Black Lives Matter protest in Lyon honoring George Floyd; (c) Alexis Fauvet
Traveling While Black In Lyon
Traveling While Black In Lyon is complex with pros & cons. Age demographics matters too.
As a light-skin, green-eyed brother, I can’t accurately speak to the higher blood pressure that my darker sisters and brothers experience. Nor can I accurately speak to dark-skinned African experience visiting or living in Lyon.
For insights, I suggest visiting this weblink https://templeuabroad.blog/2018/11/21/where-is-the-black-culture-in-lyon-and-other-things-ive-noticed/ by an African-American sister who visited from Philly. I also recommend this article by another sister who visited France, https://matadornetwork.com/life/african-american-traveling-france-felt-like-rite-passage-found-far-complicated/
But I can say this for certain. In America, I’m treated with more suspicion but not as much as my darker cousins experience in Baltimore, DC, Pittsburgh and friends in Los Angeles.
In Lyon and France in general, I’m treated as a human being first. Curiosity may prompt someone to ask about my light-skin, green-eyed lineage, but never in a “Less Than” way.
Like Paris, every African-American that I met in Lyon seemed to get along well when they spoke American English. My sense was also that Native-born African-French people got along mostly well too. I have always attributed that to Black soldiers who helped liberate France in World Wars I and II.
Some Black Americans also returned or became expats to France rather than tolerate horrendous racism in America.
The exception is a percentage of white Europeans that are “very concerned” about African and Middle East illegal migrants. Some estimates place the foreign-born population of Lyon Metro Area at 13-14% and mostly African immigrants. That figure is easy to digest when see African brothers & sisters in restaurants, bars and shops around the city.
I understand that every nation has a right to control its borders. But racial problems manifest when some white Europeans treat African immigrants as “Less Than.”
People with darker skin tones or names perceived as ‘African’ have more difficult time finding housing. It’s easy to understand why much of the local populace embraced the Black Lives Matter Movement after our George Floyd event.
Make of that what you will. But as for my family and every dark cousin of mine, we’d take a visit to Lyon 7 days and week and twice on Sundays as compared to most cities in America.
