TJE Center Presents Dr. Jean Beaman

MAISHA WYNN: I just want to welcome all of you and I want to thank my amazing colleagues in the School of Education in Chicano Chicanax studies. I would like to also acknowledge a colleague who's not here today but who is here in spirit because he created the flyer. If you saw the beautiful flyer for Professor Beaman's talk that was created by our colleague Darnel Degand. And he has an incredible exhibit that I want to bring your attention to STILL-- Racism in America exhibit. It's in Cruz Hall.

And it's featuring the artistry of Brumsic Brandon Jr. and his daughter, Barbara Brandon-Croft. So if you get a chance you absolutely have to see the exhibit. I took my class last week and it's incredible. And so my name is Maisha Wynn and I'm a professor in the School of Education. I am also the co-director of the Transformative Justice and Education Center with Lawrence Torry Wynn who's in the back. We have an incredible team, many of whom are here today. And so I just want to acknowledge our

graduate student researchers who really make up our community. Misbah Naseer is a first-year doctoral student and she is on our team. And Andre Anderson Thompson is also on our team, a second-year doctoral student. So thank you Misbah and Andre for all of the work. And also want to acknowledge Carrissah Calvin and Izamar Ortiz-González. I also would love to acknowledge Pamela Erickson, who is our events coordinator. And so she has some lovely items back there. And if you are hungry or need a sn

ack, certainly, help yourselves. Thank you, Pamela. Everything you touch turns to gold and you're definitely a joy to work with and we're really grateful to you. And thank you to our tech team. I feel like we've had our IT team doing a lot of work for the School of Ed for the last couple of weeks. So thank you for everything. We really appreciate you. So without further ado, let me start with introducing Professor Jean Beaman. Jean Beaman is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology

at the University of California Santa Barbara. Prior to joining the faculty at UC Santa Barbara, she was on the faculty in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University. Professor Beaman has held visiting fellowships at Duke University and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Most recently she was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in Behavioral Sciences at Stanford which we affectionately refer to as CASBS as part of the 2022, 2023 cohort. And it was at CASBS where I

got to know Professor Beaman and her scholarship very well. Her book, Citizen Outsider-- Children of North African Immigrants in France with the University of California Press examines how Frenchness and French identity are constructed as white often rendering citizens of North African heritage as always in proximity to but never fully achieving social citizenship. Professor Beaman offers a framework of what she calls "cultural citizenship." And I just want to share a passage from Citizen Outsid

er that I think is really poignant. "Cultural citizenship focuses on what would allow an individual to traverse the cultural symbolic boundaries defining a particular national community and identity and be accepted as a full member. When children of North African immigrants indicate that their fellow citizens do not consider them as French as they are they are expressing how their fellow citizens are denying them cultural citizenship. These are individuals born in France who insist upon their Fr

enchness and are still denied it." On a personal note, I just want to say that Professor Beaman has become a scholar who I call on when I need critical and specific feedback. She is a consummate methodologist and a brilliant writer. It's a true honor to host her tonight and have that opportunity to engage in her work that contributes to global conversations around anti-Blackness. Without further ado, help me welcome Professor Jean Beaman. [APPLAUSE] JEAN BEAMAN: Thank you so much everyone for be

ing here. Thank you so much Maisha for that very kind and just very humbling introduction. It is such an honor to be invited to speak with Transformative Justice in Education Center and to be here at UC Davis in the School of Education, and especially extremely-- well, I extend much, much gratitude to both Doctors Wynn for extending this invitation. It's just such an honor to be in community with you. And thank you both for your support of me and my work and the time that we've known each other.

It's deeply meaningful for me. And I'm just really excited to be in conversation with all of you. So in this talk, I'm going to bring you to France, specifically the Parisian metropolitan region, and then back to the United States, and in doing so illustrate the connections between racism and anti-racism in both societies. So before diving into the meat of this, I want to mention how I personally have come to this work, partly because it's a question I receive often and partly because I feel st

rongly that my own identity informs the research I do, the questions I ask, and the communities with which I engage. So I first started learning French as a middle schooler many, many moons ago. And my continued training and curiosity with both the French language and French society led me to do a year-long study abroad program as an undergraduate at Northwestern University where I did a homestay with a white French family. That particular year was very eye-opening for me for many reasons, one o

f which was experiencing being racialized as a Black person in a different society, some of which was similar to how I'm racialized here in the United States and some of which was very different. I was forced to confront the relationship and the distinction between race and nation. How like other African Americans in Paris before me, including for example James Baldwin or Josephine Baker, I was not seen as quote unquote, "threatening" by white French people once I was recognized as an American o

r US citizen. This among other things sparked my curiosity as to the experiences of France's own ethnoracial minorities, how were they racialized and how do they see themselves in French society. Later when I was in graduate school, many years later, [LAUGHS] I moved back to Paris to conduct ethnographic research for my dissertation which then later became my first book, Citizen Outsider-- Children of North African Immigrants in France, and my interest in comparative racism and racial formations

has continued ever since. So each time I've lived in Paris I've encountered Paris and France more broadly that was different and similar from the various images that one confronts in films and other media. And this includes learning that France is much more of a multiethnic society and Paris is much more of a Black city than is often thought. Oh, I forgot to switch this out. OK. And so this is an image of me when I was doing my fieldwork many years ago and then you see nonstereotypical images o

