Governor General carries the promise of atonement
michaëlle jean's upcoming visit to France could provide a chance to address the country's murky colonial past
Monday, March 24, 2008
LA ROCHELLE, France - Governor General Michaëlle Jean will be pushed to help rekindle a French national debate over race relations and France's historic reluctance to confront its role in the slave trade.
The photogenic Jean, Canada's most famous Haitian immigrant, will share centre stage with France's media-magnet President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris on May 8 to mark the anniversary of the end of the Second World War. She will then fly to this southwestern coastal tourist city for events the same day honouring 17th- and 18th-century pioneers who left France via this picturesque port.
While the official events will focus on mostly folkloric aspects of the Canada-France historical bond, a new and more controversial issue is emerging as activists in France's black community become aware of Jean's visit.
Jean, the great-great-granddaughter of African and aboriginal slaves, will attend events at a port that was at the epicenter of France's slave trade that shipped an estimated 1.25-million Africans to plantations in France's colonies, particularly in Saint-Dominique, now Haiti.
Jean, who made an emotional private visit in 2006 to a local museum here that includes disturbing artifacts from the slave trade, is acutely aware that her own ancestors may very well have been placed in leg irons by bullwhip-wielding guards in ships that set sail from this port.
Her visit also takes place two days before France's national day to commemorate slavery, which was inaugurated only in 2006 under pressure by France's blacks.
Critics of the French government's approach to race issues see Jean's visit as an opportunity to advance the black community's interests. French minority groups have often been frustrated by the republic's shunning of the concept of multiculturalism.
The French have instead demanded that all citizens be assimilated into the dominant French culture under the revolutionary banner of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.
"I think the visit of Her Excellency will have a tremendous effect on the situation of black people in France, because the French have tried to hide their history," Patrick Lozes, president of the moderate national advocacy group called the Representative Council of Black Associations.
"It will also help the president, Nicolas Sarkozy, who can't understand the quest for social justice carried by millions of black people," he told Canwest News Service.
Lozes said Jean's high stature could prove embarrassing for Sarkozy because there are few black people in the upper echelons of France's political, business and military world, despite a black population he estimates at about five million out of a total population of 60 million.
Jean-Yves Camus, an analyst who has written extensively on race relations and slavery for the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Relations, said the French have throughout history never felt guilty about its colonial misdeeds.
But that began to change somewhat in the mid- to late-1990s due to French activities in Algeria between 1954-62, as well as France's agreement to compensate families of Jewish Holocaust victims during the Second World War.
Camus said Jean's appearance in France could make Sarkozy uncomfortable because the president argued during the 2007 election campaign that France should not feel ashamed of its colonial past.