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Robert Laffont
EAN : 9782221252994
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 234
Size : 135 x 215 mm
I am black but I don't complain – I could have been a woman

Release date : 26/08/2021
The first black woman of African descent to become a headmistress in a Parisian high school tells all about her daily encounters with racism
All her life, Mahi Traoré has refused to be defined solely by the color of her skin and her Malian origins. But even now, at 48 years of age and in the influential position of headmistress of a high school in Paris, she still has to suffer from the biased... All her life, Mahi Traoré has refused to be defined solely by the color of her skin and her Malian origins. But even now, at 48 years of age and in the influential position of headmistress of a high school in Paris, she still has to suffer from the biased look imposed on her by society and her fellow citizens.
Her story, from her childhood in Bamako to the suburb of Clichy-la-Garenne and up to her studies at the Sorbonne and her professional success, has always been and is still judged with the condescending attitude French society reserves for her so called “citizens from a diverse background”.
Her story is not so much underpinned by a confrontational and openly heinous racism, as by a multitude of micro-aggressions she has been and still is confronted with on a daily basis: the discovery of her being different as a black person through the eyes and the attitude of her fellow students, the systematical questionings about her nationality or her lack of a foreign accent. Other humiliating situations occur in her professional career, when she is being confounded with the janitorial staff, and even in her private life, when she picks up her children at school and is taken for the black babysitter. In addition to that, all throughout her career in national education, she has to put up with the prejudice that her career is not the result of effort and merit, but of “positive discrimination”.
With a detached sense of humor that does not dampen her enthusiasm, Mahi Traoré tells about her standing up to racism, and shines a light on the situation of young people of color in present-day France, especially on the situation of young women of color who are victims of two sets of stereotypes targeting their gender as well as their racial origins. Without caricatures nor invectives, Mahi Traoré delivers a lucid and yet optimistic narrative which is an essential contribution to the present debate on the “black question” France has finally engaged in.
 
Key points:
A strong narrative from a powerful new voice
A highly relevant subject
An engaging and charismatic author
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EAN : 9782221252994
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 234
Size : 135 x 215 mm
Robert Laffont