Blackness, slavery and anti-racism activism in contemporary North Africa
Eric Hahonou, Roskilde University
In this essay, I look at racism and race formation in North Africa through the lenses of contemporary African anti-racist activism opposing race-based discrimination, and more specifically racism against Blacks.[1] African anti-racist activism is understood here as a variety of collective actions initiated by African nationals to fight against racism and racial discriminations in their home country and beyond. This comprises organized forms of mobilization, awareness raising, education and sensitization, advocacy work, violent as well as pacific activities that are meant to help bring changes about racism, slavery and its consequences over time.
The mobilizations of North African nationals against racism in their country emerged in the early 2010s in the context of a broader challenge to and destabilization of authoritarian regimes (the so-called ‘Arab spring’). This context is important to situate the quasi-simultaneous birth of anti-Black racism in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Egypt and Libya. The social movements that shook North African political regimes constituted a critical event and a turning point for anti-racist activism. Before 2011, the issue of racism was rarely discussed in public debates. The ‘culture of silence’ characterized not only Moroccan society but the general attitude vis-à-vis overt racism in all North Africa.[2] Everyday whisperings and gossip about the social origins of black nationals contributed to produce, maintain, and reproduce racism over time, while national authorities failed to address systemic racial discriminations (by both private and public institutions) as a public problem. Although the seeds of dissidence were already there, the ‘Arab spring’ created the conditions for it to grow and flourish. The Arab spring opened up a window of opportunity to contest existing political orders and to make citizenship related claims about the ‘unspoken’ issue (at least in the public sphere) of racism against Blacks in North Africa.
While the immediate political context matters, it is equally important to adopt a longue durée historical perspective to better understand North African anti-racist activism. This allows us to connect racism to the history of slavery. Anti-racist activists often explicitly associate racism in contemporary North Africa to the legacies of slavery, which has played an important role in the social political and economic structures of these societies. Between the sixth and twentieth century, sub-Saharan individuals were captured, enslaved, and traded over the Sahara. Slaves, sourced from different places in sub-Saharan Africa (including areas corresponding to nowadays Niger, Mali, Chad, Sudan, as well as northern parts of actual Nigeria, Benin, etc.), were destined for locations north of the Sahara Desert, the Mediterranean shores, and the Middle East.[3] According to Austen’s estimates for the period situated between 1700 and 1880 alone, Egypt received 800,000 slaves, against 400,000 in Libya, 515,000 in Morocco, 100,000 in Tunisia, and about 65,000 in Algeria.[4] There is a consensus among scholars that the historical exchanges between Sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb and the rest of the Arab world deeply affected the ways in which Blackness is represented and associated with slavery in this region today.
North African traders and consumers benefitted from another important source of slaves constituted through the Barbarian (Berber) slave trade.[5] According to Davis, slavery pirates from the Ottoman provinces of Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli alone captured and enslaved 1 to 1.25 million Europeans who were sold on various North African slave markets between the sixteenth and the middle of the eighteenth century. The independent sultanate of Morocco and other raiders and traders of the Ottoman Empire also enslaved and traded Europeans they had captured through raids until the 1830s.[6]
Though these estimates should be taken cautiously, there is no doubt that both black and white slaves were simultaneously present on North African slave markets and that slaves played significant roles in the society as servants and concubines in domestic settings as well as shepherds and laborers. The possession of slaves manifested power, generated economic benefits, and brought social prestige to slave owners. Surprisingly, the Barbary slave trade, which had a major impact on the economy of the region, appears to have left little influence on how whiteness is perceived today. Oblivion or intentional collective amnesia? How has Blackness been associated with historical slavery whereas whiteness has been disconnected from it? How should we understand the process through which slavery in North Africa was racialized in this particular way that conflates Blackness and slavery?
In this essay, I understand race as a contested concept that shapes relations among citizens and between citizens and state institutions in contemporary North Africa. In the North African context, discourses about race relate to Blackness and conflate with slavery. Blackness is a socially constructed category, volatile and fluid, used by social actors (including state institutions) to define citizenship rights. The concept of Blackness encompasses race, skin-colour, ancestry and culture. It is often opposed to Arabness. Thus, defining who is black and who is not translates into the question of who is entitled to particular rights. Anti-racist activists in North Africa are more particularly concerned by racism against black nationals (hereafter referred to as anti-black racism) since Blackness has become a criterion for discriminatory practices. Thus, the existence of anti-racism organizations in North Africa is closely related to the historical legacies of the ideology of slavery and its detrimental sociopolitical consequences for people of slave ancestry or more generally black people (including sub-Saharan migrants and other black people whose ancestors have never been enslaved). African anti-racist activism emerged in contexts where the stigma associated with Blackness and its ascribed connection to slave status is particularly tenacious.
