A Cold Civil War?

French Historian Pap Ndiaye and American novelist Jake Lamar discuss racial turmoil in the USA and its echoes in France

Abstract

On February 1, 2022, the American Library in Paris launched its Black History Month program with a conversation between two well-known figures in France’s international Black community.
Pap Ndiaye is a historian of French and Senegalese descent. As a professor at Sciences Po, he popularized the study of race and identity in French academia, most notably with his book La Condition noire. In 2021, he was appointed direc- tor of the National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris.
Jake Lamar is an African American writer who has lived in Paris since 1993. He is the prize-winning author of a memoir, seven novels and a play and teaches creative writing at Sciences Po. What follows are edited excerpts of their exchange.