Ineffable!

Sent by Anonymous :

Hello! I saw on WWC that you had responded to a post about black people and racism in France. I was wondering if you could point me towards any resources/knew anything about at home culture amongst black French people? Obviously it wouldn't be exactly the same for everyone, but I was hoping for some insight. (It's for a story I'm hopefully going to be writing soon.)

Heya Nonners :)

I‘m not sure I can really answer your question because it seems to me that you’re trying to find out about a French equivalent to the African-American culture present in the USA (where they have specific speech pattern such as AAVE etc.) but we don’t have that concept in France, where the most generic groups of black people we talk about as different cultures are

1. People from the ‘Antilles’ (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthélémy & Saint Martin)
2. African communities

Which is without mentioning black people who don’t particularly have connections to either of those groups and “only” have the French culture(s) used where they live.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many details here because it sounds like ou’re kind of in the beginning of things and also because my knowledge is limited (one of my great grandad was a black Guadeloupean man, but my family isn’t very connected to the culture) but on the whole what you need to do first is determine what your character(s)’ background(s) is/are and then go from there.

Because things are going to be very different between a woman who comes from Guadeloupe to study in Paris (for ex) than they’ll be for a black man who was born and raised in the depth of the French countryside. So if I were you I’d start by picking:

1. Where they live/lived in France (throw a dart if you want to) whether it’s in the mainland or in one of the DOM-TOMs
2. Roughly their levels of income (not necessarily super specific but having a general idea of the level of comfort you want them to have)
3. Where their family came from and roughly when
   (Keep in mind: France is an acceptable answer to that question. There have been black people on our bit of land since well before the middle ages and not every black French person will be able to trace their ancestors back to a specific African country)

This will provide a basis for you to do more refined research where needed and try to figure out how much you need to know about your character’s background. You can try to ask @useless-francefacts if they or their followers know of bloggers who specifically discuss being black in Metropolitan France and/or life in overseas part of France like Guadeloupe, and if you have more specific questions later on I’ll be happy to try and help you find resources/sum up some of the resources I can find in French :)