PARIS (AP) 鈥� For nearly two centuries after France abolished slavery, the that classified humans as property remained quietly in place. On Thursday, lawmakers will finally move to eliminate it.
The bill, expected to be adopted by the National Assembly, will repeal Code Noir, or Black Code, the 1685 decree King Louis XIV signed to govern .
The law turned human beings into chattel, allowing them to be worked, beaten, sold, raped and killed 鈥� and France never formally did away with it.
That realization has left many aghast.
鈥淭hat shocks me,鈥� said Muriel Jean-Baptiste, a Paris-born nurse whose parents are from Martinique, a French overseas department in the Caribbean.
鈥淎 law that treated Black people as property was left sitting there,鈥� she said.
The code鈥檚 reach was total. Article 44 declared the enslaved 鈥渕ovable property.鈥� Other sections ordered mutilation for those who fled, and dictated that the word of an enslaved person counted for nothing.
Code Noir鈥檚 60 articles 鈥渟hould never have survived the abolition of slavery鈥� in the 19th century, President said last week.
鈥淭he silence, even the indifference, that we have maintained for nearly two centuries toward this Black Code is no longer an oversight,鈥� Macron said. 鈥淚t has become a form of offense.鈥�
Like French presidents before him, Macron stopped short of an apology.
France ran the third-largest slave trade, shipping about 1.4 million Africans to plantations whose sugar wealth built the French cities of Nantes and Bordeaux. Its empire later spanned four continents.
Others see the repeal as something more telling 鈥� a symptom, they argue, of a country that has yet to reckon fully with that past, one of many slow steps along the way.
Calls for France to face its past
In law, officially eliminating it is the easy part, observers say. Code Noir lost all authority in 1848, when France abolished slavery.
France didn’t relinquish its slave colonies: the four oldest 鈥� Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana and R茅union 鈥� were made full French overseas departments in 1946. That means they’re governed from Paris like any other.
Their roughly 1.9 million people, most descended from the enslaved, are French citizens.
Despite being fully part of France, the overseas departments remain among its poorest territories. Unemployment runs roughly double the mainland rate, and more than three-quarters of households in Mayotte live below the national poverty line.
Shocked to find the law wasn’t annulled
Before he discovered the truth, the French lawmaker who put forward the proposal to repeal the law didn’t know it still existed.
Max Mathiasin, from Guadeloupe, had bought copies of the text over the years and left them on his shelf.
鈥淎s the great-great-grandson of people who were enslaved, I had never been able to read it in full,鈥� he said. 鈥淭his was made by human beings 鈥� against human beings.鈥�
For him, the vote is 鈥渁 way of restoring our ancestors, restoring our humanity鈥� before a France whose motto is liberty, equality, fraternity. 鈥淚t means living up to the Republican promise.鈥�
That promise, he says, is still unkept at home.
鈥淚n Guadeloupe,鈥� Mathiasin said, 鈥渋n the most important positions, in the structures of the state, they are white.鈥�
A colonial exception that never ended
The Foundation for the Memory of Slavery is chaired by a former prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, and its deputy director is Pierre-Yves Bocquet 鈥� both white men.
Bocquet calls Code Noir the birthplace of France鈥檚 鈥渃olonial exception鈥� 鈥� the principle that the French Republic鈥檚 founding rights could be suspended for those under its rule.
The principle outlived the empire, he said: 鈥淓ven today, we accept that people in the overseas territories can have fewer rights than in mainland France.鈥�
France is hardly the only country still holding fragments of empire 鈥� the United Kingdom and the United States still have overseas territories.
But what sets France apart, observers say, is that it made its slave colonies equal departments of the Republic, not dependencies it governs from afar.
The state insists that the overseas departments are France like anywhere else, even as the people who live there say they are treated as less.
France is ‘still in a form of apartheid鈥�
For Max Relouzat, 81, president of the Association for the Memory of Slaveries, the repeal matters, because so little else has.
His African ancestor had no name under the law, only a number and a registration code 鈥� the family that lived in Martinique was given the name Relouzat at emancipation, likely after Nelouzat, a village in the Auvergne region of central France.
What galls him, he said, is what the symbolism leaves untouched: systemic racism in France.
鈥淯nder the cover of departmentalization, a colonial system was maintained,鈥� Relouzat said. 鈥淚f the overseas departments are part of France, why is there a ministry for the overseas?鈥�
In France, he said, 鈥渨e are still today in a form of apartheid 鈥� a form of colonial continuity.鈥�
鈥楻acism is the legacy of slavery itself鈥�
For some who have fought longest, Thursday isn’t the milestone it appears.
For Florence Alexis, a slavery expert and daughter of the Haitian writer Jacques Stephen Alexis, the real turning point came 25 years ago. In 2001, the Taubira law made France the first country to call the slave trade, and slavery, crimes against humanity.
鈥淭hat is what changed my life,鈥� Alexis said.
For her, racism is the legacy of slavery itself, not of one edict.
鈥淲hen I was a child at school, they called me the little monkey,鈥� she said. 鈥淧eople made animal cries when I walked past 鈥� as they still do in football stadiums today.鈥�
Paris-born 脡lodie L茅on, 29, whose family is from French Guiana, welcomes the repeal, but resents the delay.
鈥淪ymbolic neglect is also neglect,鈥� she said.
The history of reparations
At the Taubira law鈥檚 25th anniversary on May 21, Macron floated the idea of reparations 鈥� something that France has long stay away from addressing.
He called it 鈥渁 question we must not refuse,鈥� but one on which 鈥渨e must not make false promises.鈥�
He committed no money, instead defining repair first as truth-telling, education and historical work.
The wealthiest of France’s plantations were in Saint-Domingue, where the enslaved rose up and won independence in 1804 as Haiti. France then forced the freed to pay reparations for the loss of their masters 鈥� a debt cleared only in 1947.
France isn’t alone. In the United States, federal reparations legislation has stalled for decades. California approved an apology, but no cash.
But the timing of Macron’s latest speech was awkward. Two months earlier, France abstained when the U.N. General Assembly voted 123-3, with 52 abstentions, to call the trans-Atlantic slave trade the gravest crime against humanity.
And this month at the in Kenya, days after declaring himself a 鈥減an-Africanist,鈥� Macron seized a microphone and .
鈥淎s soon as he sets foot on the African continent,鈥� French opposition lawmaker Dani猫le Obono said, 鈥渉e can鈥檛 help but behave like a colonizer.鈥�
The repeal of Code Noir, said Bocquet, 鈥渨ill have no direct effect.鈥� Whether it helps France fight racism and inequality in its overseas territories, he said, 鈥渞emains to be seen.鈥�
鈥淚t is easy for the French authorities, and for Macron, to do this,鈥� Alexis added. 鈥淏ecause it commits them to nothing.鈥�
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