Calixthe

I don't know much about Calixthe Beyala. Some glowing factoids of her resume are included in the brief introduction in this translation of this 2006 interview with her, but I have not taken the time to verify their every nuance. The important thing is that she's a black African woman whose provenance is a Third World country (apparently the Cameroons), and she's evidently something of a self-made woman in terms of sociopolitical activism; and she's intelligent.

She may hold many PC MC views about this, that and the other subject (though elsewhere in the interview, she forcefully condemns antisemitism, while mentioning the antisemitism of a black French Muslim rapper-demagogue named "Dieudonné"); but what she says about Islamic racism and slavery against black Africans in this interview is in this context all that matters. This is the kind of woman (along with Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Wafa Sultan) whom Oprah (not to mention other MSM venues) should showcase.

Here now is my translation of the interview, which begins with a brief introduction (the interviewers are Alexandre del Valle and David Reinharc, whom I will refer to simply as "Interviewers" -- comments in square brackets are mine):

Introduction: Her biography, her travels, the fact, also, that she speaks several languages -- other than French, she speaks Eton, her mother tongue, as well as Pidgin, Spanish, and some African languages -- reflects a veritable openness of spirit. Someone who wrote her first book at 23 years of age has indeed a career path.

She is not merely a novelist, but also a militant activist, denouncing, among other things, the deficiency of the representation of multicultural society in the media, politics and the economic realm.

Above all, this intellectual is the moral beacon of the black community, her "compass". All the more reason, then, to read with attention her rather shocking and certainly disturbing opinions on Dieudonné, on the alliance of Jews and Blacks, on the "ethnic cleansing" of Blacks by Arabs...

Interviewers: You are a renowned intellectual and preside over, among other things, the central movement of Blacks in France, which fights against discrimination. Is this an accurate description?

Calixthe: I don't define myself as someone who represents this or that. Let's just say I define myself mainly as an intellectual in whom her community recognizes a certain ability to think and to act.

Along with general equality, I have uncovered, in effect, the premises of what could be called black France, the relations between black Frenchmen and the Republic in terms of the dangers that lie ahead if the problem of representation of visible minorities is not resolved. Already, I have proposed a voluntary policy to set in place quotas or positive discriminations in order to resolve the problem.

Interviewers: It seems, indeed, that you have abandoned the past... to open a new front on the issue of the invisibility of blacks in France, above all in the media. If, concerning positive discrimination, one proposes quotas, don't you fear that other groups -- homosexuals, Asians, etc. -- will devolve by means of this into a Balkanization of France by, in their turn, agitating for better representation?

Calixthe: To be black is an immediate visual addition which discriminates, while being Jewish, for example, is to be a Westerner like others. To be black is to be labeled despite oneself to a nigritude with regard to others.

[Okay, we've read enough on these peripheral issues to accord Calixthe her PC MC bonafides, sure to please the MSM. Now let's get to the meat of the matter. Here's the money quote from Calixthe Beyala:]

Calixthe: We are often told that Africa was destroyed by the Western slave trade and Western Colonialism. The truth is that black Africans had already been brought to their knees by the Arabs between the 7th and 16th centuries! Africa was, so to speak, "finished off" by the West, but the slave trade which had brought ruin for six centuries was first and foremost the Arab slave trade, which has never been forcefully condemned. Unfortunately, Arabs continue [to this day] the slave trade and colonization [of blacks] in Sudan, in Saudi Arabia and in Mauritania.

The Westerners arrived long after the Arabs. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was quite different from the Arab slave trade, which consisted in a veritable destruction. Arabs occupied North Africa and literally pushed blacks relentlessly southward.

Interviewers: In the law of May 10, 2001, which recognizes the slave trade as a crime against humanity, according to you it should mention the Arab slave trade as much as the trans-Atlantic slave trade?

Calixthe: Yes. All forms of slavery should be denounced. The massacres and invasions by Arabs were extremely destructive. Arab slavery was the beginning of the real decline of black culture and civilization. If the West had encountered a solid Africa, a black slave trade would not necessarily have occurred. The Arab slave trade is passed over in silence, but it should be brought to the light of history, not to judge or to avenge, but just to re-establish historical truth.

And it continues to this day: In Mauritania -- and in Sudan, a thousand black officers were slaughtered. In Arab lands, black people suffer from a dreadful racism, but this issue is taboo. In the past as in the present, there is a policy of "ethnic cleansing" of blacks by Arabs.

...

The Arab slave trade is passed over in silence in the name of Pan-Africanism, of "African unity", for political reasons. I can tell you right now: this silence on the issue does not reflect the reality.

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[Of course, even though Calixthe is black, African, female and thoroughly PC MC on most social issues, she still will have an uphill battle getting her points across about Muslims because, as we know, the PC MC mainstream privileges Muslims over all other minorities and over all other liberal issues. Nevertheless, her otherwise decidedly PC MC slant and her "visible" ethnicity may give her just enough of an edge to chip away at one little corner of the PC MC paradigm -- if, that is, she can get her foot in the door.]