Today in post-slavery North Africa, as we shall see, this stigma often impedes people’s access to social mobility (f. ex. through jobs and marriage) as well as their access to land property, inheritance, political representation or religious positions. Here, post-slavery refers to the connection (denoted by the dash) made by social actors between the past and the present. In North African contexts, slavery (as a system of economic, social and political structures of inequality) has vanished (at least in most cases) and is commonly considered as something that belongs to the history. However, the ‘post-’ suggests that it is in fact not yet over, that slavery continues to shape contemporary social practices and govern-mentalities (here as mentalities of government) in North Africa. Post-slavery bridges the past to the present.[7] Thus, I argue that the understanding of race formation and race-based discriminations in North Africa requires the acknowledgment that slavery still matters. Race formation in the region is intimately related to the history of slavery and its memorization.
This article addresses the contribution of anti-racist movements to the formation and transformation of race in North Africa. I first map out the emergence of anti-racist organizations country-by-country and show how they engage with local, national and regional politics. Then, I describe and analyze the challenges identified by leaders of grassroots organizations, their goals, claims, values, ideas and political strategies and tactics. The conclusion offers a regional analysis and highlights the complexity that emerged out of the conflation of race, Blackness and slavery in post-slavery North Africa.
Given the gaps and limitations of data available in many countries, the results below should be interpreted cautiously. It is likely that national or local anti-racist associations, committees, organisations or movements are overlooked because all activists or activist groups are not active on the internet, reported by media, registered as formal associative organizations, or studied by scholars. Thus, the anti-racist initiatives presented hereafter have been active in the fight to eradicate racial discrimination and the legacies of past slavery. These non-governmental responses to race-based discrimination reflects the collective agency of groups of stigmatized people to resist racism as a phenomenon enacted in mundane practices and deeply rooted in the history of slavery. These expressions of activist citizenship are lively in all North Africa, including Western Sahara, Algeria, and Morocco. The following sections look more closely into the responses at the national level in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Tunisia: a black revolution in the revolution?
In the early years of Tunisian independence, Slim Marzoug, a black Tunisian intellectual, campaigned against discrimination against black Tunisians. In 1962-1963, Marzoug called for black Tunisians’ self-determination and attempted to create a political party of black Tunisians in the South of the country.[8] However, the government soon repressed and eradicated this initiative. In 1968, Marzoug was arrested and sent to a psychiatric hospital for thirty-five years.[9] Beyond this early attempt to address racial discrimination, anti-racist activism in Tunisia was discreet or quasi-inexistent before the Jasmine revolution that shook the country and led to the ousting of Ben Ali’s regime in January 2011.[10]
After the revolution, two associations created by black Tunisians played an important role in the Tunisian anti-racism landscape: Adam and M’nemty. Adam, founded in 2012, aims at increasing awareness among black populations in the South of Tunisia and improving their social condition (through the promotion of education) as well as to bring the subject of racism in the media (television, press, social media). The association M’nemty (or ‘my dream’ by reference to Luther King’s speech) – created in 2013 by Saadia Mosbah, a black female Tunisian anti-racist activist – fights against racial prejudices, physical violence and discrimination against black Tunisians, but more generally embraces an anti-racist agenda that also concerns African immigrants in Tunisia (who share similar issues of verbal and physical violence).
Through protest, advocacy, public debates on TV, social media communication, petitions, and conferences, these two organizations have been particularly active in promoting the criminalization of racism on the political agenda.[11] On 9thOctober 2018, the Tunisian Parliament passed a law to criminalize racial discrimination, making racist speech unlawful. Under this law, offenders can be jailed for one month and fined 1000 dinars for using racist language. On 21st July 2020, the Council of Ministers approved a decree for the creation of the National Commission for the Fight against Racial Discrimination in charge of implementing the 2018 law. This legislation was welcomed as a cultural revolution, although activists also acknowledged that a lot remains to be done to change a conservative society. By promoting racism as a public problem in Tunisia, anti-racist activists have contributed to shaping Tunisian public policy and laws to protect the rights of a discriminated group.
