Some black populations in the Maghreb suffer from persistent racism.
The antithetical incidents of anti-blackness are symbolic of the relations maintained between the black populations established in North Africa with the light-skinned natives, between symbiosis and animosity.
Dark-skinned migrants are indignant at being the targets of a nameless contempt, enduring in some places daily bullying.
In recent years, the attention paid by local media to the perils of sub-Saharan migrants gives this “spontaneous” racism a xenophobic dimension of the Blacks of the Maghreb.
Tunisian activist against racism, Maha Abdelhamid says “There are invisible barriers like the almost impassable one of marriage: we can share everything except blood.”
From the Gulf to the Atlantic, prejudices and taboos on dark skin are rooted in a collective memory that dates back to slavery, freezing the image of the black man as an eternal servant. From Cairo to Casablanca, those who recognize the latent racism of their societies explain: “History is resurfacing.” In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, nearly 2 million Sub-Saharans were taken to North Africa to serve as soldiers, domestic servants or agricultural laborers. Generations from the old masters would have unconsciously perpetuated the gaze of their ancestors on the descendants of the freedmen. More alarming, the Black Maghrebis themselves seem to submit to the yoke of a certain perception of history. In May 2013, anti-racism demonstrations organized in Tunisia brought together only a small number of them. Maha Abdelhamid, who participated in the organization of the event, explains: “Blacks have always cultivated discretion, they are afraid that by expressing this will lead to hostile reactions. ‘They talk about it among themselves, come to deny the existence of racism towards them. There is a double denial.”
Perceived as an empty and barren space, in the minds of many the Sahara constitutes a lock between a light-skinned and civilized Africa, and a black Africa, a jungle of ferocious beasts and sorcerers devoted to anarchy.
