Rokhaya Diallo confronts France with its paradoxes

Rokhaya Diallo is a busy woman. Monday evening, on the LCI news channel with David Pujadas. Wednesday evening: on BFM TV. Thursday, first part of the evening: on RTL. Second part of the evening: on Balance ton post, Cyril Hanouna's television show. Friday: in three episodes of the Kiffe ta race podcast. Somewhere in all this: a column for the Washington Post, a sixth documentary – “but it won’t be ready until April…” and a complaint filed for racial slurs against him, held by a listener from Sud Radio. She is “a bit exhausted at the moment”.

It must be believed that confronting France with its paradoxes almost daily and live is an energy-intensive task, which the forty-year-old has been working on for more than ten years via often relevant, sometimes divisive, never lazy chronicles. From systemic racism to "yellow vests" to sexism and Islamophobia, she lets no inconsistency pass in the land of freedom, equality and fraternity that saw her grow up. In return, her detractors, live or on Twitter, never miss her either.

She is "tired" but you can't hear it, you can't see it, when she gets out of the taxi sent by the production of BFM TV and greets each security guard, a smile in her eyes (mask requires) . She makes her way to the dressing room, silver sneakers on her feet, wax pattern notebook in hand. Walk fast, talk fast, think fast, take advantage of every downtime. Look at his smartphone. On the program this evening: photo shoot in the premises of the channel, then an hour of live on the set of the show 120% news, Who will convince you?, where she officiates as a columnist. This strange job which consists of… what, again? “We agree on the subject at the start of the afternoon, we prepare it in a few hours and we will defend a point of view. Tonight I'm talking about sexual harassment in big schools with the hashtag #SciencesPorcs. A few days earlier, Frédéric Mion, director of the prestigious Parisian school Sciences Po, resigned. He is accused of having been aware of the heavy suspicions of incest that weighed on Professor Olivier Duhamel, and of having nevertheless chosen to offer him one of the most coveted positions.

A rocky rise

Still relatively unknown in Switzerland, the 40-year-old was ranked this winter among the 24 most influential people in Europe by the American magazine Politico. “Impose your luck, squeeze your happiness and go towards your risk. Looking at you, they will get used to it." The quote from René Char, epigraph of his book Do not stay in your place, published in 2019, which highlights a sawtooth ascent and fierce adversaries, on a television format which hardly suffers nuance.

Its battle horses are multiple. To name but a few: the right of women to control their bodies – whether they want it covered or not, or make it their tool of subsistence through sex work. The importance of recognizing that each point of view, in particular on racism or sexism, is "situated", that is to say forged by an individual experience, and is therefore never universal or neutral, even when it dominates cultural production. The latent racism of French institutions, whose unconscious is still marked by colonial history according to her, particularly in the context of racial profiling. "The level of anger provoked by the mere mention of possible state racism, probably amplified by the fact that the hypothesis was put forward by a black woman, shows how this type of debate remains struck by a heavy taboo”, she advances in her book La France, do you like it or do you close it? also released in 2019.

Read also: Rokhaya Diallo: "We expect recognition from minorities, not subversion"

For Sébastien Chauvin, editor of the book and now associate professor at the University of Lausanne, the violence of the reactions aroused by the positions taken by Rokhaya Diallo is proportional to the denial: "There is only in France that we react with such vehemence to what should be common sense. There is nothing radical in that. What she writes, what she defends on TV, is often not very far from what a Bernie Sanders or even a Joe Biden could say.

This is what he is accused of. Those who present her as a “radical”, “sulphurous” Muslim, “aggressive” feminist activist, a clash-and-click machine like the web churning out, see in her the importer of American debates linked to identity politics . A representative of the Black Lives Matter movement which gained momentum in France following the assassination of George Floyd in the United States, and an ambassador for the excesses of the "#MeToo generation", not without danger for French society. However, they are rarer today. Who has changed? Rokhaya Diallo, or the era?

Class defector

It's cold in this low-cost box that everyone shares at BFM. Plastic coat hangers sit alongside threadbare leather makeup chairs – TV's grand ways, it was "the world before". She scans the outfits of the stylist mobilized for the photos: black satin blouse: no, white shirt: no, APC denim jumpsuit: yes. For the occasion, Ibrahim, her "image manager" and she have chosen to surround themselves with brilliant, young, black artists, committed "for a diverse society, which is moving in the right direction". Their mere presence, in a “La Haine – So far everything is fine” sweatshirt and XXL streetwear, contrasts with the “suit-grey-tie-blue-foundation-beige” atmosphere of the chain. An eminently political choice, of course: the spotlights shone on her, who catches the light so well, illuminate them, too, by ricochet. “For the next shoots, you need color, OK? Dull clothes don't suit her," slips "Ibra" to the stylist while the columnist changes without making any manners in the next room.