f Paris and the [FRENCH] the presence of Black people, the presence of public housing, which I'm going to speak about. So where I am today and what I'm going to speak on this evening is a book manuscript I'm writing tentatively entitled Suspect Citizenship-- Racism and State Violence in France and the World. And this is outlined here on this slide. So in this book, I introduce suspect citizenship as a framework for considering how certain populations by virtue of their ethnoracial assignment by

others have been rendered forever marginalized and incapable of being included into society. Specifically, I argue that the specter of state violence structures this condition. I demonstrate that state violence is therefore not a question of race-- or just a question of race but also a question of citizenship who can belong and who was permanently excluded from ever belonging to society. I examined suspect citizenship at the nexus between active citizenship belonging and nonbelonging anti-racism

at a macro level and activism and mobilization against police violence and racism. I demonstrate how is constructed against and resisted by all nonwhite populations. So I discuss and theorize the contours of state violence in France and the specific work that state violence does. State violence outside of just specific killings to overall questions of hyper surveillance and policing. The goals and aims of this particular social movement and how activists frame the social problem of state violen

ce. The transnational resonance of Black Lives Matter and the global connections activists make with anti-racist struggles elsewhere. The role of Black feminism and intersectionality as Black women are often the face of present anti-racist struggles and how they therefore think about their status as Black women within France and considering how anti-racism operates and can operate outside a codified and recognized at no racial categorizations. I conclude with the implications of this framework a

nd why suspect citizenship matters and is ultimately a useful way for understanding societal difference. So what I'll specifically talk about today is based on chapter 4 of this book. On the diasporic connections, anti-racist activists make with social movements elsewhere and specifically how Black Lives Matter is red and interpreted within France and how we should think about or might think about or make sense-- excuse me, the connections between Black Lives Matter and long-standing anti-racist

struggles within France itself. In doing so, I'm thinking through how France both historically and presently does not value Black lives, how for activists this is both a local and global conversation, and how present mobilization against racism and state violence is in conversation with the Black Lives Matter movement here in the United States and movement towards Black liberation more globally. More broadly, I discuss how to understand or read Black Lives Matter not just in France but in Europ

e as a whole and how we should make sense of the connections between Black Lives Matter and the long-standing anti-racist traditions across Europe. So what I'm speaking on is based on ethnographic research in the Parisian metropolitan region conducted between 2017 and 2022 interrupted at various points due to COVID-19. This includes 47 interviews with activists involved, broadly speaking, and mobilization against state violence, including individuals who are associated with different collectives

or organizations as well as journalists who reported on some of these issues and family members of victims of police violence, some of whom are activists themselves. Most of the people I engage with in this fieldwork are visible minorities, which is a visible minorities is a French social science term for ethnoracial minorities. So mainly either Maghrebin, West African origin, or Caribbean origin individuals as in descendants of immigrants from former French colonies and overseas [FRENCH] in th

ese regions. I connected with individuals, excuse me, through various collectives and organizations, existing networks, and social media pages, which I'm happy to talk further about in the Q&A. So I conduct all of my interviews in French and then later had them transcribed by a native French speaker, and I then do all the translations myself as I'm fluent in French. I've also conducted participant observation with different organizations at demonstrations related to state violence and anti-racis

m, as well as organizational meetings, activist trainings, and other types of related events. So my method here is informed by a Black feminist epistemology which takes seriously my standpoint as a Black woman conducting this research. So in some of my earlier work in writing, I discussed how my own identity as non-French and as a Black American citizen has been implicated in conducting ethnographic research, namely in my relations with my interlocutors, some of whom perceived an insider connect

ion with me as a fellow ethnoracial minority. This is also true for what I'll speak on today, particularly as individuals reference my own identity or their perception thereof as a Black American living in this era of Black Lives Matter. I'm continually fascinated by the connections my interlocutors make and the boundaries they further draw-- sorry, the boundaries they draw further reveal how racism is understood and resisted in French society. And this is a photo I took at a 2018 demonstration

for Adama Traoré who was killed by the police in 2016. I'll discuss this case shortly. And just as to note that I took the majority of the photos in this talk which I also see as part of my ethnographic method. So I want to quickly say a bit about the context about race and racism in France and discuss republican ideology which is sort of overguarding this entire project. So French republicanism emphasizes the relationship between individuals and the state over any other group categorization or

identity. Being French is supposed to supersede any other identifications such as linguistic, religious, or ethnic. Race as well as ethnicity is not considered a legitimate category by the state. It is not measured in the French census or any other government documentation. So talking about race or even using the literal word race is seen to exacerbate racism. And in fact, the United States is often characterized as an example of the dangers that can occur when such race indifference is acknowle

dged, which of course then becomes relevant when considering the resonance of Black Lives Matter in the French context. France therefore imagines and constructs itself as colorblind or race-neutral. This is reflected for example in how the French continually celebrate African American expatriates such as James Baldwin, Chester Himes, or Josephine Baker who were supposedly able to feel freer in France than they ever could in a racist American society. Yet despite the republican emphasis on the re

nunciation of ethnoracial categorization, many scholars-- and here I'm thinking about Sue Peabody, Todd Sheppard, Jennifer Blanton among others, have argued that France has long relied on ethnoracial boundaries in constructing its national identity. Since France has a very long history of colonial slavery, colonial rule, and related subsequent migration to the hexagon or continental France, it is necessary to understand how individuals who are descendants of these structures fare in contemporary

