The Brown Curse: On Being French, Undesirably Brown and James Baldwin
By: Hanan Khadraoui
Tags: North Africa, France, Equality, Culture, Racism

The Brown Curse: On Being French, Undesirably Brown and James Baldwin

If it weren’t for James Baldwin, I’d be dead right now and nobody would give a damn

Illustration: Nerdy Brown Kid

Elementary school was solemn, one could not speak unless spoken to. The rigor of the French classroom lived up to its hype. I was particularly terrified of my teacher, a busty redhead with gaudy lips smothered under thick layers of orange lipstick. She had a distant gaze, wore skintight dresses and commanded the attention of the class. She was theatrical, sanctimonious, and lethal. She was also beautiful. Her pale skin was an object of desire, my desire. Why couldn’t I have porcelain skin like her? Why couldn’t my hair be soft and silky straight like hers? I hated my hair, its bristle brush texture foreshadowing the muddled narrative of an Enfant Sauvage with no direction, much less ambition.

I clung to the lofty aspirations of my white classmates. Take Geraldine for example; her blond hair neatly-restrained by a satin rubber band revealed the angelical face of someone whose destiny had already been divinely ordained. I could smell success coming out of her pores, her life trajectory unfolding with grace. I imagined she would follow the footsteps of Simone De Beauvoir, an intellectual of some kind. She would live in Paris’ trendy Quartier Latin, happily married, raising beautiful kids in a luxurious but unassuming 5th floor Hausmanian Pied-à-Terre bequeathed to her husband Charles, a successful doctor.

Foreshadowing Geraldine’s future was not hard in contrast to the incongruity of my own life which was measured by how well I could shine my teacher’s shoes or brush her hair. My grades depended on it. I was never studious, so catering to her needs was an opportunity to earn good behavior points. This was right up my alley. Nothing academically strenuous my teacher promised. All I had to do was show eagerness. I would brush her silky blonde locks as two other classmates polished her shoes. Three brown girls assuming the role of servants under the dismissive gaze of our white classmates. I was unaware of the destiny that had just anchored itself right below my feet, standing on the crossroad of two irreconcilable identities: One French and the other, Algerian.

This was my first exposure to racism, but as a kid, the concept of race was entirely foreign to me. I’ve never given race any thoughts. A French teenager from an upper-middle-class family, I ripped the benefits of my milieu, one filled with luscious vacations to Marrakech, lavish holiday parties, frequent shopping sprees, a nanny, a housekeeper, school tutors were woven into my quotidian. No expenses were spared. I was the quintessential French girl, except perhaps for my impossible to pronounce last name: Khadraoui. My first name Sounia was also different, and with the clarity that only distance and time bring, everything about me was an exercise of peculiarity.

MY unruly hair, thick eyebrows, dirty sand complexion were oddly out of place. Perfecting my grand battement jetés during ballet classes was particularly awkward. I could never lift my legs high enough at the bemoaning of my instructor who blamed the size of my thighs, hips and not having the ideal body type to master those grand jetés. “Perdez donc du poids mademoiselle Khadraoui!” would my instructor solemnly declare, her delicate lungs protruded, her voice filled with exacerbation. She did not make any efforts to mince her words, her gaze filled with indignation as she slammed her wooden cane to the ground.

I enrolled in intensive ballet retreats during holiday breaks to perfect my techniques and rid myself of the unwanted weight. I managed to lose a few pounds, determined to pass the upcoming examination performance that would allow me to graduate to the next level and finally start points. I was a boisterous 15-year-old whose dream was to become a ballerina, and nothing could come between me and my ambitions, except for an all three-white jury panel who flunk me and two West Indian girls. The reason provided was that our dance movements were overshadowed by the massiveness of our bodies. We were urged to pursue a different hobby.

The rest of my adolescence was vastly underpinned by a similar display of microaggressions, but none of it was apparent at that time. I simply did not perceive those events through racial lenses. I just brushed them off as isolated occurrences.

I was in 12th grade excited at the prospect of spending one year as an exchange student in Louisiana. Growing up in Paris, I’ve always had a kindred affinity for New Orleans, a city that evokes good food, fun, and continues to capture people’s imagination. I was utterly thrilled to know I had been paired with an exchange family in Northeast Louisiana — “The deep South,” as they called it. The strong southern twang took some time to get used to. The humidity was equally challenging, though nothing prepared me for the wretched poverty I witnessed. Dirt roads, mobile shacks, dilapidated housings, and crumbling infrastructures were stark reminders of how deeply pervasive poverty was. There were also protruded bellies everywhere. Young girls across the racial line bearing seeds within them, their fate and that of their unborn progenies enmeshed with a destiny they could not escape. As taken as I was, I felt an inexplicable sense of belonging. Louisiana’s mysticism was spellbinding, its magical landscape, swamps, cypress and tupelo trees majestically rising out of murky waters were like a splash of mango paint on a blank canvas. Marigold hues made sunsets particularly spectacular.