“Picture manager.” The job says a lot about the evolution of Rokhaya Diallo's career. “In fact, I have several managers”, explains the latter between two doors. “I worked for a while with a French agent based in the United States who taught me, among other things, how to better value my services. But right now I have activities so different from each other that it's easier to have a manager for each area of ​​activity: conferences, publishing, TV, documentaries, brands that offer me to wear their clothes … Each area requires specific skills.”

"Don't stay in your place"

Under the white neon lights, someone announces: "We launched the ad, it's good for the set." Last look at his notes. A fraction of a second, her nose in her notebook, shows through the determined, studious and reserved schoolgirl she claims to have always been.

In Do not stay in your place, half biography, half imperative to believe in her ambitions to try to influence the weight of social determinisms, she describes herself as a class defector. “Nothing destined me for the life I lead today,” she says. Socially, it is undeniable. But the personal qualities required to calmly live such media exposure were there, says his brother Bachir, three years his junior: shyness does not detract from the natural lead, the calm, the desire to put forward one's arguments which has been well worth eyes to the sky to her mother, when she was a child.

Born in Paris, Rokhaya Diallo grew up in the 19th arrondissement before her parents, a sewing teacher and a Senegalese mechanic who arrived in France in the 1970s without illusions, settled in the Parisian suburbs, in Seine-Saint -Denis. At home, her parents speak Wolof with each other (the most spoken language in Senegal) and French with the children. Her mother sings Edith Piaf, venerates Anne Sinclair and Dalida, "so elegant". Television is a totem, almost a member of the family, and no one misses an episode of Dallas or a political debate.

“My father was a member of the PS, I remember that he took us to a meeting of Lionel Jospin. He was a figure in the Senegalese community, always receiving people at home for the ataya, the green tea ceremony… and a pretext to chat. My mother was in charge of the operations of the shelter, helped with literacy in a migrant women's association and sold clothes that she made. She was very keen on appearance: you had to be impeccable. Even today, he sometimes sends me an SMS when I am live on a set to tell me: “Raise your collar, it is crooked.”

The Muslim religion as practiced by its extended family, some veiled cousins, others not, is open to the world, vector of values ​​of respect and tolerance. She herself is only interested in it as a teenager, from afar. “My parents had registered my brother and me for Arabic lessons at the Stalingrad mosque in Paris. We went there backwards because we missed the cartoons.

“The machine swallowed”

She first discovers racism in the background, on TV: everyone is white and no one looks like her. Or almost. The memory of The machine swallowed, an improbable clip from Club Dorothée in which three black men are agitated next to the blonde singer still exasperates him. “At the time I was angry with these black people, I even insulted them, without thinking about the fact that it was the whole Club Dorothée who gave free rein to these colonialist clichés. We had to wait for the American series to see interesting black people on the small screen, with The Prince of Bel Air.

In real life, racist events are rare in his neighborhood. In Paris, a friend picks up her mother's accent; school children point to his father's 'dress' returning from the mosque; in the changing rooms of the swimming pool, we are surprised by the amulets that Senegalese ancestors enjoin him to wear at the waist to ensure his protection. "I knew it was proof of ignorance on their part, but that didn't stop me from thinking about it when I got back." Like many discreet children, at school, she was harassed for weeks by a group without her understanding, even today, if the motivation was sexist, racist, or gratuitous. She talks about it to her parents but refuses their intervention, and moves on.

The teenager she becomes is neither popular nor extroverted – love stories interest her in books, but her classmates much less. She is a fan of manga and imagines creating cartoons in her corner (“Ah, The Knights of the Zodiac!” – nostalgic sigh). She dreams of Japan and its mangakas, the adored authors of comics. Germinates the idea of ​​seeing something other than Senegal, where she regularly spends her summer holidays with her family, eating peanuts from the market and waiting for time to pass. Bingo: the communist town hall in its suburbs offers some students discounted trips that take them to Italy, Canada, the United States. Then offers him a scholarship in return for involvement in the cultural life of the city on the theme of his choice. She begins to take an interest in African authors, and immerses herself in post-colonial struggles: this will be her subject. “I realized that a whole section of the history of literature and cinema had escaped me.”

Y’a bon Awards

Soon after, in 2005, the suburbs of several major cities in France, including his own, were set ablaze. The very ones that Nicolas Sarkozy, then Minister of the Interior, intends to "clean up with a karcher". “I felt immense anger, great contempt for the political class. The security discourse was praised by the press, all of which testified to a great ignorance of the subject. With a few friends, we decided to create an association, Les Indivisibles, which would do a sort of watch on trivialized racism – not the greasy and vulgar one of the Lepenists, no, the more insidious one, which spreads prejudices and that we let happen."

