“To internalize the feeling that your own skin color is less valued or has less value is terrible”, testifies the director general of High international and political studies (HEIP) Laetitia Helouet, Tuesday January 18 on franceinfo, while the documentary “Blacks in France” in which she testified is broadcast from 9:10 p.m. on France 2.
>> “Blacks in France”: special evening on January 18, 2022 on France 2.
franceinfo: Why did you testify in this documentary?
Laetitia Helouet: It seemed to me that it was interesting. I often talk about my journey. It is a journey where I have had successes, failures and doubts and if these successes, like these failures and these doubts – which are also constitutive of my identity – can be useful to others, it seems to me that it ‘is important. It also seems to me that it is important to shed light on a subject since when I am filmed in this documentary, I am at the Court of Auditors, I am the only black woman rapporteur at the Court of Auditors.
“The question that simply arises is: does my presence in this institution mean that it is possible or does the presence of a single black woman in this institution mean that, obviously, there is a problem that is not a problem of talent?
Laetitia Helouet, Director General of Advanced International and Political Studiesat franceinfo
The documentarians asked all the witnesses when they realized they were black. You, when was it?
For me, it’s quite simple. I was born and raised in my early childhood in Congo-Brazzaville and, before France, I lived in Romania. We didn’t realize during our first years of childhood that we were black because everyone looked like you, but when you arrive in Romania this difference jumps out at you and you are reminded of it. In France, I grew up in a housing estate where diversity was quite common. I think it’s when I start high school because I’m a good student and I arrive at a high school in downtown Reims. There, the subject of being alone and more and more alone begins to arise. It starts in high school and we will say that the phenomenon is accentuated in professional life of course. The question is other forms of incarnation in positions that are considered the most prestigious positions, whether in the public sector where I come from, but also in the private sector.
In the documentary, little black girls are asked to choose the most beautiful doll between a white doll and a black doll and they all take the white one. What does this remind you of?
I’m touched. In this part of the documentary, it’s about ten little black girls who make the choice of beauty and choose the white doll. It touches me because it also reminds me of things that I have experienced.
“When I was little, I imagined that I was going to become white.”
Laetitia Helouetat franceinfo
That’s also the privilege of childhood, it’s magical thinking. It was: at some point, I would become white because everyone is white and therefore I would look like everyone else. This question, which we finally integrate quite young, is to internalize the feeling that one’s own skin color is less valued or has less value, it’s terrible and that means that you need a way of emancipation. Some people are probably doing much better than me. Me, it took me a long time to emancipate myself from this question.
40 years ago, television was still showing depictions of black men with bones in their noses. Today, this is no longer the case. Have prejudices disappeared?
It means that things have changed, that is to say that the most brutal and most frontal representations exist less. I also think things are more subtle. My name is Laetitia Helouet, diversity does not appear in my surname. My name would be Fatoumata, I don’t know if I would have had the same trajectory. I would be a black man, I don’t know if I would have had the same trajectory. I think violence or discrimination is perhaps more direct when you are a man. I am also in a fairly privileged professional environment where, in fact, the discrimination dimension is rarely abrupt, it is more subtle, it is in a look, it is in a nuance. In the documentary, I tell this story which is the story of my life, of being called Laetitia Helouet, of having been general manager, then rapporteur at the Court of Auditors and when I arrive without anyone seeing me, regularly, there is a surprise. The question is what is behind this surprise? I think that in this surprise, it’s not just discrimination and very often it’s surprise quite simply because in terms of incarnation, a woman who is general manager or rapporteur at the Court of Auditors, we do not imagine that it could be a black woman. The subject is how do we move forward in French society to ensure that my example is certainly not an exception? For me, there is really a reflection to have to know how, at each stage, we have a kind of machine to eliminate people who, quite simply, when they look at the Court of Auditors, when they look at an executive committee of company, never feel represented.