Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era by Emily Marker (review)

Reviewed by: Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era by Emily Marker Christiane Kasarhérou-Leurquin Black France, White Europe: Youth, Race, and Belonging in the Postwar Era. By Emily Marker. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022. xiv + 261 pp. Hardcover 39. 95, e-book 25. 99. Black France, White Europe is a scholarly book that takes the reader on a very informative journey into French education policy and practices in the postwar era. It is the result of Emily Marker's research for her PhD in history, End Page 313 completed in 2016 at the University of Chicago. Summarizing the content of this book is no easy feat, as it spans more than twenty years, between World War II and the early 1960s, a period rife with political and social changes in France, as well as covering vast territories encompassing Western Europe and Africa. Marker focuses on French colonial education reforms and attempts to integrate Black African and white French youth in the European project, as well as on the condemnation of racism from the young Black African elite in the midst of decolonization. Her aim is to show how France became more European during the 1940s and 1950s while trying to strengthen the ties with its African colonies. In the epilogue, which looks to the twenty-first century, she concludes that "though French and European officials learned to rhetorically denounce religious and racial discrimination … in the wake of World War II, their practices and policy choices laid the groundwork for the processes of exclusion and the structural inequalities that continue to organize politics and social life in France, ex–French Africa, and the EU today" (228). Black France, White Europe is riddled with references and notes on most pages. The author has obviously researched the question thoroughly, basing her arguments mainly on primary sources and archival material. The meticulous analysis of several sources, such as Saurat's and Cassin's books on their understanding of education in Free French Africa (51–5) and the proceedings of the Brazzaville Conference, illustrates an otherwise dense and unwieldy list and assessment of the diverse organizations and different officials' ideologies behind education policies of the time. The book is structured into five chapters, which are organized chronologically in some cases (Chapters 1, 4 and 5) and thematically in others (Chapters 2 and 3) in order to cover the different aspects of the research: the review of colonial education policies during and after the war, the place of religion and race in these education policies, the decision makers, and the African students. Each chapter is divided into subsections that are invaluable to the reader, who can then decide to focus on a specific aspect of the reforms or on a particular perspective. In Chapter 3, for instance, titled "Reconstructing Race in French Africa and Liberated Europe, " Marker argues that African and European conceptions of a world without racism diverged significantly because of their different postwar expectations regarding education and racial justice, which she presents independently. In Chapter 4, Marker discusses the experience and image of the African boursiers, or scholarship students, in France in the context of "Eurafrica" and the forging of today's European Union. The African students' opinions are not featured often, but when they are, we are treated with an insight into the lives of the lucky recipients of these policies, like in the 1956 issue of L'Etudiant End Page 314 d'Afrique Noire, where African students speak out about their experiences in France (156–61). Another student narrative that hints at the racial segregation in schools in French Africa is taken from a 2010 interview of Senegalese Marie Louise Potin Gueye, who "was part of the first African cohort to desegregate the Lycée Van Vollenhoven, the lone French high school in Dakar" (101). This book is a formidable source of information on this rich period of history for France, as it prepared to integrate Europe with her colonies while struggling with racism, religious pluralism, and national renewal. Christiane Kasarhérou-Leurquin University of Otago Copyright © 2024 Johns Hopkins University Press