French society in light of these histories. This is also reflected and has been reflected in scholarly treatments on race and racism in France and Europe more broadly. For example, Frantz Fanon wrote in Black Skin, White Mask of how the European has a fixed concept of the negro and therefore how Blacks in France are not seen as of France. We can also point to the work of French scholar Pap Ndiaye who discusses how Blacks in France are paradoxically and simultaneously visible and invisible, and

Trica Keaton who argues that France's race blindness is coupled with race-based assumptions which lead to an overall consciousness of race. In my work where broadly I extend Michael Omi and Howard Winant's framework of the racial project to the French context. This framework allows me to consider how people are marked as different and inferior without state-level categories. David Theo Goldberg's framework of racial Europeanization is also helpful here, focusing on how race is often seen as a pr

oblem everywhere but in Europe, whereas instead often framed as exceptional or related to specific phenomena of the past, such as the Holocaust. He argues therefore that Europe is an example of what he calls quote unquote, "political" racism. I'm also influenced by Stephen Small's conceptualization of Black Europe which articulates how Black people throughout Europe are seen as quote unquote, "permanent" strangers. And anthropologist Nicholas DeGenova's conceptualization as quote, "the racialize

d sociopolitical category that can be understood to encompass the full spectrum of social identities produced specifically nonwhite," end quote. What's clear here is how race and ethnicity are taboo to invoke or discuss, yet as my research and that of many others has long shown, omnipresent in the lives of individuals marked as nonwhite and as a structure dictating belonging and nonbelonging in French society. So by using the term state violence my focus here is not just on specific incidents of

police violence or deaths and brutality by the police but also as a way to think through the different ways the state is involved and the systematic devaluing of certain individuals. So a French anthropologist Didier Fassin has argued that the police acts as an agent of the state to maintain ethnoracial boundaries in the absence of these state-level categories. In recent years, there has been growing attention to tense relations between the police and ethnoracial minorities, including hypersurv

eillance of some of these minorities, some of which leads to death. One sort of famous, if you will, example of this violence was the fall 2005 uprisings throughout many of France's [FRENCH] or suburban outskirts. In this case, Zyed Benna a 17-year-old of Tunisian origin, and Bouna Traoré, a 15-year-old of Malian origin, pictured here, were electrocuted in a substation as they fled police in Clichy-sous-Bois, a Parisian [FRENCH].. They are apparently trying to avoid the constant [FRENCH] or iden

tity checks by the police. So outrage about their deaths at the time led to uprisings throughout France which lasted a few weeks. Then President Jacques Chirac declared a state of emergency and then Interior Minister and later President Nicolas Sarkozy called the individuals involved in the uprisings [FRENCH] or scum and suggested cleaning the streets of the [FRENCH] with Karcher, a brand of a high-pressure water hose. So the police officers involved in the deaths of Zyed and Bouna were cleared

of all charges over a decade later. So while these uprisings received much national and international media attention, including lots of images of cars and buildings on fire, what was often missed was how the deaths of these two ethnic minority youth were due to hyper surveillance by the police and are therefore an example of state violence. So anthropologist Paul Silverstein has argued that these identity checks by the police are a kind of citizenship surveillance, a predominantly Black and Mag

hrebin origin individuals, and French political scientists Fabian Joubert and René Lévy have demonstrated how they disproportionately target these invisible minorities. A 2012 Human Rights Watch report found that the majority of Black and Maghrebin-origin individuals reported identity checks by the police as a major problem. They are six to eight times more likely than whites to experience them. Under current laws police officers have broad jurisdiction to stop individuals seen as quote unquote,

"suspicious" as for their identification and whereabouts and comb through their belongings. As to actual deaths by the police, estimates vary widely. But one estimate states that between 1977 and 2020 about 703 people have died at the hands of the police. I now want to introduce some of the individuals I've encountered in my fieldwork who are fighting against the state violence. So here is Ramata Dieng who was a 45-year-old woman who I first met in 2017. So on June 17-- I'm sorry, June 17, 2007

, her brother Lamine Dieng, a 25-year-old of Senegalese origin died following a struggle with multiple police officers in the 20th arrondissement, not far from the famous Pere-Lachaise Cemetery-- for those of you familiar with Paris geography. Lamine was restrained face down on the street with his hands tied behind his back and his feet strapped together. He was then taken to a police van and by the time he arrived at the police station, he was no longer breathing. The medical report stated that

he died of asphyxiation, yet his family and friends want a full investigation as well as punishment for the various officers involved. And this photo here is from-- this is one I took from a 2018 demonstration for Lamine Dieng. So after her brother's death Ramata started [FRENCH] which loosely translates as stolen lives as a way to mobilize others against state violence. She wants us to be a worldwide network connecting what's happening in France with what's happening in the United States and o

ther societies. Through this collective, she and other activists aligned with friends and family members of other victims of state violence and also hold yearly commemorative demonstrations each June on the anniversary of Lamine's death. During these commemorative marches, Ramata recounts the specific events leading up to her brother's death, leaves flowers at the exact spot where he died in the 20th arrondissement as well as allows family members and friends of other victims to recount their ow

n testimonies. And this photo here is from a demonstration I was part of for the July 2017 demonstration which was then the 10-year anniversary of Lamine's death. So once when she and I were meeting in a park not too far from where her brother was killed, she explained the contours of this issue. She says, quote, "Police violence in France, really, is a racial question. It is racism of the state because when you look at the list of victims, you see that essentially more than 90% are Blacks and A

