US-American Racial Politics in French Spaces: Interrogating Color-Blind Republicanism Through William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face

ABSTRACT First published in 1963, William Gardner Smith’s novel, The Stone Face, unveils the story of Simeon Brown, an African American journalist who escapes to Paris as a way of fleeing the ubiquity of racial violence he experiences in the United States. At the time, Paris had acquired a reputation as a safe haven for African American artists and intellectuals where they could evade the racial caste system entrenched in the United States. It is during his stay in Paris that the protagonist of Smith’s novel slowly develops an awareness of racial hierarchies emerging from France’s colonial history—an awareness that disrupts his initial idealized image of Paris as a racially tolerant paradise. Smith’s protagonist develops comparative tools that enable him to not only contextualize but also relate struggles for racial justice as well as opportunities for forming alliances across national boundaries. At a time when prominent French political figures, including President Emmanuel Macron, decry the influence of US academic discourse on race studies in French spaces, this article examines how William Gardner Smith’s novel, written fifty-eight years ago, can inform these contemporary debates.