“Dans la Peau d’un Noir”: Senegalese Students and Young Professionals in Rabat, Morocco

Abstract

In the article “Dans la peau d’un noir au Maroc” (SlateAfrique 2012), the Senegalese journalist Bassirou Ba describes the prejudice he has encountered as a black-skinned person in Morocco. Ba’s testimony is part of an ongoing debate, both in Morocco and in North Africa more broadly, about the issue of “anti-black racism” and its relations with the legacies of slavery. Tracing the contours of this debate against the backdrop of changing migration policies and emerging anti-racism movements, in this article I discuss the narratives of four Senegalese university students and young professionals in Rabat. My interlocutors’ everyday experiences of, and reflections on, racism reveal the manifold ways in which black Africans are racialized as “the others”. Highlighting the historical contingency of “racialization”, I argue that, while the racial legacies of slavery continue to affect local constructions of “blackness” and to shape racial prejudice, current anti-black racism also speaks of contemporary dynamics in Morocco.