Tunisian anti-racist associations explicitly link the issue of racism to the history of slavery.[12] Anti-racist activists support individuals and families who fight in court in order to get rid of reference to their slave past in birth certificates and identity papers provided by state institutions.[13] For many black Tunisians today, the term “atig” in their names (which means “liberated by,” followed by the name of the former owner of their ancestors) denotes the status of a freed slave. They see this bureaucratic practice as derogatory and denounce the “institutionalization” of racism. They point out this practice as a barrier to getting jobs in post-slavery Tunisia.[14] M’nemty also denounces the segregation of ‘black’ pupils from ‘white’ ones in school transport in the village of El Gosba, in the governorate of Medenine (southeastern Tunisia), a separation enforced by the national transport company since 2000.
The slave past not only impedes the everyday life of black Tunisians but it also taints their memory for posterity as their burials in ‘slave cemeteries’ apart from other cemeteries acts as a reminder of a society segregated from birth to death.[15]Offended by these post-mortem segregationist practices, black Tunisian activists have organized to contest them in court and claimed equality by protesting against its persistence.
In July 2020, Tunisia black activists and other Tunisians voiced their opinion in protests related to the US Black Lives Matter movement,[16] showing their opportunism and tactical skills next to strategic long-term strategies to address anti-Black racism in the country and beyond. In less than a decade, anti-racist activists have successfully engaged with the issue of racism in the public sphere by simultaneously contesting the broad acceptance of anti-Black racism in Tunisian society and the lack of legal framework to fight against it. The attention paid to law reminds us that law matters (even not fully implemented) in the strategies of activist organizations which fight against racism and racial discrimination.
Black Egyptians against racial discriminations
Recent anti-racism movements in Egypt attest that race plays a significant role in the current transformation of the society and legal framework. In Egypt, where a significant proportion of the population is black, black Egyptians are treated by the majority group as an inferior minority group. There is evidence of lasting human rights violations against Nubian and Bedouin populations, including forced relocations and arbitrary violence against peaceful protesters by state actors. Individuals are subjected to racial discriminations and varying degrees of daily verbal offenses (either related to their Blackness or their assumed servile status) by fellow Egyptian of light skin color.
As in other North African countries, black anti-racist Egyptians mobilized under the form of “counter-racism” movements, mainly active on the internet (Facebook, Twitter, and blogs) and especially initiated by members of the Nubian community.[17] For example, the blog ‘Brownie’ was created in 2007 and ‘Black in Egypt’ was launched in 2013, two years after the revolution.[18] Both blogs denounce Egyptians’ deep-seated anti-Black racism, although Brownie focuses mainly on the case of the Nubian population forcibly displaced from their ancestral land in order to build the Aswan High Dam on the Nile. In media and public or private newspapers, Nubians are often portrayed as servants, drivers, gatekeepers and sometimes as slaves.[19]
Interestingly, Brownie started four years before the revolution, showing that the revolution provided an opportunity for existing claims that needed a favorable context to flourish and expand. Following the 2011 revolution, members of the Nubian community engaged in the process of rewriting the country’s constitution. In 2014, they obtained an official recognition of the Nubian ancestral land, the right to return to that land within 10 years, and the ban of discrimination against Nubians.[20] Activist bloggers in Egypt have been demanding better political representation, representation in the law and the media.[21] Egyptian bloggers remind their readers about the historical role played by Nubians in the history of Egypt but they also document everyday humiliations, physical violence and racial discrimination against black Egyptians and black people in Egypt and the Arab world.
Activists protesting against the absence of implementation of the law have organized protests opposed by police forces. In 2017, police forces arrested about 30 Nubian activists, including Gamal Sorour, a prominent Nubian activist, who died in prison, while others were victims of judicial harassment. Like elsewhere, Egyptian activists are opposed by conservative forces (especially in the press and on social media) as well as governmental reaction.
Anti-Black racism in Egypt is met by a strong opposition from the mainstream population, media, and governmental bodies. As in Tunisia, activists deplore the pervasive character of racism in Egypt and its denial on the part of a majority of the population and the authorities. Considering slavery’s late disappearing in Egypt,[22] the quasi-absence of explicit reference to it in debates about race in the Egyptian context is quite surprising. The issue would require a thorough investigation as it appears to stand as an exception in the North African context.