Alexandra Henry, co-founder with Rokhaya Diallo of Les Indivisibles, remembers the leitmotif: getting the message across through humour, even dark humour. “We had a lot of fun with a small group of friends. That's how we designed the Y'a bon Awards, prizes that reward the worst racist comments from the holders of the media word in France. The first of its kind.

Whether you consider it brilliant or dubious, the initiative is gaining visibility. And Rokhaya Diallo too. In 2009, Canal+ spotted her and offered her a column, which she accepted without knowing how long it would last. The day after the premiere, she received an email to her work address: "It's the first time I've seen a young dark woman with frizzy hair and an African name talking about serious things on French television." The responsibility now incumbent on him can no longer escape him. She kisses him.

The buzz caught up with the organizers of the Y'a Bon Awards when journalist Caroline Fourest, "awarded" a banana peel by the association, threatened to file a complaint in 2012. Did she deserve this prize or not for her about denouncing “the associations which ask gymnasiums to organize basketball tournaments reserved for women, veiled, in order to raise funds for Hamas”? The controversy swells, the turmoil begins.

A step aside

Mistakes, she has made over the past ten years, and readily admits them. Having co-signed with about twenty people, in 2011, a text critical of the unconditional support of the political class for Charlie Hebdo is one of them. From there to being accused, five years later, of being herself "guilty" of the terrible attack of 2015 which will leave her speechless, there is only one step, which some do not hesitate to take. polemicists of the French audiovisual landscape of the time. There followed an unleashing of suspicion and violence against him. The one who says in her books that she "never gives up her emotions to her opponents" reels in shock. She leaves for the United States for a moment to "take a step aside".

It may come back stronger, more audible, but the caricature sticks to its skin. Her intersectional discourse, according to which certain individuals find themselves at the crossroads of several discriminations – for example sexist and racist when one is a black woman – terrifies a fringe of French intellectuals quick to defend “the universalism of the Republic” (for which the sociological concept of "race" is nonsense) or "French seduction". She affirms that the ethnic statistics in force in several Anglo-Saxon countries could help to combat racism? She is accused of being manipulated by the United States, after she was brought to meet Barack Obama as part of a trip highlighting young leaders. Unsurprisingly in the ultra-tense post-attack context, the subject of the most virulent disagreements remains Islamophobia, which she systematically denounces, making for some "the game of Islamism".

Many are those who publicly equate his name with that of the hard fringe of the Indigenous Peoples of the Republic, “a fundamentalist group of dangerous Islamo-leftists”. While all these voices are raised in her name, “often without reading me or listening to me”, she says in passing, Rokhaya Diallo advances with the assurance of those who have never doubted their legitimacy.

Also read: Rokhaya Diallo: “Black consciousness in France is getting closer to what is happening in the United States”

“Relevant” in the United States

Across the Atlantic, he is being listened to attentively. Perhaps because her story as a self-made woman commands admiration and balances the American dream. In charge of international chronicles for the Washington Post, Mili Mitra affirms that offering her a monthly column was obvious for the daily: “For years, Rokhaya Diallo has been one of the most influential personalities in public debate, and her work has brought to light issues that had not received the attention they deserved. The context and perspective that her voice brings on topics related to race and racism are powerful assets at this time.”

In a world where it has become so easy to "unfollow" its opponents, she has found her place by debating without condescension, with intransigence. “She is not afraid of anyone, believes her colleague David Pujadas between two ski slopes in Verbier. I do not agree with everything she says, far from it, continues the star presenter – for example I find that she takes too many precautions on Islamism – but her positions are very largely caricatured. She never plays on emotion, she reads, documents a lot. We cannot take away the fact that she is a hard worker and that over the years, she has become a real columnist. Fun fact: Rokhaya Diallo connects facts but also people. “She was the one who recommended the person who became my assistant, for example, specifies David Pujadas. She is very generous.”

The fact that it undermines French universalism can be an opportunity for debate, the interest of which depends on the diversity of voices. "Let's be clear: I don't like his ideas at all, but I have respect for his courage", concedes the journalist and essayist Elisabeth Lévy, editorial director of the magazine Causeur, diametrically opposed politically and familiar with the verbal jousts with Rokhaya Diallo in the show We remake the world on RTL: “All this intersectional bullshit or whatever, I don't believe it, the accusation of state racism is a shameful defamation. The new anti-racists only see race. To fall asleep, they count women and blacks, it is contrary to our universalism and it aggravates French fractures. But she has a side "alone against all" that I like. We can argue and go have a drink together. Finally, when the cafes will reopen.

