On April 11th, the Institute of European Studies, along with the Center for African Studies, the Department of African American Studies, the French Department, the UC Berkeley Black Studies Collaboratory, and the Center of Excellence in French and Francophone Studies, was delighted to host Professor Jean Beamen, an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California Santa Barbara, for an audience of 15 people. In her talk, Beaman discussed her research on the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and anti-racist mobilization in France. Moderated by Akasemi Newsome, Beaman began her presentation by breaking down the different components of her research, including activism around state violence, questions of surveillance and killings, the decision of the French state not to recognize race as an identification category, the role of intersectionality in the BLM movement, and connections between the BLM in France to social movements elsewhere. Her field research consisted of 27 interviews with activists, journalists, family members of victims, as well as other individuals impacted by state violence and racial discrimination in France. Beaman claimed that the French state marginalizes Black individuals through its republican ideology and considers racial identification to be a dangerous acknowledgement. According to Beaman, police watch systems can target BIPOC individuals and groups with harassment and violence without legal repercussions.
Beaman then cited a long list of literary works that have informed and inspired her research, including Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, The Threat of Race by David Theo Goldberg, and Black Europe and the African Diaspora by Stephen Small. She then cited several personal anecdotes from relatives of victims of French police violence, amplifying their voices and recognizing their continued activism and its impact. Beaman finished her presentation by pointing out several of the principal issues that the BLM movement is tackling in Europe including fighting racial discrimination, naming racism, protesting police violence, reckoning with slavery and colonialism, and affirming the existence of racial minorities. Her work and its concentration on the marginalization of Black people and people of Maghebian origin is further expanded upon in her book, Citizen Outsider: Children of North African Immigrants in France