In 2015, I was living in Paris and writing my master’s thesis: An exploration of post-colonial French identity through the lens of the country’s education system in its overseas territories. This is when I learned from my advisor that “race” as we know and use it in English doesn’t have a French equivalent. While the word does appear in the language, I’ve seen it used in reference to animal breeds more than anything else. What’s more, in 2018, members of the French parliament — an overwhelming number of whom were white — hailing from both ends of the political spectrum voted to strike the word from the constitution. Race is a made-up social construct and thus doesn’t exist, they argued, so neither should the word itself. 

This presented a rather obvious roadblock along my academic path at the end of which I intended to have 100 pages written in French on the subject of, in a word, race. The role of race in perpetuating the structural inequalities upon which the French education system is built, especially on land that didn’t belong to France in the first place, is irrefutable. The reason this education system even dominates learning in places like French Guiana — my area of focus located in a largely forgotten pocket of South America — is due to imperialist practices that, to this day, marginalize and oppress the Black and indigenous populations inhabiting them. How can we question, challenge, and address these issues without the adequate vernacular to talk about them? How can we tackle the lasting vestiges of colonialism head-on when we can only speak around these topics, rather than about them directly? Or is that the point? 

We can’t define another person’s identity, nor can we deny it. As Diana points out in her introduction, using race to classify different groups within the French population can be perceived as a threat to national unity. But my question here is, for whom? Rejecting the notion of race based on principles of science is convenient for those whose lived experiences are not shaped entirely by how they look. Erasing the word doesn’t erase the discrimination and violence endured by non-white individuals in the country on a daily basis. This is why phrases like “I don’t see color” or “the only race is the human race” are not only employed by the culturally valorized, but weaponized against those who call out white supremacy when they see it. So let’s not take away the words required to make sure those calls are heard loud and clear. AR

As a white person at this point in a not-so-post-colonial history, I am less concerned with how to redefine (and center) what my whiteness is (see: every time I walked home from New York’s City Hall Occupation without being arrested), and more concerned with how to make up for the systemic damage it upholds. That means taking the back seat and supporting non-white livelihoods with my wallet, body and vote. It means following abolitionist approaches to community safety in lieu of mere police reform, and fighting for a future that must be led by BIPOC coalitions. 

Yes, race is a construct. But it has engendered very real intergenerational discrimination that won’t disappear just because one of the most widespread, long-standing colonial powers won’t look those realities in the face and make reparations. We’re not there yet. We can’t skip that beat. When we [gestures to fellow white people] “do the work,” we realize that we are in recovery from racism, but only so much as we choose to be. Consider France’s involved anti-hijab and burqa policies, and attempts to literally rewrite its colonial history. Listen to Black French activists like Assa Traoré. As Chelsea Stieber wrote in Who’s Afraid of Antiracism? “When [the French] state accuses racial-justice activists of threatening the values of the republic, what does that say about the state?” 

White people: Consider ancestral therapy. As an ally said during a protest for Breonna Taylor last summer, “If you’re uncomfortable, it’s working.” Find out who sucked in your family, and who didn’t. Build out cultural rituals in a way that feels appropriate, healthy and reparative.

As to how much we should define the race for the people in our lives? That’s for them to say (or not), and for us to respect. MFK

I could forgive my friend for calling me a “white motherfucker” if, three weeks prior, he hadn’t spent the afternoon at my wedding chatting to my Black and Jewish family members. Growing up, the label I gave myself was “Jewmaican.” It generally raised a smile while neatly informing people of my background. It hadn’t even occurred to me how long it had been since I last used the term until this lightning-bolt moment at a party with my Paris peers, when an anarchist communist poet had decided that I was simply a posh-straight-white-mother-fucker. For the record, not one of these things is true. 

This drunken assertion was just one of several incidents that made me realize that since moving away from the UK, and away from the context of my childhood and family, most of the people I encountered in my adult life have incorrectly pigeonholed me. And this, in turn, made me reevaluate what was important for them to know. Most of my current community knew that I used to be a hardcore emo (aliceACID™, put me in your Top 8). So why didn’t they know that I am mixed race? Or for that matter, that I didn’t come from fabulous wealth? I decided to fill these gaps in the Alice Encyclopedia by talking about them more often.  

Being defined by any one thing is lazy: Drinking prosecco isn’t a personality. Nor is being Asian. While all of these big and small jigsaw pieces undoubtedly form the totality of who we are, to choose one thing to be representative of another person on their behalf is to erase everything else about them. Especially because, when you do define someone as Black or Jewish or Asian or Arab, it isn't so much a recognition of their cultural heritage as it is an acknowledgment of their non-white otherness.

As a mixed-race person who looks white to most people, I am treated as white by society. Because of this (“this” being, to put it bluntly, white supremacy), I am privileged to represent one of the very few branches of my family tree that hasn’t experienced racism. But my very existence is shaped by it and, more importantly, the generations-old traditions that are sidelined when we talk about race as though it’s purely a color spectrum. Defining somebody by their race is moot. But understanding somebody through the prism of their culture is to understand them better as an individual, in context. AB