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. 

Biography

Rachel Jean-Baptiste is the Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden Family Professor of Feminist and Gender Studies, and faculty in the Department of History and Department of African American and African Studies at Stanford University.  At Stanford she is also the Faculty Director of Program in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies .  Her research interests include the history of the family, marriage, childhood, citizenship, race, and the history of cities in the French speaking Atlantic World, encompassing, West and Equatorial Africa, Western Europe, and the Caribbean.  She has published articles in journals such as Gender and History, Slavery and Abolition, Journal of the History of Sexuality,  Journal of Women’s History, and Journal of African History. She is the author of 'Conjugal Rights: Marriage, Sexuality, and Urban Life in Colonial Libreville, Gabon' (Ohio University Press, 2014. French translated edition forthcoming with Karthala, 2026) and 'Multiracial Identities in Colonial French Africa: Race, Childhood, and Citizenship' (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Winner, 2024 David H. Pinkney Prize for most distinguished book in French history, Society for French Historical Studies.  

Winner, 2024 Martin A. Klein Prize in African History, American Historical Association.  

Finalist, 2024 African Studies Association Best Book Prize

Honorable Mention, 2022-23 Laurence Wylie Prize in French Cultural Studies, New York University 

Honorable Mention, 2024 P. Sterling Stuckey Book Prize, Association for the World Wide Study of the African Diaspora 

Honorable Mention, 2024 Rosalyn Terborg-Penn Prize, Association for the World Wide Study of the African Diaspora