Social Races and Decolonial Struggles in France

Abstract

In France, apart from activists and intellectuals acquainted with the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic¹ (PIR — Parti des Indigènes de la République), not many people understand that a French party or movement embraces the task of an anti-racist struggle, points to the need of a decolonial strategy and presents itself as a liberation party.² These principles may indeed be surprising. Mistakenly, some see this as a will to imitate movements that have struggled, or still struggle, against the colonial occupation of their territories. This, of course, would be nonsense. The condition of the ‘internally colonized’ and the mechanisms of their racial relegation are considerably different from the forms of oppression produced by territorial colonization. In order to avoid any misunderstanding, I will try to explain why talking about liberation and, more precisely, about decolonial liberation continues to make sense as long as the coloniality of power relations — surely, under new terms — persists as an organizing principle of French society, structuring different groups of the population according to a racial hierarchy.