rabs. The remaining 10% are activists or militant, Roma, and what we say in quotation marks as 'accidents.' Whites only die by accident because they are not targeted, they are not the profile. There is a kind of profile for police violence and the profile of victims is always the same profile. It's always young Black men between 20 and 40 years old and Maghrebin or North Africans as well between 20 and 40 years old," end quote. In that same conversation, she told me that in the United States sta

te violence is way worse as there are many more victims here, yet she says, quote, "This happens in all Western countries because it comes from the state. The state is racist," end quote. This is one example of how state violence is framed as a racial phenomenon in France despite France's ongoing denial of the existence of race and racism as well as how activists like Ramata understand state violence as a looming presence and threat. During this same conversation with Ramata, she noted how frequ

ently the same police officers were coming by the park where we were hanging out, harassing the same youth that they had spoken to only an hour or two beforehand, speaking both to the [FRENCH] of police harassment and the social function it ultimately plays. And this image is from a 2015 poster advertising, the 2015 demonstration for Lamine Dieng, and hopefully you can see the reference-- I don't know how much you can read, the references to Ferguson, Detroit and Baltimore, and then the image of

Malcolm X with the quote translated. The first one is "Our objective is total freedom, total justice, total equality by any means necessary." And then the second one is that "The truth is on the side of the oppressed." So the morning I went to the 2017 demonstration commemorating the death of Lamine, which I showed in the earlier slides, I just read the news of acquittal of Jeronimo Yanez, a Minnesota police officer who was acquitted in the July 2016 death of Philando Castile, pictured here on

the left. Castile was a 32-year-old Black American who worked as a school nutrition worker and was pulled over as he drove with his girlfriend and four-year-old daughter. His girlfriend captured the aftermath of his shooting by Yanez on Facebook Live. As I participated in the demonstration for Lamine Dieng as well as for other victims, I thought about the parallels between state violence in both societies. And I was not the only one thinking about these connections. The death of Michael Brown he

re, pictured on the right, in August 2014 received much attention by anti-racist activists and others in France, which I'll come to shortly. After Brown's death by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri and a grand jury declined to indict Wilson in said death, residents and others protested in response as well as to the often volatile relationship between Black Americans and the police. One officer was overheard referring to the protesters as quote unquote, "fucking" animals, excuse my lang

uage, which I think is reminiscent of Sarkozy's rhetoric during the 2005 [FRENCH] uprisings. So during the protests in Ferguson, Christiane Taubira, pictured here, who until July 2016 was the French Minister of Justice said the following quote, "I will not make value judgments on the institutions of the United States, but when the sense of frustration is that strong, that deep, that long-lasting and that huge there is reason to question whether people trust these institutions. You realize that s

omehow it only happens to the same people, Afro-American kids," end quote. And French people tend to use the term Afro-American versus African American, which is a whole other conversation. But yet I think Taubira's statement also applies to ethnoracial minorities in France as many of the images and discourse of the protests in Ferguson were resonant of the images and discourse of the 2005 uprisings. In short, I'm showing here that there are transnational connections regarding how it feels to be

ultimately rejected by the state. To give another example, in July 2016, Adama Traoré a 24-year-old Black construction worker died under mysterious circumstances after being arrested in another [FRENCH] north of Paris. The police first claimed that he had died of a heart attack and then later said he had had a severe infection. Assa Traoré, who's pictured here under a photo of her brother, it's his 32-year-old sister who is leading the movement for Justice for Adama. Since his death which one U

S media account termed quote unquote, "Francis Ferguson," there have been numerous demonstrations demanding justice for Adama Traoré including one every year on the anniversary of his death. And this photo is from one such demonstration in 2018. So Assa and her family are alleging lack of assistance and willful neglect by the police as both contributing to his death, especially since he had no chronic health issues prior to his death. Before her brother's death, she was working as a teacher's as

sistant in another [FRENCH] north of Paris. She has since written two books, the sales of which she uses to seek justice for her brother. This includes paying legal fees for four of her other brothers-- she has 17 total siblings, who have been in jail for various periods such Adama's death. She has stated publicly that her family has been under attack by the state ever since they contested the official police explanation for Adama's death, therefore explaining why her siblings have also been arr

ested. So Assa regularly gives talks about police violence and her brother's death, not just in France but all over the world and has received support from various celebrities, including French rapper Mokobé and activist and scholar Angela Davis. As she explained to me when we first met several years ago, she sees this cause as not just about justice for her own brother but for all forgotten populations in France, including residents of [FRENCH] or working-class neighborhoods both in the [FRENCH

] and the city who know the police only as a quote unquote, "invading" force. Once when I met with her as she was signing copies of her first book at the offices of Seuil, her publisher in Paris, she explained, quote, "We don't see people like Adama as a human, a son, a brother. Even I've been controlled in these [FRENCH] or neighborhoods. She's talking about the identity checks. What's happening is France is having an identity crisis. It wants to suppress differences but you can't do that," end

quote. So here Assa is speaking to not just the pervasiveness of state violence as in the prevalence of these identity checks but also to the ways that people like her, her slain brother are not understood as even part of France or even as fully human. Her words also speak to the tensions inherent in French republican society as some differences in French society are seen as meaningful and others are not. And this image is a photo I took at the 2019 demonstration for Adama Traoré, and hopefully

