Essay 8

Casey Petett
Essay 8
African migrants during the interwar period used French culture to reject colonialism and to create a positive black identity. Early African migrants would use the educational opportunities in France to assimilate into the culture. These students made modest demands for colonial or political reform in Africa. Three students, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Léon-Gontran Damas broke with this tradition and used their time in French educational institutions to reflect on their membership in an imperial nation-state. Other African immigrants used French ideas on politics and citizenship to resist assimilation and shape African identity in metropolitan France. The African migrants mixed French culture with African culture in order to form relationships with their colonial past, their current situation in France, and the African nations that they identified with.
Senghor, Césaire, and Damas started a movement in 1930’s France called Negritude. This movement was spontaneously started by the three while they were attending school in France. The three rejected the assimilation that the schools taught the colonial elite, but they did embrace large segments of French culture. They constantly engaged in metropolitan public life, which included “visits to theaters, museums, concert halls, and art galleries” (Wilder, 155). The educational system offered the students a connection to French culture, but it also allowed them to form relationships with other likeminded Africans. These relationships allowed the movement to challenge ideas of assimilation and gave Africans a sense of worth under the colonial system and racist attitudes in France (Wilder, 156). Africans could take their experiences in education to challenge and even change the perception of black culture in French society.
Senghor, Césaire, and Damas were not the only African migrants that altered black culture in France. A diverse group of people used many different mediums to communicate their message of black equality in France. This group was able to use French ideas of citizenship to mobilize large segments of the African population against policies in France and the colonies. The French form of republicanism was based on the idea that a community of people was “expected to practice civic virtue by participating in public life and devoting themselves to a common good” (Wilder, 159). Africans used the French ideas of citizenship to gather people in order to demand for reform in the colonies (Wilder, 159). Africans were “subject-citizens”, which prevented them from participating in self-government. (Wilder 160). Although, the African migrants did not have the same legal status as French citizens they were able to use certain rights that guaranteed political participation.
The opportunities granted to African migrants allowed them to consolidate their status as colonial subjects with their status as free people in France. The freedoms granted to them gave the African a way to agitate for reform in France and the colonies. Ideas of citizenship and freedom in France were intended for the white native population, but were used by the African migrants to create a positive identity.