Jeune Afrique l’Intelligent,
Nos. 2266, 2270, 2273–76, June-August 2004, Paris
During its colonial rule, France enlisted West Africans to fight on its behalf
in regiments called the Tirailleurs Sénégalais. One of
the battlefields was the Maghreb, the Arabic word for the region comprising
Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia. The French did not create racial enmity in the
region—Moroccan dynasties brought sub-Saharan Africans north as soldiers
and slaves centuries earlier—but they exploited and exacerbated it for
their own ends. Today, as fresh waves of migrants make their way to the region,
old patterns of mistrust are reemerging.
Thousands of sub-Saharan Africans fleeing poverty and political strife have
arrived in the Maghreb in recent years. This influx has garnered much attention
in local media, but what receives less attention is Maghrebi hostility toward
the new arrivals and the patterns of discrimination toward dark-skinned Maghrebis
upon which it builds. Last summer, the Paris-based magazine Jeune Afrique
l’Intelligent launched a five-part series titled “Are Maghrebis
Racist?” to provoke debate about this taboo subject. The magazine itself
is no stranger to controversy. It was founded in Tunisia in 1960 and associated
with the nationalist and pan-African projects of that period. The magazine once
critiqued Moroccan regimes, but it is now criticized by independent Maghrebi
media for being too close to the state.
Maghrebi racism is highly controversial because it contradicts national ideologies
of tolerance, as well as constitutional and religious doctrines of equality.
The testimonials that make up the bulk of the series focus on this hypocrisy.
Staff writer Cherif...