, you see that Black Lives Matter text. And then at the bottom, it says, "Silence France Kills," and then the date of Adama's death in 2016. When I first met Assa in 2017 she had paid attention both to incidents of police brutality and police violence here in the United States and elsewhere and to the growing Black Lives Matter movement, yet this does not mean that she and other activists automatically transferred Black Lives Matter to the French context as they are aware of the differences in s

tructure in identity politics between the two societies even if there are similarities in the experiences of ethnoracial minorities. She explained to me quote, "Black Lives Matter is difficult to do here. You can't even say the word [FRENCH] Black, and all of these issues are related, undocumented immigration, et cetera. So we can't have a subcategory of Blacks we can't say that undocumented immigrants are not ours, that they are not related," end quote. So I highlight Assa's understanding of Bl

ack Lives Matter here to illustrate that activists can pay attention to and relate to Black Lives Matter in the United States and incidents of state violence against Black Americans while also critiquing the movement as it's constituted here. This speaks to the question of what does it mean to say Black Lives Matter in a society or context in which there are seemingly no quote unquote, "Black" lives. And this photo here on the right is from a community event sponsored by Ferguson in Paris, a col

lective I'll talk about shortly. And these two individuals are actually African American activists from Saint Louis who came to Paris to discuss their experiences being involved in the protests related to Black Lives Matter in Ferguson following Brown's death. Yet especially since the 2020 death of George Floyd and the ensuing protests and demonstrations throughout much of France and the rest of the world, Assa has become a face, if not the face, of France's present anti-racist movement and has

been framed as such in French, American, and other international media. For example, Assa led a massive demonstration outside the high court in Paris of over 20,000 protesters against state violence, including the death of her own brother, Adama, and Floyd's murder, which is what this image is of. Several protest signs invoked Black Lives Matter and quote unquote, "I can't breathe," the last words of both George Floyd and Adama Traoré. At a later interview with French Magazine Antidote, Assa say

s quote, "When George Floyd died, that's our brother. They, Floyd and Traoré, died the same way. I recognize myself in Black Lives Matter. We are all Black Lives Matter. Our common issue is racial discrimination. Here as over there, it is the Blacks, the nonwhites who are being killed," end quote. [COUGH] Excuse me. So considering this shift in her attitude, I suggest we should not assume, quote unquote, "natural" residence or automatic connection with Black Lives Matter but more importantly pay

attention to the nuances and tensions by which anti-racist activists pay attention to incidents of state violence in the United States as well as elsewhere but also have their own beliefs and critiques about movement ideology and tactics so they are not parroting whatever comes out of the United States but considering strategically what it means to do so. And Assa's anti-racist work both within and outside of France speaks to these tensions. Moreover, as I've alluded to earlier, part of this an

ti-racist movement involves transnational connections with struggles for Black liberation worldwide, including Black Lives Matter and the US civil rights movement as shown here and then also on my title slide in terms of the various kinds of iconography, posters, and chants used in various demonstrations. But these connections are not just found at demonstrations and protests. For example, Ferguson in Paris, a collective I'm also working with for this book, connects incidents of state violence a

gainst Black Americans with similar incidents in France through campaigns on various social media and demonstrations. This particular group began after Michael Brown's death and seeks to apply the discourse and actions of Black Lives Matter to the plight of Black populations more globally. As their own Facebook page explains they aim to show that what's happening in the United States is happening in France and also around the world. And here are just some photos from their Facebook page. So you

see the image Justice for Michael Brown Black Lives Matter. And then on the right, the Don't Shoot Ferguson in Paris. So don't shoot being one of the chants from the protests in Ferguson. And then on the right, the translation Police Kill, and on the left, Théo and Adama remind us why Zyed and Bouna were running. So Théo was another victim of police violence. He was beaten and sodomized by multiple police officers in 2016. And then Zyed and Bouna were the two deaths that led to the 2005 uprising

s I mentioned earlier. And then on the right, you see the names of Black women murdered by the police. So also recognizing not just Black male victims. And then on the left, you see again the Black Lives Matter United We fight, other sort of evoking Black Lives Matter iconography. So as one of the founders of Ferguson in Paris, Mamadou, a 32-year-old of Malian origin who grew up just south of Paris put it quote, "Part of the reason I chose the name Ferguson in Paris is to show Ferguson and Paris

it's the same, it's the same thing. The contexts are not the exact same, but the pressure means are the same. These are the people who never receive justice," end quote. So my point here is that the challenge to combating state violence is doing so under the constraints of French republican ideology. Struggles against police violence have to also be anti-racist struggles even though there's no language literally or figuratively to combat racism within France. Activists can seek to connect or al

ign their struggles with similar incidents in the United States and elsewhere yet they do so in a context in which there are no, quote unquote, "Black" lives. Black Lives Matter as both an ideology and larger social movement both presents possibilities and reveals constraints for mobilizing against state violence in France as race is a legitimate category upon which to make claims of the state here in the United States but it is not in France. Ultimately, even though state violence is often fram

ed as a racial issue and many activists acknowledge or activate a shared consciousness with other Black populations around the world, including in the United States, they are still struggling within this movement to be seen or recognized as French as other French people rather than to be seen as something other than French. In many ways, they are critiquing the French state, but they have not, and importantly wholly abandoned it. The state activates racial and ethnic boundaries through incidents

