Book contents
- Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa
- African Identities: Past and Present
- Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Multiracial Identities and the Consolidation and Subversion of Racialized French Colonial Rule in French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, ca. 1900–1930
- 2 Wards of the State
- 3 “I Am French”
- 4 “Odd Notions of Race”
- 5 Humanizing Maternal and Child Welfare in Dakar, 1949–1956
- 6 Multiracial Internationalism
- Epilogue
- References
- Index
3 - “I Am French”
Multiraciality and Citizenship in FWA and FEA, ca. 1928–1938
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 May 2023
- Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa
- African Identities: Past and Present
- Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Multiracial Identities and the Consolidation and Subversion of Racialized French Colonial Rule in French West Africa and French Equatorial Africa, ca. 1900–1930
- 2 Wards of the State
- 3 “I Am French”
- 4 “Odd Notions of Race”
- 5 Humanizing Maternal and Child Welfare in Dakar, 1949–1956
- 6 Multiracial Internationalism
- Epilogue
- References
- Index
Summary
Chapter 3 investigates the French nationality decrees promulgated in 1930 and 1936, which recognized the claims métis people had been making for decades: they were French and entitled to French legal status. These new legal pathways to French citizenship and demarcations of parameters of belonging were tied to concepts of how race and multiracial identity mapped onto French legal status. The decrees codified multiracial people as a specific category in French colonial thought and society, but within the context of how multiracial people themselves claimed multiracial selfhoods. The claims of métis people who petitioned for citizenship deepened the debates about race and racial identity and changed the very idea of Frenchness. The burden of proof on petitioners hinged on questions of paternity and French cultural competency. However, maternal kin and African communities played an essential role in the legal process. Métis obtainment of French citizenship was consequential for hierarchies of status within African societies. At the same time, it both contested and created hierarchies of social and legal status and privilege based on changing racial thought.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Multiracial Identities in Colonial French AfricaRace, Childhood, and Citizenship, pp. 103 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023