M y first day of school in the United States was something extorted right out of a Jim Crow story. There I stood in the middle of the courtyard, struggling to breathe on this humid day, bewildered by what I witnessed: black and white school students casually standing on opposite sides of the playground during school recess. The stark racial divide could not be ignored; the casualty in which it unfolded forever cemented in my conscience. I stood there, my body erected in the most awkward ways, floating above what felt like a real divisive line. Although invisible, racial separation was real. I felt numb, unable to grasp the historic significance of this experience. The joints in my legs were locked, my feet anchored to the ground. My cheeks were flushed as my heart compressed my chest with crushing ferocity. A hand jerked me by my blouse, whisking me away from the white crowd “You must not be from around here, child’, don’t be hanging around with dem white folks unless you want problems,” a girl declared. She was roughly around my age and had a level of assertiveness beyond her years.

I was stunned: “Why would she say this? I’m not black!” But not of this matter. What mattered was that I was North African, a colored girl, subject to the one-drop rule which classified anyone with a single drop of black blood as black. The fact that I was French did not matter. What mattered was that I was from Africa and colored enough to be labeled as an “other.” What matters was that I was dark enough to not be considered white.

This unsettling proposition became the thesis of my time in Louisiana. Above all, it became the thesis of my existence. Race governed my day-to-day life and my interactions with people. It governed my friendships and became a center-stage actor that cared little about my feeling. I did my best to take everything to strive, knowing my days in Louisiana were counted. I would soon return to Paris, resuming life with uncomfortable detachment.

M y return to France was filled with anxiety. The time spent in Louisiana made me embrace my Algerian heritage. For the first time, I felt anchored in my identity and dreaded the idea of having to relinquish it to find acceptance. Although my experience abroad gave me a nuanced perspective, my awareness as a woman of color conflicted with France’s secular tradition of excluding racial classifications as a calculated way of erasing racial inequality.

Ironically, none of that matter and no matter how much I tried to wear this French identity, I would always be looked at as the other. The only way out of this loophole was to engage in passing. This would take some effort on my part, an obsequious thought introduced by my mother who would urge me to change my legal name and lie about my identity. “Tell them you are Italian or Spanish! Nobody has to know your origins!” she’d solemnly exclaimed. The idea of passing was ludicrous, and the notion that I had to partake in the erasure of my own identity to be considered wholly French made me nauseous. Post-racial France was a myth undergirded by the specter of colonialism. I resented passing as a white woman. Being French, African and Arab was a condemnation on my existence by a nation that professes to be color-blind. Out of despair and outrage, and rather than following my mother’s advice, I did the opposite. I decided to pass as a Black American woman.

France has a long tradition of rolling its carpet for Black Americans while professing to be the beacon of civil liberties. On the other hand, France also a reputation that precedes her as a country known for its complacent stance towards its African community so passing as an American made the most sense to me if it meant I would have a shot at being equal. The results were disturbing. I was immediately accepted, sought-after even. I relished the attention, most importantly, for once in my life, I felt equal. I was also fetishized by Frenchmen which drew tremendous discomfort knowing the root of their attraction was shrouded with hypocrisy. All of it was manufactured and made me angry. The crux of my alienation was that I could not exist. Neither Algerian nor fully French. I felt like a fraud and flirted with death on several occasions. Death was an alluring escape because I was longing for me but could not be me as long as I existed.

M y salvation came on a crisp winter evening. I was invited at the residence of recently-deceased Patricia Laplante-Collins, the hostess of the African American literary Soirées. The event hosted from the comfort of her bourgeois apartment; a dreamy Pied-a-Terre nestled in a posh enclave of Paris followed the rich tradition of literary salons found abound throughout Paris. It is on this crisp winter evening that my induction to African American intellectuals began. I discovered the magic of James Baldwin and a long tradition of other Black American intellectuals who flocked to Paris to escape racism back home. The gleanings from Baldwin’s observations resonated on such a profound level. Of particular interest was a quote that would have profound implications:

“I realize that the Algerian is the Nigger in Paris.”

As Baldwin shared “my mama didn’t raise no fools.” Baldwin alluded to the underlying hypocrisy he witnessed during his time in France. African Americans being given the red-carpet treatment on one hand, and Algerians treated as third-class citizens on the other. James was no fool. His words made me realize that the implications of post-colonialism were far more reaching than what I could ever conceive or wrap my young head around. Baldwin’s words had such an effect on me. His words were a revolutionary act and gave me the knowledge and foundation to realize how expansive and woven French racism is. To be brown in France is a crippling condition and my misguided attempts to pass as a Black Expat was an attempt to play the player and expose France’s underlying hypocrisy.

If it weren’t for James Baldwin, I would be dead right now and nobody would give a damn.