, such as the deaths of Zyed or Bouna or Lamine or Adama, but activists are limited or more constrained in what they can do about them as such we need to pay more attention to racial formation globally as well as how people resist the consequences of these racial formations. So in considering how ethnoracial minorities challenge and resist their suspect citizenship, it is therefore necessary to consider both the local specificities and how these struggles travel beyond nation-state boundaries. A

s I have written about elsewhere, Black Lives Matter in Europe builds upon-- or what we might call Black Lives Matter in Europe built upon and connects to present and past anti-racist mobilizations across Europe. Black Lives Matter therefore involves challenging the denial of race and racism, the ability to name racism-- to actually use the term, fighting police violence against ethnoracial minorities, forcing Europe to grapple with its own history of slavery and colonialism, and acknowledging a

nd affirming the presence of Black Europeans across the continent. Black Lives Matter in Europe challenges a European exceptionalism with regards to difference in race and racism and challenges Black Europeans' frequent designation as permanent outsiders within Europe. It both addresses the local specificities of anti-Black racism and different European societies and travels beyond the boundaries of the nation-state to emphasize the global connections regarding what it means to be racialized as

Black around the world. This is not at all new, but it is crucial to pay attention to in order to understand the realities of Black populations, not just in Europe but around the world. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] I'm glad you that. MAISHA WYNN: We will have time for Q&A. Excuse me. You can use the microphone. So this one. Would this be OK? [LAUGHTER] Thank you so much. Oh, yeah. I'll go and check. Any questions? JEAN BEAMAN: Or comments. Yeah. MAISHA WYNN: Here you are. JEAN BEAMAN: Thank you. AUDIEN

CE: Thank you that was brilliant. JEAN BEAMAN: Thank you. AUDIENCE: I have a quick question about much of what you were talking about around transnational solidarities, but I'm also curious about transcultural and transethnic solidarities, specifically in what you were discussing around the Black population of France as well as the Maghrebin population of France and whether or not in your research experience you've noticed that there is a strong sense of solidarity between the two. And I'm espec

ially curious about that following the protests of this last summer following the death of Nael. JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah, thanks for that question. So that's a really complicated thing to sort through. So basically I think there have been moments in my fieldwork where they have come together in terms of shared demonstrations and protests and efforts, but there also are some real tensions there. And so I'm trying in my writing be really sensitive to that. Part of the tension especially since the death

of George Floyd and the sort of boom in anti-racist activism since then has been around who is named as the quote unquote, "face" of this movement, and so there is resistance against Assa Traoré for example for the ways that she's been interpolated as the leader and other activists who have been involved in this movement for longer, there's some resentment there. And I think some of that maps on to ethnoracial distinctions, but I think some of it also frankly maps onto personality clashes. But I

think it's true in any social movement, but that's also very true here. So there's some ways in which they do come together around this general umbrella of state violence, but there are some meaningful distinctions as well. Yeah, thank you. AUDIENCE: Thank you so much. That was really interesting. And I love the images. JEAN BEAMAN: Thank you. AUDIENCE: Great photographs. I was wondering since you were conducting this research during COVID, were there any interesting insights there that you fou

nd out? JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah. Thanks for the question. So because of COVID, I couldn't go to France for a while, but one thing I do know and just being in regular communication with folks that I had already been in relation with is that there was this issue, particularly in Paris but in France more generally, around France as a society took COVID more seriously than the United States and so it was really hard to-- there was a period for example where you couldn't go that far from your house without

a particular form. And there's some research that's coming out around the ways that certain populations, particularly Black and Maghrebin-origin populations were more targeted by the police when they were seen walking around during the first wave, if you will, of COVID-19. And so when you don't have the proper form you get a ticket and there's accumulation of fines targeting particular populations because of this. So that's one way that this was-- and this was understood by the people that I've

already been in research with as an example of state violence here under the gaze of trying to prevent the spread of COVID-19 but it's still gives carte blanche if you will to the police to interrogate, stop people that are seen as doing things that they shouldn't be doing whether rightly or wrongly. So that was a kind of COVID-19 manifestation of a lot of what I had already been seeing-- already been observing, sorry. The other thing I would say is that I think with the COVID-19 pandemic a lot

of these activists and these groups were much more intentional about what they were doing and putting it out on social media because you couldn't be in the streets in the same way. I mean, some people still were and that was the 2020 protests I showed was an example of that. But there also was more just like being more intentional about more visibility on social media because people couldn't be outside in the same ways. So those are two things that come to mind in response to your question. Tha

nk you. AUDIENCE: Thank you so much. My question is on-- I love the way you're playing with this word citizenship and the sense of belonging. And I wonder how immigration in France further complicates Blackness unlike just their identity because in the context of America Black Americans have citizenship being an American citizenship, but how does the whole nuance further complicate that status and that relationship where they might not even be citizens of France that further complicates it? JEAN

