“First times”: stories of pivotal moments around the transition to adulthood. This week, Candyce Bosson, 25, recounts her difficulties as a black student at the Sorbonne.
by Margherita Nasi
The first time I entered the Clignancourt-Sorbonne University university campus, in the 18th e arrondissement of Paris, for my history and geography license, I felt black. I was 16, and I did not feel in my place, because the whole university community is white. In college, only black people are entrusted with difficult tasks: they clean up, or take care of safety.
I grew up in the Ulis, in Essonne, in a very mixed environment. I started to perceive a diminishment of diversity in college, and especially in high school, where I saw many white students from privileged backgrounds arrive: they came from small surrounding towns, like Marcoussis or Nozay. But nothing to do with what I observed in the framework of my license at Sorbonne University: blacks were counting only on the fingers of one hand.
I have always been a good student. My two parents left Martinique at 20, looking for a better life. They do not have the bac, but they gave us, my sister and I, the taste for studies. In my room, I had a whiteboard, as in class. And I have facilities: I jumped a class, I have always felt good at school. In high school, my teachers campaigned for me to do a literary preparatory class, or that I try Sciences Po. But all of this scared me a little. I preferred to register for the Sorbonne in geography history.
in license, I was behind
In college, I was a very active student, I participated a lot. But, as the classes became more and more white, I always put myself more at the bottom. The inequalities will grow, and they accentuate the lack of success of certain populations. At the Sorbonne, I never had a black teacher. During my three years of license, I was behind. As a master’s degree, I started to tell myself that racism is not something anecdotal. It’s not just humor when my white comrades tell me that, slavery, “it was a beautiful era”, while laughing. It is not just benevolence when a teacher advises me to do my doctorate in England or in the United States, because there is no room for blacks at the Sorbonne.
I became aware of the systemic character of racism. And I started to read. I realized that there are very few books on being black. Then I came across the black condition. Essay on a French minority, (Calmann-Lévy, 2008), by Pap Ndiaye… It was a click. I asked for an appointment with him. Two days later, he received me. We talked for three hours, we redid the world. This meeting motivated me a lot. I changed my posture, I stopped being passive. I took the opportunity that one of my teachers who believed in me gave me, and I gave a lecture on the black question. I finally felt black in a positive way: I felt strong, because I had never seen any black in my place. I had a lot of positive feedback from students.
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