Slave markets, race and Blackness in Libya
Although slave markets are underground activities (which take place both physically and on the web, where black domestic slave workers are put on sale), their rebirth in post Gaddafi’s Libya is not a surprise for attentive observers of Libyan society. The chaotic situation in Libya after the collapse of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011 led to a critical situation regarding slavery and other human rights abuses. The International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported in April 2017 that many Sub-Saharan migrants were trafficked and sold as slaves after being detained by smugglers or militia groups.[23] In 2011, black Libyans and migrant workers were arrested, tortured, extorted, exploited and often killed by militias and rebel groups. A special unit under the label “the brigade for purging slaves, black skin” ransacked and torched the homes of Tawergha residents, raped women and stole possessions.[24]
Dark skinned people in Libya are indistinctly called ‘abid’ (meaning ‘slave’). Armed groups and military units do not only traffic immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa, but also fellow Libyans from the south of Libya. For example, black Libyans (e.g. Tawarghans who are descendants of former slaves emancipated from slavery during Italian rule (1911-1943) and Tebu indigenous populations in the south of Libya) are targeted by militias.[25]
Black Libyans such as Tebu people, or ‘non-Arab indigenous populations’ as they call themselves, were victims of Muammar Gaddafi´s brutal Arabization campaigns. Many members of these communities were deprived of citizenship, which prevented them from getting healthcare, education and employment.[26] Tebu have organized under “National Tebu Assembly” to promote their culture and language, to provide education in their own language as well as to denounce widespread racism in Libya.[27]
Conclusion
Anti-racism movements in post-slavery North Africa emerged recently in various contexts of political liberalization, evolved in different trajectories, developed specific narratives of resistance, and eventually engaged into identity politics and citizenship struggles. Contesting decades of daily humiliations perpetuated by rumors, whisperings, verbal abuses in public spaces and slurs on social media, North African activists have been voicing opposition to racism in the public sphere and bringing it forward as a public problem requiring specific policies. Anti-racist activists shed light on North African black nationals who are systematically marginalized economically, culturally, politically and socially. Pointing out that black nationals are mistaken for black Sub-Saharan Africans (migrants, students, refugees) and often called “abid,” “wasif” (which literally means “slave” in Arabic) or other derogatory labels, anti-racist activism reveals that racism in North Africa is deeply rooted in the memorization of slavery.
Racism and the rise of anti-racism protest are also present in Western-Sahara, Morocco and Algeria. However, in these countries too, both slavery and racism are silenced (and even repressed). Most victims of Black racism live in marginalized areas of the country and face discrimination related to either their skin color or their slave past.[28] In Morocco, anti-racism activists such as “Africa Morocco,” which gathers black Amazighs, try to raise awareness in public settings, alter language and educational policy, discuss slavery, ethnic and national identities, and propagate new norms to define racism.[29] In 2014, a coalition of associations launched the national campaign “My name is not a negro” which gave public visibility to the issue of racism in Moroccan society.[30][31]
In the Algerian context, the election of Khadija Ben Hamou as Miss Algeria in 2019 prompted racist attacks on Facebook and Twitter denigrating her skin color as well as the shape of her nose and lips.[32] Very interestingly, this bitter discussion on social media revealed the extent to which Blackness is debated and contested among the North African population and how its negative connotation is questioned.
In the whole North African region, the process of “othering” or “alienation” is imbedded in past differences[33] opposing light-skin masters to dark-skin slaves (systematically omitting the history of white Europeans enslaved by Maghrebians until the 1850s). This categorization and hierarchization based on race situate black people as socio-culturally, esthetically, and genetically inferior human beings. Here, the ideology of slavery is conflated to the ideology of racial hierarchy. A common denominator among these movements is their (explicit or latent) reference to Arabness. Thus, the duality between Arab and Non-Arab populations is translated in racial terms as the cases of the contested election of Miss Algeria 2019 and the self-identification of Southern Libyans show. These conflated ideologies legitimize a form of stratified citizenship in which a majority of light-skin nationals can enjoy privileges whereas black people (both nationals and foreigners) have very limited rights and suffer from systemic disadvantages and abuses.
In most North African countries, cultural representations associated to Blackness entail race-based discrimination and restricted opportunities for social mobility (with limited access to education, jobs and spouses), economic exploitation, marginalization (even after death as the case of Tunisian anti-racist movements reminds us) as well as forms of segregation.[34] Yet, in other cases (Libya, Egypt) representations associated with Blackness have led to increased exposure to violence (including violence perpetrated by state institutions), enslavement practices and other forms of exaction.