BEAMAN: Yeah. Thanks for the question. That's a great question. I look forward to talking to you more about this topic specifically, but, yeah. I will say-- I mean, I think France long has had because of its colonial history an idea of racialized citizenship. So citizenship has always been racialized. And I would say the same thing about all societies, but that's a different thread. The interesting thing around thinking about the relationship between immigration, citizenship, and Blackness is a

lso to think about how a lot of people involved in this movement were actually born in France and so are technically citizens in the legal sense but they're not incorporated or interpolated as such right. And so their Blackness or their sort of visible otherness, if you will, is one way that they're marked as different and that therefore means that they're marked as non-French even though that they are actually French. So it's like their Blackness makes them stand out, but actually, they're just

as French as any other French person. So this is-- I don't want to say not a conversation about immigration because it's of course immigration is part of it, but it's really a more conversation about colonialism and the legacies thereof and how that shapes who is seen as French and who isn't. So that's how I see that playing out. Thank you. AUDIENCE: So I just want to first start off by echoing this individual excellent and brilliant talk. JEAN BEAMAN: Thank you, Dr. Wynn. [LAUGHTER] AUDIENCE:

And in your talk, you were going back and forth between working class and Black, Black as in the US. What role does the middle-class Black folk in France play? Because when I think about the US, when you talk about state-sanctioned violence, police brutality, it's middle class, upper middle class, affluent Black folk are all part of it. But in France, all the images was around working class. And knowing that France is also centered on classism, what have you found for Black middle class, elite B

lack middle class, what is their role? JEAN BEAMAN: That's a great question. Thank you. So a couple of quick thoughts. So there's definitely not as a-- what's the word I want to use, established Black middle class in France as there is in the US. And we had-- I mean, I'm just thinking years ago one of my dissertation advisors was Mary Pattillo, who, of course, is a scholar of the African American middle class. And so I'm kind of build on a lot of her work in my writing and thinking about this. S

o it's not as codified in the same way. But the thing I would say-- so when I showed the example, the image of Christiane Taubira who was the former Minister of Justice, this was a Black woman who was in a very high government position but was subject to a lot of racism so then she very quickly left that position and that's a different-- but yeah. So I bring her up to say the few examples we do have of these kinds of prominent Black leaders, if you will, in France often experience the same racis

m and then often then have to or come to align themselves with this movement against state violence as they realize that they're subject to the same kinds of racism and non-belonging as their working-class counterparts. And there's something else I was going to say to that and I forget the other thing I was going to say. So it'll come to me. Sorry. [LAUGHS] Yeah, it'll come to me. But thank you. AUDIENCE: I have a question. You were talking about early on in your speech about how France uses Afr

o-American and America uses African American. Can you speak on the difference of that? JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah. Thanks for asking the question. Yeah, no, I think I just wanted to highlight that because I think that sometimes the translation from-- this is the way French people use kind of American term is a bit awkward to our ears understandably and so African American is not a term that's come across the Atlantic yet to them. So they're still using older terms that we don't necessarily use or think a

re appropriate. So that's why I clarify that. That was me saying that. I mean, what she was saying was accurate for where she was but not how we would talk about it. AUDIENCE: Thank you so much for your talk. I have a question. So I gather the ways Black Lives Matter has traveled to France to help folks critique state violence and police brutality. However, in the United States part of Black Lives Matter has recognized the specificity of anti-Black racism in the way other folks of color can expe

rience racism and still be in solidarity against anti-Black racism. Has that specificity of anti-Blackness as a discourse of Black Lives Matter traveled to France? Do folks recognize the distinction of anti-Black racism and racism experienced by non-Black people of color and would that be useful in the French context? JEAN BEAMAN: Thanks for that question. So I think he has one. He has one. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, I think yes. So yes and no. I think the specificity of anti-Blackness in France the

recognition of that is not a new thing. And so here I want to just invoke the long history of discussions about Black consciousness, about what it means to be Black in France. I'm thinking about the négritude movement and the Nardal sisters and these kinds of things. So I think there's always been an awareness or long-standing been an awareness in France of the specificity of what it means to be a Black subject in and of itself outside of just being an ethnoracial minority. So I think what's ha

ppening in France is in conversation-- or what I was trying to say is that what's currently happening in France is in conversation with these earlier conversations in France 100 years ago about what it means to be Black in France and be Black globally. So that's one thing. But I do think that kind of comes back to the first question-- I don't know your name, about the differences or the tensions between Maghrebin-origin populations and Black populations because I do think that some Black anti-ra

cist activists that I've been in conversation with for this work would highlight that their visibility of being Black or being different is more prominent than perhaps some of their Maghrebin-origin colleagues who can-- for lack of a better word, pass as not Maghrebin in everyday society. And so thinking about who the police stop and that kind of thing. So there definitely is a recognition among some people that some Black individuals that they experience more racism or heightened sense of racis

m or different sets of racism than their Maghrebin-origin colleagues even if they're all aligned in this movement. So I don't know if that answers your question, but yeah. OK. Yeah. AUDIENCE: To follow up. JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah, please. AUDIENCE: So in this moment, perhaps in this country where we're feeling a lot of Islamophobia, however, you wouldn't say Arab lives matter. We've had a conversation of the specificity of different groups, distinct positionalities within the racial hierarchies of the

United States. Is that conversation happening because I saw a lot of the flyers saying Black and Arab lives matter or Black and Arabs against the-- is that conversation occurring? In some ways, Black Lives Matter has helped us have that conversation here in the United States. JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah. No, thanks for the follow-up. I think that gets to what it means to think about Blackness as a broader category of generalized otherness from this particular colonial relationship. And that I think when

that kind of colonial part is brought into play then you can more easily see or at least activists themselves more easily to see the connections between Black people and Maghrebin-origin people, again, even though these colonial histories have their own specificities. Those are way that France relied on the dispossession colonialism of much of the world and then that is what we're seeing in hexagon France is the current manifestation of that. So that helps bring the two together as well. Thanks.

