I last saw Rokhaya Diallo and many of these feminists in May during a two-day, international symposium in Paris and the suburb Bagnolet. The gathering was the work of Black France Noire, a collective of Black women academics who work in the field of Black French studies. (Full disclosure: I am a founding member of the collective, along with Soumahoro, Mame-Fatou Niang, Kaiama Glover and Véronique Charles.)
Our inaugural symposium was themed “Gendered Identities, Racialized Spaces,” with a stated goal: to create a space devoted to dialogue about how race and gender have long intersected, shaping the lived experience of Black French women, girls and nonbinary people. For two days, participants repeatedly noted how moved they were by the atmosphere of our convening—the intentional care and energy in the room as we centered Black women, girls and nonbinary people in a manner few of us had experienced before.
This collective energy, solidarity and sisterhood reminds me, perhaps the most powerful weapon we have against misogynoir—no matter in which language or context it appears—is one another. Sometimes it’s Black women continuing to do our work and not allow racism to distract us. Other times, it’s us joining together to defend one another, or refusing to be silent about the racist and sexist attempts to strip us of our dignity and humanity.
Great Job Régine Jean-Charles & the Team @ Ms. Magazine Source link for sharing this story.
