Reflections on systemic racism and colonial exception, by Youssef Girard, Éditions Héritage

Colonization produced a "world cut in two", in the words of Frantz Fanon, racially hierarchical based on the dehumanization of the colonized. Conversely, colonization created “supermen”, a “race of Lords”. This dehumanization has made it possible to justify all exactions, from genocidal conquests to mass massacres to repress national liberation struggles, through slavery or the establishment of exceptional legislation, such as the Code of Indigénat.

This colonial policy crossed the Mediterranean with the first immigrant workers from Algeria at the beginning of the 20th century. As Malek Bennabi wrote, "'the native' had crossed the Mediterranean more easily than the 'indigenous'".

This book tries to understand how, more than fifty years after independence, a colonial management of non-white populations, their cultures and the spaces in which they live, continues in France? How does the colonial exception redefine itself in order to preserve an unequal social order marked by white hegemony?

Doctor of history, Youssef Girard is a specialist in the Algerian national movement and colonization.