Going to Paris

“It was quite clear to me that the Frenchmen in whose hands I found myself were no better or worse than their American counterparts…The only difference here was that I did not understand these people, did not know what techniques their cruelty took…That evening in the commissariat I was not a despised black man. They would simply have laughed at me if I had behaved like one. For them, I was an American.”
—James Baldwin, “Equal in Paris” from Notes of a Native Son

French ELLE Article’s Racist Remarks Spark Boycott:
“For the first time, the chic has become a plausible option for a community so far pegged [only] to its street wear codes,” writes Nathalie Dolivo in a post translated from the magazine’s website titled ‘Black Fashion Power.’

And if this sweeping stereotyping and flat-out ignorance weren’t already off base, Dolivo goes on to explain why the so-called Obama renaissance of style is so “chic.” According to her assessment, it embraces “white codes” while still making what she calls “a bourgeois ethnic reference (a batik-printed turban/robe, a shell necklace, a ‘créole de rappeur’) reminiscent [of] the roots.”

In the class I’m taking on James Baldwin, we read his essay “Equal in Paris.” In the essay, Baldwin writes about the young American in Paris and the image the French have of Americans. In the particular part I quoted from, he specifies how they perceive African-Americans—or how he perceives they perceive African-Americans.

This essay immediately brought to mind not only Jay-Z and Kanye West’s song, “Niggas in Paris,” depicting a Paris of opulence as a marker of capitalistic success, but the French Elle article that speaks of black fashion condescendingly and Azealia Banks’ performance at Karl Lagerfeld’s house in Paris. The connection of Baldwin’s essay with current events and cultural and nationalistic ideas interests me—the topic of perception. How do the French perceive African-American culture, and what is the source of this perception? How do African-American’s perceive French culture and the city of Paris in particular, and why do we perceive it as we do?