Multiracial Identities in Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship - Prof Rachel Jean-Baptiste, Stanford University

Despite increasingly hardened visions of racial difference in colonial governance in French Africa after World War I, interracial sexual relationships persisted, resulting in the births of thousands of children. These children, mostly born to African women and European men, sparked significant debate in African and French societies about race and how ideas about racial identity shaped childhood, parenting and parental rights, and citizenship. Tracing the life histories of multiracial children in several locations - St. Louis and Dakar, Senegal; Abidjan, Ivory Coast and Brazzaville, Congo; and Paris, France - this talk traces the fluctuating identities of multiracial individuals. Crucially, it centres claims by métis themselves to access social and citizenship rights amidst the refusal by fathers to recognize their lineage, and in the context of changing African racial thought and practice. In this history of race-making and rights, Jean-Baptiste demonstrates the diverse ways in which métis individuals and collectives carved out visions of belonging as children and citizens in Africa and Europe, thereby shaping global history.