Traveling While Black In Nice
Sista walking along Promenade des Anglais, Nice; (c) Soul Of America
Traveling While Black In Nice is complex with many pros & cons.
Though I have darker grandparents and cousins, as a light-skin green-eyed brother, I can’t accurately speak to the higher blood pressure that my darker sisters and brothers experience visiting or living in Nice.
I 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 and friends experience in Baltimore, Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago, NYC, Miami, San Francisco Bay Area, and Los Angeles.
In France in general, I’m treated as a human being first. Curiosity may prompt someone to ask about my light-skin lineage, but never in a “Less Than” way.
Like Paris, every African-American that I met in Nice seemed to get along well when they spoke American English. My sense was also that native-born African-French people got along, but not quite as well.
I have always attributed that difference to African American soldiers who helped liberate France in World Wars I and II. And to lesser extent, the influence of Josephine Baker. Some African Americans also returned shortly after World War II or became expats to France rather than tolerate horrendous racism in America.
Nice Carnaval dancers on Promenade des Anglais; (c) CdAT
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 Nice Metro Area at about 4% via mostly African immigrants. That said, I could not tell if Blacks that I saw in restaurants, bars and shops were from Sub-Saharan Africa or visiting from the UK or America.
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 Nice & Cote d’Azur 7 days and week and twice on Sundays as compared to most cities in America.