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Flashmag September 2018 www.flashmag.net
The controversy in Cannes this summer was this book “noire nest pas mon métier” Black is not my job. Do you think that there are chances that we no longer designate certain roles exclusively for blacks? If we would still have trouble to have a white actor play the role of an African marabout, the problem according to some is not at the level of scenarios, which often must be closer to reality but simply at the idea that conveys certain scenarios, hence the notion of pejorative cliché. And if there are so many pejorative clichés, some conclude that it is racism. Is it true that art is "racialized" in the West and that the attitude of screen professionals helps it because some people think they want to work and then accept roles, even if they are degrading for their community?
it's a big question. This book "Black is not my job" had the merit of highlighting what many of us - actress Black or Mixed - have lived or still live ... As I was able to express my concern to some the authors at the launch of the book, it was both a relief to see that I was not alone in this case (I have anecdotes to tell in the subject, that easily will add ten pages to this book !) And at the same time, it’s very violent to realize that in 2018 we are still there. Let's face it, most of the roles that are offered to me are actually the nurse, the nanny, the prostitute, the delinquent or the migrant. So, no problem in interpreting these roles, which in themselves are not devaluing, provided that there is a real point to defend and not when it comes to a stereotypical treatment like most of the time!
So yes, there is a form of racism, often unconscious, insidious but persistent ... Or if it is not about racism, at least there is a kind of collective consensus established and unconscious that the norm and the universality would be white ... for it to change, there would have to be a real will concretized. But recently for example, we learned that France O, the channel dedicated to overseas, was going to be deleted ... Because "it is necessary that the ultra-marines (Caribbean) appear in the classical audiovisual landscape in the same way as all the French". On paper, it's very nice. In fact, I wonder. We have trouble even in the fictions to
see blacks in non-clichéd roles ...
So, the attitude of the professionals would be simply to give this right to normality to black characters. There are black doctors, black magistrates, black businessmen in life ... Why they are not on the screens?
But hey, I think the book "Black is not my job" has raised awareness and I hope it will move the lines. In any case I remain optimistic! Moreover, the last two roles for which I was casted are those of a lawyer and a principal! We progress!
You are Mixed Franco Haitian. We live in a world that alas categorizes humanity. The debate with the biracials is their belonging to the so-called black race, in your opinion why we continue to refuse to say that mixed race is white too, not only black?
I do not feel curiously close to the biracial debate. Perhaps because I have always lived my miscegenation, and that I lived it as a wealth. But indeed, it is the Other who sends you back your difference, a difference that you do not necessarily recognize at first sight ... But which makes that today, almost in spite of myself, I get closer to pan-African groups, movements , festivals where the question of my miscegenation does not pose any particular problem. Moreover, this whole question of the construction of identity in a country, of a society that refers you to origins, that sometimes you do not know is the subject of my next film ... But to return specifically to your question, I believe that the human can sometimes see no further than the tip of his nose. As a Mixed, I have brown skin more or less dark depending on the season, curly hair, curvy and all the exotic attributes, fruits of a collective imagination of a bygone time that should be over .... So, I am black. Even in the cinema - and it would not be so absurd that it would make you laugh - on a set, I'm shown the mother of a Mixed child, while the real mother of the comedian in question is white. It should not be too much disturbing to the public eye: a woman of mixed race with a white child? Of course, but I can assure you