Blacks in the City of Light?

Going through my Foder's: Paris 2010 guidebook, I did not read about the same Paris I saw through the lens of Discover Paris. In Foder's guide of Paris, there were no black establishments categorized as "...worth seeing", as if blacks did not help light the city! Had it not been for the guidebook given to me by the Paris Noir program, I would not have known or seen where Bricktop's jazz clubs were, what sighting inspired James Emmanuel's poem 'Crossing the Square, Montparnasse,' or where Josephine Baker first sang 'J`ai Deux Amors'. By having this guidebook of black history in Paris, I was able to retrace the steps of revolutionary artists, writers and business owners and clearly see their contributions to Parisian culture. By physically walking these same streets and examining the proximity of the theaters, cafes and apartments, the words in the guide came to life! What was most noticeable was how within the same arrondisement (district), there was such great juxtaposition between the black and white establishments. Most of the black owned businesses were located in small commercial spaces on side streets, whereas, the white corporations dominated all of the main rues in big buildings. Bricktop's clubs were able to service and entertain patrons regardless of race or class, while the three block long Galaries Lafayette merely reinforced globalization. Be this as it may, the space allotted was no way near comparable among these racialized categories, even in spite of Bricktop's ability to create change.
Although my tour group was actively discovering these sites for days, such exploration of areas of where blacks were prominent in Paris is so low that many neighborhood onlookers questioned our reason for taking note where we did. This questioning spoke volumes of the unspoken, in relation to the black contribution in Paris. Such efforts were not and still are not vocalized or widely spread. This then reveals the need for education and challenges initiatives towards dispersing the non-disclosed, right information.
Unfortunately, this life or Presence African is not mentioned in mainstream guidebooks of Paris, even though such rich history resides on its streets. This withholding of factual information of this and similar under represented communities, are perpetuated by the false notion of white supremacy which still manifests in 2010. By choosing the notable places and top reasons to go to Paris, the illusion of ever-present superiority is furthermore asserted, though a falsity.
So I now choose to use my chance at improvisation to move my newly gained knowledge of what it meant to be black in Paris to you the audience. Through these present day screenshots of Montmartre and Montparnesse, I urge you to enter and re-imagine the Paris that once was and celebrated black existence. The captions are left open for you to add your own interpretations, improvise, on "what moves at the margin" (Toni Morrison). These stories should question how the spatial relates to the racial? Then move from the racial to the political and actively participate in answering how this can be read as history.






~Paris Noir 2010