Voices to victims

“Let’s go.” In the dressing room of BFM TV, the professional who refines his chocolate complexion lets go of his brushes. She gets up and sits down in front of the editor-in-chief of the far-right newspaper Current Values, Geoffroy Lejeune, Dr. Hélène Rossinot and journalist Laurent Neumann. According to the format of the show, she has “90 seconds” to put forward a thesis, then debated for ten minutes. “Diallo: #SciencesPorcs, ce is just the beginning” appears under his face, in white capitals.

She unfolds her argument, relies on numbers – always. “There is a systemic problem, which is the culture of rape, that is to say a series of attitudes that justify gender-based violence. It is time to put the voice of the victims at the center and to take it into consideration.” Opposed to her: “Not everyone, not all men”, she re-explains the definition of the sociological concept of “rape culture”. Five minutes later, next. She will give her opinion on the thesis of her colleague Geoffroy Lejeune on "the true face of Islamization" a few months after the beheading of Professor Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine.

End clap. In front of her taxi which brings her back, she hesitates. Will she go to Cyril Hanouna tomorrow or not? The announcement of his casting for Touche pas à mon poste in 2017 had raised some eyebrows. For her part, no regrets: the show, she has always watched it, and respects a popular audience with which she identifies. "Some would see me better alongside the Daily team, but in reality Cyril Hanouna understands better what I am, where I come from, than many others." Named today Balance your post, the show is nevertheless “the most unpredictable on earth”. “They invited Mélenchon. Even though I'm not a hyper-fan of the person, I'm quite close to his political positions, so what would I have to say?… I'm thinking of doing the after party of the show on the homeless instead in times of pandemic.” She will also find her colleague from Current Values ​​there.

Also read: Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka to defend women, we must find a common language for as many people as possible

Annual “Reset”

Tonight, her spouse is waiting for her, no children, she never wanted any. Are her loved ones proud of this life “to which nothing predisposed her”? “They actually don’t watch TV, no one is on Twitter…they don’t care. From time to time, a friend writes me to tell me that he heard something. But for them, I'm at work. My work problems are no more or less than those of my spouse, who is in education. Its solidity is partly due to this private-professional schism, at the time of the shitstorm at the end of the smartphone.

She left Seine-Saint-Denis for eastern Paris, very close to where she spent her early years. In his apartment, no journalist or photographer goes up, it is his space, a bubble of silence. Once a year, she finds one or two relatives for a week of fasting in broth without salt: the annual “reset”. His neighborhood has “boboized”, has changed a lot. And she? For Alexandra Henry, who knew her twenty years ago when they were both active in anti-globalization associations, "it's still the same person. Of course, she does not evolve in the same circles as us, but that is normal. All that matters is that she gives visibility to her convictions. It moves the debate forward.”

In front of the premises, a journalist from BFM TV who was surprised at the photo shoot in progress a few hours earlier quips in front of another: “Are you not aware? On Rokhaya, there is a Netflix series in preparation. She smiled as she zipped up her big, long-haired coat. He laughs well who laughs last.

Thursday, March 11, at 8:00 p.m., as part of the FIFDH (Film Festival and International Forum on Human Rights), Rokhaya Diallo is the moderator of an online meeting with Patrisse Cullors, artist, political scientist and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network movement entitled: “What future for the Black Lives Matter movement”?

Rokhaya Diallo, "Don't stay in your place", Ed. Marabout, 2019.

“Do you love France or close it?”, Ed. Textuel, 2019.

A French woman

Periodically, media France – this imaginary country that stretches from BFM TV to Twitter via Le Monde and the morning show of France Inter – begins to convulse under the influence of a word, an idea, a political statement. As this magazine goes to press, the word that is shaking France is “Islamo-leftism”.

We are publishing the portrait of Rokhaya Diallo. Why she? Because this woman embodies like no other the feminist and anti-racist voice that has moved our Western societies for several years. And also because she is a new kind of public figure – let's call them “above-ground editorialists” or “multimedia polemicists” – a kind of job at the crossroads of self-employment and self-marketing, which at least in Paris you can work full time.

Rokhaya Diallo is not an employee of any media, yet she expresses herself in all of them. She became known for her militant commitments, before becoming a journalist, a job she exercises freely, in all formats – podcast, documentary, essay, comics. Without its own roots in academic research, it nevertheless draws from it the legitimacy of any position it defends.

Is Rokhaya Diallo a figurehead of “Islamo-leftism”? Answering the question would require defining “Islamo-leftism” – an exercise that France has been tackling, not without pains and contortions, however without success, for several weeks already. So while waiting for this umpteenth manifestation of the social and political crisis that is going through our big neighbor to calm down, we can always read here the sensitive portrait of a figure of our time, and of her country: Rokhaya Diallo, a French woman.

Rinny Gremaud