"France Confronts Slavery, A Demon of its Past, " James McAuley

Paris’s only significant slavery memorial — a bronze statue of broken chains —
sits in front of an ornate building once owned by the Bank of France.
(James McAuley/The Washington Post)

“'...I wish to give to France an institution it still lacks, a foundation for the memory of the slave trade, slavery and its abolition,' (he) President François Hollande told reporters.  The government’s announcement comes after years of frustration in France’s black community — one of the largest in Europe — over what they consider the effacement of a traumatic history...."

"...For Louis-Georges Tin, the president of the Representative Council of France’s Black Associations (CRAN), which led the campaign for the new foundation, the long public failure to grapple with slavery and its legacy sends a clear message.  'It clearly means that black lives do not matter,' he said in an interview...."

"...In the 18th and 19th centuries, France was among the major European slave-trading nations, capturing and selling an estimated 1.4 million people before leaders outlawed slavery in 1848.  The country’s coffers grew rich from colonial conquests in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean, where slave labor generated the commodities that French merchants then sold in Europe.

When metropolitan France finally outlawed slavery — a generation before the United States — liberation brought freedom only in theory for many blacks in French territories overseas. 'Slavery was abolished, and the old slaves became citizens,' said the historian Frédéric Regent, a renowned expert on the French slave trade. 'They even elected deputies. But the plantation economy continued with the same masters, who then became ‘employers.’ 

'What was different between that and slavery?' Tin asked. 'Nothing.'

This form of economic subjugation overseas persisted well into the 1960s, when France, crippled by two world wars, lost its former empire. Many argue that the injustice persists today in the form of socioeconomic disparity between young whites and blacks, increasingly confined to peripheral suburbs and low-paying jobs," "France Confronts Slavery..., " James McAuley, Washington Post, May 28, 2016 .

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