Would you believe that the Code Noir (Black code), the decree that was passed by the French King Louis XIV of France in 1685 which defined the conditions of slavery in the Antilles, then Louisiana, and served as the code for slavery conduct in the French colonies up until 1789, the year marking the beginning of the French Revolution; yes, that Code Noir has just been repelled from the French law today by the Senate? Did you know? So, over 150 years since the abolition of slavery in French colonies and in the whole world, France still has a document that describes people of African descent as properties, as subhumans, a document that dehumanizes the African men and women, the France of Marianne, the France of the great liberties, still had that in its legal texts? Lord have mercy! No wonder France could never agree to admit that slavery was a crime against humanity when the rest of the world did (The UN Recognizes the Transatlantic Slave Trade as the Gravest Crime against Humanity). My goodness! Where do we start?
Today, 178 years after banning slavery, the French senate finally repelled the Code Noir which governed it! So brothers and sisters of the former French colonies, do you still wonder why you were treated below humans? do you still wonder why your humanity was crushed days in and days out? And today, we talk of France and African countries as brothers or partners. How can one be partners with someone who in modern days, 178 years after slavery has been banned, over 60 years after the ‘independence’ of its former African colonies, still has such a treacherous inhumane law in its books, a law that reduced our ancestors years in and years out to below humans! And the French president has the guts to call us ingrate! Ingrate!
There are just no words to for this! We are told that this law no longer had any values since the abolition of slavery, but then why couldn’t it have been removed before? We are told that the legislators forgot, but then how come they did not do any land reforms in the Antilles, was that just an oversight? Is the land disparity in those parts still just an oversight? What else is hidden?
