Black Feminism and Transnational Solidarity: Mobilization Against State Violence in France

Based on three years of ethnographic research, including interviews with activists, I discuss the role of black feminist activism and transnational solidarity in the movement against police violence. I focus on how Black and Maghrebin origin men are predominately killed at the hands of police and how Black and Maghrebin origin women, including Assa Traore and Ramata Dieng, are leading this burgeoning movement. It is telling that despite the preponderance of men as victims of state-sponsored violence, it is women – as sisters, mothers, etc. - who are doing much of the mobilization against this issue, rather than their brothers or uncles or fathers. Black women activists navigate how to respond to police violence that disproportionately targets particular ethnoracial minority populations in a context that does not acknowledge the relationship between state violence and racism. They do so by locating the specificity of their identities as both Black and women. The activism of Black women is not only motivated by their particular positionality, but it is also shaped by it. Gender is just as present as and is inextricably intertwined with racial identity, and both shape the possibilities and modes of mobilization. Their unique standpoint (Collins 1986) as Black women, sisters, mothers and daughters also characterizes the transnational solidarity these women activists make with Black Feminist activists around the world, including Angela Davis and the late Marielle Franco. I argue that such a Black Feminist perspective is essential to understand contemporary racism in postcolonial societies.