Black North African populations are not bare victims or silent objects upon which racial discourses are constructed. They actively engage with and participate in the elaboration of racial categories. As much as light-skin individuals belonging to majority groups stigmatize Blackness, North African activists of slave descent and other black activists tend to cultivate and reinforce race formation because their strategic choices to mobilize supporters and claim equity are often based on racial categories.[35]
To the questions of how the conflation of Blackness and slave status can be understood in North Africa; how Blackness, in this particular region and cultural contexts, came to be associated with servility and inferiority while Arabness has been promoted as a superior status; and how various ideologies of slavery merged in discourses and social practices to promote a common (although contested) hierarchy of races, I suggest three hypotheses or pathways for further research. First, what defines who is enslaveable (and who is not) does not depend on social attributes related to race, skin color, gender, or inferiority, but to a person’s or a group’s inability to secure protection from threats in a particular point in time and space. Second, the history of colonization in Northern Africa serves as a false proof that Arabs were superior to indigenous Berber and other African populations; the subsequent history of European conquest of North Africa proved that white Europeans could pass from the status of slaves to that of dominant colonizers. This more recent development might have erased the association of Whiteness and enslaveability. Third, the study of Blackness in North Africa allows us to uncover the construction of Arabness as an identity that requires Blackness as its antithesis, in as much as the aristocrat needs to maintain the idea of the slave in order to maintain self-esteem, status and associated privileges. In other words, I would argue that the maintenance of the moral and sociopolitical order in Northern Africa requires the deployment of racial discourses and identities. Race, skin color and the history of slavery are integral components of the North African construction of difference that shapes a stratified citizenship in which those who claim to be Arab enjoy a range of privileges, those ascribed the status of black nationals are denied the access to these privileges, and those black non-nationals are maintained at the lowest level of rights and consideration in the society.
[2] El Hamel C., (2013), Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race and Islam, Cambridge, New York Cambridge University Press ; El Hamel C., (2002), Race, slavery and Islam in Maghribi Mediterranean thought: the question of the Haratin in Morocco, The Journal of North African Studies, 7, 3 : 29-52.
[3] Andrews, K. (2013). Resisting Racism: Race, Inequality and the Black Supplementary School Movement. London: Institute of Education Press.
[4] Austen, R.A. (1979) The Transsaharan Slave Trade: a Tentative Census, in J. Hogendom, H. Gemery (eds), The Uncommon Market : Essays in the Economic History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, New York, Academic Press, 1979 : 23-76.
[5] Barbarian slave trade refers to the Berbers. See Davis, Robert C. (2003). Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-71966-4.
[6] Davis, Robert C. (2003). Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-71966-4.
[7] For an elaboration about the use of post-slavery in African contexts see Lecocq B. & E. Hahonou, 2015, ‘Introduction: Exploring Post-Slavery in Contemporary Africa’, International Journal of African Historical Studies, Vol. 48, No. 2 (2015): 181-192
[8] Mzioudet H. (2019) Mobilizing for social justice. Black tunisian activism in transitional justice. https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/38219-mobilizing-for-social-justice-black-tunisian-activism-in-transitional-justice.html (accessed on 23-03-2021)
[9] Abdelhamid, M. (2018). Les noirs en Tunisie après la révolution de 2011. Retour sur les prémices d’un mouvement contre le racisme. Policy brief, 84, 27 August 2018, EuroMesCo ; Mrad-Dali, I.M. (2005). De l’esclavage à la servitude. Cahiers d’études africaines, 179 (3), 935-956 ; Mrad-Dali, I.M. (2009). Identités multiples et multitudes d’histoires : les « Noirs tunisiens » de 1846 à aujourd’hui (Doctoral dissertation, EHESS) ; Mrad-Dali, I.M. (2015). Les mobilisations des «Noirs tunisiens» au lendemain de la révolte de 2011: entre affirmation d’une identité historique et défense d’une «cause noire». Politique africaine, 4, 61-81 ; Bedoucha, G. (1984). Un noir destin : travail, statuts, rapport de dépendance dans une oasis du Sud tunisien.
[10] The self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in 2010 generated an impetus for the protests against the regime in Tunisia and a chain of events that became the so-called ‘Arab Spring’. Pouessel, S. (2012a). Les Tunisiens noirs entre stéréotype, racisme et histoire : regard sur l’actualisation d’une identité « marginalement intégrée». In Noirs au Maghreb. Enjeux identitaires (75-98). Karthala ; Pouessel, S. (2012b). Les marges renaissantes: Amazigh, Juif, Noir. Ce que la révolution a changé dans ce «petit pays homogène par excellence» qu’est la Tunisie. L’Année du Maghreb, VIII, 143-160 ; Pouessel, S. (2012c). Un ministre noir tunisien, yes we can? No we don’t want!. Questionnement identitaire en Tunisie post-révolutionnaire. In Frontières identitaires et Représentations de l’altérité (1-7).