AUDIENCE: Actually, the question I had was very similar. JEAN BEAMAN: Oh, great. AUDIENCE: And you've answered most of it because I was interested in the movement and in the Black Lives Matter movement in France and the solidarity within Black people and the Maghreb people in France and how that relates also for the Maghrebin people especially have to deal with Islamophobia. AUDIENCE: [FRENCH] AUDIENCE: Hmm? And then that brings up [FRENCH] as well and how the response to [FRENCH],, which is so

important to French culture and society but is not necessarily something that has benefited people of color and people of different religions in France. JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah. No, thank you. So I'll take that in reverse order. So I think when we talk about [FRENCH] in France, we have to also be mindful of the ways that that has been a particular sociopolitical formulation that's been used to other particular nonwhite populations. So I think you hear about the work of scholars like Mayanthi Fernando

who've talked about how there's never really been a lot of consistency in how this is applied, except to other people that are seen as non-French or other people who are seen as nonwhite. And so it's a tool for that happening. So what religious symbols are seen as meaningful or problematic is a racialized construction. And then also I've also written about how because France does not officially acknowledge race or ethnicity, there's a way that Muslim becomes this ethnoracial category in a way t

o other people from seemingly secular French bodies. And then the other-- oh yeah, the other point I wanted to make in response to what you said about Islamophobia is also to keep in mind that actually, anti-Muslim racism affects Black individuals in France as well. They often-- just in my conversations feel like they're not read or interpolated as Muslim because they're seen first as Black and then Maghrebin-origin and people are seen first as Muslim and both of those are problematic and nuance

d. But they also feel like the state violence that they experience is not just being Black, it's also around being Muslim. And then, of course, not all Maghrebin origin individuals in France are even connected to Islam but they're subsumed under this other category partly because that becomes a way for France to talk about difference when you can't talk about race the way that we do here in the states. Thank you for those points. AUDIENCE: I have a question. Thanks for your talk, really just com

pelling and I have a lot of ideas swirling in my head. [LAUGHTER] AUDIENCE: You talked about this notion of visible minorities and I thought that term was just fascinating. But my question has to do with whether or not this kind of discourse around state violence against visible minorities, how much of this has made it into what's happening in classrooms. We know Black Lives Matter, critical race theory has been a big point of contention within our K through 12 systems, higher Ed systems. So how

much of this has made its way into what teachers are discussing in the classroom about this and are teachers raising these issues with the youth in France around this? And if so how are they even discussing this in the ways-- I mean, it's something happening in the ways we're seeing here in the US with the discourse around this? JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah. Thanks for that question Short answer, no, partly because I don't mean to be glib, but, well, yeah, I know-- [INTERPOSING VOICES] JEAN BEAMAN: I mean

, I can nuance that a bit. So part of the issue it's really hard for me to overstate how much the French republican ethos makes it very untenable to talk about race publicly or in a classroom in any kind of educational setting. So yeah. So there's none of these kind of conversations. Within French academia, there is a big push against even talking about critical race. So they're receiving the same backlash to critical race theory that we have here in the States, particularly in academia in Franc

e and that's coming from French politicians from French government, this idea of Islamo-Gauchisme, that sort of ideas about race and racism are imported from the United States and therefore have no relevance in France, that's very, very strong within French academia presently. I personally know lots of French academics, particularly academics of color who since relocated to the United States to be professors at US universities because they can't do the same kind of work-- they can't talk about r

ace or study race with any legitimacy in the French academic sphere. So short answer, no. [LAUGHS] There's just not a space. There really isn't a space for these kinds of conversations in classrooms of any kind. AUDIENCE: And just a quick follow-up. Their K to 12 curriculum is nationalized. So none of this would make it into their curricula unless they were state-sanctioned, right? JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah. No, there's no discussion of any of these things. I mean, this isn't related to this book. But i

n my first book, actually, when I was focusing on adult children of North African immigrants, it was really interesting how many of them talked about how they didn't learn anything about French colonial history in school. In the French history classes, they learned a particular narrative that completely elides the war in Algeria, the history of colonialism et cetera, et cetera. So there's no invocation of any of this. MAISHA WYNN: We may have one last question. AUDIENCE: First, I want to thank y

ou for coming here for the talk. It was beautiful. My question is, is there a name of the organization or is it just throughout the French neighborhoods and community? JEAN BEAMAN: So for Black Lives Matter or for-- what name for what do you mean? AUDIENCE: Yeah, the Black Lives Matter for France. JEAN BEAMAN: Yeah. So thank you. Thank you so much Javier for that question. So yeah. There's not a sort of-- that's a really good question, there was an attempt to have a codified Black Lives Matter c

hapter as organized chapters we have here in the States and that didn't really play out for various, I guess, personality issues. So really what I try to think about as Black Lives Matter for the purposes of this project and when I talk to folks about it or when they bring it up, they're talking about both the overarching ideology, the idea about Black Lives Matter, about affirming Black humanity. And then they're also talking about specific collectives or organizations throughout Paris or the [

FRENCH] that are focused on racism or focus on police violence even if they don't use this specific term, Black Lives Matter. MAISHA WYNN: Thank you so much. Thank you everybody. We're so grateful to have Professor Beaman here.