French was imposed on you… or was it a gift?
I think it was an opportunity. And it’s French we’re talking about now… right?
I’m just champing at the bit, but I’m trying.
I also speak English – another opportunity – and I started in Cameroon, where I was born: we speak many other languages ??there, such as Ewondo, so we have adopted French to communicate with each other.
Was it not the language of the oppressor?
Colonization was oppression, but language is an opportunity that we have been able to take advantage of as a useful tool.
Algeria is now replacing colonial French with English.
It’s a mistake: why replace one language with another instead of adding them?
Adding them is adding opportunities?
In the same way that, on the other hand, reducing the history of Africa and Europe to that of oppressors and oppressed, enslavers and slaves… is to forget its rich complexity.
Do we continue to reduce it today?
Yes, absolutely. The relationship between Africa and the West is much more than immigration and pastoralism. There is so much more to tell.
What story does he tell in his books?
That before the centuries of colonial slavery there were a thousand years of commercial and cultural exchanges; of travel and travelers, with their ups and downs…
It seems more interesting than that of slaves and slave owners.
It is much more, and richer and more complex than this dichotomy between good and evil!
The Egyptians who founded the main ancient culture, what ethnicity did they have?
They could be black, but also brown-skinned and there were whites: of all skin tones… It was irrelevant then. It was only relevant from the European colonizations.
Were the pharaohs black?
Let’s see, the important thing is that until the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries the color of your skin did not define you. The most important thing was not your color, but your religion, culture, language, customs…
Does colonialism invent race as an irrevocable judge of status?
But this relationship between color and race, ergo status, continues to permeate our culture today.
Why did color suddenly matter?
Because colonialism not only wanted to colonize, but to erase history and replace it with the version that the colonizers were interested in: they wanted color to determine the appearance of intelligence – the black was thus less human and less intelligent – and had always defined the status of societies and towns. The color of your skin was not relevant before colonialism.
Black Roman citizens?
And emperors: Septimius Severus was born in Libya, then part of the Roman Empire, and he was African. There were other markers to discriminate people – as we have others today – but it was not the color of the skin.
Do you think there has been any progress?
In the 18th century life was terrible for people like me and today, on the other hand, women have more rights than ever. Studying history frees us and prevents progress from ending in regression.
Will there be more or less immigration?
It is logical that if your country ends up, among other reasons due to its colonial past, in a terrible state, you want to emigrate; but Europe is not the place where most African immigrants go. And remember, moreover, that Europeans are getting older: there are fewer and fewer children here.
We know about Africa’s problems, but less about the solutions.
Africans want to progress and that is why they emigrate, but for them to progress in their own country, solutions thought up in offices in other countries do not work: the social distance of covid, for example, in Africa meant liquidating street trade. It was not viable, it generated deadly misery.
Does colonialism persist?
A colonizer leaves, but others arrive and that is indeed very worrying.
Are China and Russia colonizing Africa?
Sometimes we have to collaborate with the old colonizer to get rid of the new one.
Geneticists show that the genetic difference between ethnic groups is minimal.
I am much more interested in enjoying and valuing the diversity of humans in equality: how we live the human experience in different ways.
But you are a teacher in England and France: do you still feel African?
I enjoy my mix of identities and try to share this joy with my African and European students and friends. The best thing about being human is that you can be human with multiple identities.
