In the name of Mbappé: letter to Celeste Amarilla

Once upon a time, there was a little Lorette from a small Latin American country whose utter stupidity and anachronistic racism illustrated all that the South American subcontinent ignores about Africa and Africans. This letter is addressed to her, in the name of the part of Kylian Mbappé’s heritage that this knave thinks she can insult and trample on, in the name of her whiteness and a supposed civilization. This part of Africa that Latin America quietly regards as the dark and unfinished side of contemporary European culture.

Everywhere they defeat a South American nation, the French teams, showcase of French diversity and the talent of its colorful youth, are vilified, guilty of having appropriated African added value. Oh please! What level of stupidity and bad faith can prevent a descendant of Spanish, Portuguese colonizers, returning Nazis, hidden fascists or Oriundi driven by hunger from understanding that a nation can benefit from the contribution of successive waves of migration to rise up.

What some narrow minds like chamberpots and their representatives such as this Céleste Amarilla reproach France for is that part of Africa which is now part of its DNA whether they like it or not, whether France itself likes it or not. It is exactly the same colonial history that is the pride of Paraguay, Brazil or Argentina. Argentina whose uneducated representatives sing to mock French people coming from Mozambique or Angola, as if it were a greater crime than being a Paraguayan from Italy or a Uruguayan descendant of former SS.

When a little madam disguised as a senator scolds an "absence of elegance" on Mbappé’s part, while ignoring the attitude of the footballers from her country whom the whole world saw indulging in what was seen as the height of poor sportsmanship, lack of flair and ignorance of sporting values, she links it to his African heritage about which she clearly knows nothing. France, madam, is not only that of Diderot, it is also that of Dumas, Fanon, Césaire, Maryse Condé, whom you have obviously never read. It is also the France of Saint-Georges, Belley, Monerville and so many others that you ignore, making your French education quite doubtful.

It is the France of the tirailleurs and those who shed precious blood so that barbarians of your kind never decree the end of history. Your Spanish and Indian mixing is no more worthy than the Cameroonian and Algerian blend that gave Mbappé to France. You boast about the importance of greetings among Paraguayans. That is exactly what Mbappé would most likely have inherited from Africa and with it empathy, community spirit, respect for elders. Everywhere he has not shown this, see it as a loss of his African upbringing. Instead you imagine that refusing a hand offered cannot be French. What a lack of culture! What an inferiority complex!

These plebeian values you claim as uniquely Paraguayan are rooted in all world civilizations, everywhere on this planet. That’s why so many South American intellectuals and heirs of Bolivarism see Africa as a pre-Columbian sister of Latin America. The sense of dignity, family, and community are ours.

But you and the idiots of your kind couldn't care less. You continue to spread the clichés of the colonialist and racist imagination of the West. Even old Europe and its most outdated ideologues are somewhat embarrassed to uphold this nowadays. In your view, the wrong of Africans is to be poor. You confuse poverty with indignity, poverty with ignorance, poverty with stupidity. Too many people under your latitudes embody this combination for you to keep looking down on Africa. At each international competition your part of the world puts on a show with its cultural racism. Enough!

The Blacks towards whom you are so condescending, you hate them when they make European nations win. As if you suffer from the house slave complex, dreaming of waking up in the master’s European home and measuring civilization as the currency of our shared humanity. It is time for Latin America to wake up and understand that young French people of African origin are fully French but proud of their heritage.

This is not a stigma to be mocked. Coconut milk, peanuts and yams are transatlantic cultural symbols that nourish and strengthen us. Monkeys are animals that live in our forests as much as in your cities. It is time for you and your kind to understand that you are no better than Africans. Where you despise black skin, you accept abandoning your humanity and slip back further to the colonial mindset that shaped your nations. You can be proud of it, but at least remember the meaning of geography!

You can choose to wallow in the pile of garbage you call a dictionary, but Africans see you and will respond when necessary. And I will give you the answer that Césaire gave to all the racist scum of the world. The black man pisses you off!

Contribution by El Hadji Malick Ndiaye. Writer, Associate Professor in African Studies.

Seattle University