[11] Abdelhamid, M. (2018). Les noirs en Tunisie après la révolution de 2011. Retour sur les prémices d’un mouvement contre le racisme. Policy brief, 84, 27 August 2018, EuroMesCo ;
[12] About the association of Blackness to slave ancestry see also Ltifi (2021) in this special issue.
[13] https://www.babelmed.net/article/9298-le-combat-de-saadia-mosbah-contre-linvisibilite-des-tunisiens-noirs/ accessed on 06-02-2021
[14] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tunisia-rights-race-trfn-idUSKBN2741GY accessed on 11-02-2021
[15] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAltGt_-k3s accessed 11-09-2020
[16] https://www.facebook.com/BBCnewsafrica/videos/2643326055989288 ; https://minorityrights.org/2020/07/29/black-spring-tunisia/ accessed on 07-10-2020
[17] About race formation in Egypt and the case of Nubians, see Moll
[18] https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/features/2015/7/23/being-black-in-egypt consulted on 07-10-2020
[19] See Ahmed Sukarno, Nubia and Nubians in Movie and Egyptian Television (Al‐Nüba Ü Al‐Nubĭn fĭ A‐ Sĭnĭma Ü Al‐Tĭlĭfĭzĭün Al‐Masrĭ) unpublished paper, presented at the Conference Nubians between Resettlement and Development. See also Wealth, Business and Slaves in Al‐Hüdabĭ Family (Al‐thrüah Ü Al‐ business Ü Al‐Abĭd fĭ ΄ailate Al‐Hïdabï), Al‐Fagr New Paper, issue no. 196, 30 March 2009, in which the newspaper mentioned that Al‐Hüdabĭ Family used to have Nubian slaves.
[20] https://togetherwedefend.org/defenders/seham-osman accessed on 07-10-2020
[21] https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/features/2015/7/23/being-black-in-egypt consulted on 07-10-2020
[22] About slavery in 19th century Egypt, see Beška E. (2019), “Muhammed Ali’s conquest of Sudan (1820-1824),” Asian and African Studies 28, no. 1: 30-56; Smith E. A. (2006) Tributaries in the Stream of Civilization: Race, Ethnicity, and National Belonging among Nubians in Egypt, Ph.D. diss. (New York University); and Powell, E. T. (2012) Tell This in My Memory. Stories of Enslavement from Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press.
[23] https://www.iom.int/news/iom-learns-slave-market-conditions-endangering-migrants-north-africa
[24] http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/311675 (accessed on 25-03-2021).
[25] https://newint.org/features/web-exclusive/2016/06/23/to-be-black-in-libya consulted on 06-10-2020
[26] http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/11/spring-bursts-among-toubou-libyas-desert/ consulted on 06-10-2020
[27] https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2018/10/13/tebu-cultural-awakening-we-may-not-be-arabs-but-we-are-libyan (consulted on 25-03-2021)
[28] Blin, Louis (1988) Les noirs dans l’Algérie contemporaine, Politique africaine (N° 30) Juin 1988: 22-31.
[29] Aidi H (2020), National Identity in the Afro-Arab Periphery: Ethnicity, Indigeneity and (anti)Racism in Morocco, POMEPS Studies 40 – Africa and the Middle East: Beyond the Divides: 64-68. https://pomeps.org/national-identity-in-the-afro-arab-periphery-ethnicity-indigeneity-and-antiracism-in-morocco
[30] Menin L. (2018) “In the skin of a black”: Senegalese students and young professionals in Rabat, https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/in-skin-of-black-senegalese-students-and-young-professionals-in-rabat/
[31] https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/beyond-trafficking-and-slavery/shadows-of-slavery-part-two-race-colour-and-origins-in-northwest-africa-an/consulted on 06-10-2020
[32] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-46810367 consulted on 06-02-2021
[33] Fanon F. (1952). Peau noire, masques blancs, Paris, Seuil.
[34] About segregation in Morocco see Abu-Lughod, J. L., (1980), Rabat: Urban Apartheid in Morocco, Princeton, Princeton University Press.
[35] Menin L. (2020). “Introduction. Slavery and the Racialization of Humanity: Coordinates for a Comparative Analysis.” Antropologia (Milano) 7.1 N.S. (2020): 7–32. Web.