INTERVIEW
It is an American dream which is poured out on 256 pages made of chronicles sometimes funny, sometimes touching: in Racines d'Amérique (published Thursday by Plon editions), Alain Mabanckou tells "his" United States, a country he has discovered in the early 2000s and which has never ceased to fascinate him. This society is for the writer an inexhaustible source of inspiration: "I felt the pulse of these people during the almost 15 years spent in the United States", he describes at the microphone Europe 1 of Patrick Cohen, Tuesday noon.
"Sensation posed on America"
"My book is not as such a photocopy of America, but a reflection, a feeling posed on America through individual reflections", explains the winner of the Prix Renaudot 2006 for Mémoires de porc-épic ( editions du Seuil). This time, he reflects on the racial tensions that still undermine the unity of the United States, a country where there is "ethnic resentment". 'Minorities only want people to understand their history, their suffering, the humiliations they have experienced while wandering and being born in adopted territory. "
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"The big problem with blacks in France and black Americans is the fact that they all want to be seen as whole citizens, not second-class citizens," continues the Congolese teacher from UCLA, the public university of Los Angeles. "There is always in the minds of many the judgment that one makes with regard to the physique and the color of skin."
"Class struggle" or "race struggle"?
Alain Mabanckou criticizes a purely racial vision of the fractures that divide the United States: "We were wrong for a long time. The old Marxist-Leninist recipe, according to which the world is still divided by the class struggle, is still there", exclaims the writer. "We thought we were fighting the races when we were fighting the class struggle. Why do millionaires Snoop Dogg and Jay-Z no longer live in Compton or the Bronx, but in Beverly Hills or the Upper East Side? They live in places where they are protecting the privileges of the class they had access to versus the economic strength they had. "
On Europe 1, the writer finally denounces the champions of the confrontation between races, seen as the only possibility of leading the fight for minorities for more consideration: "We must not assign the limits of reflection", advocates the author of Roots of America . "I don't have time to explain to others what I am, it's up to them to understand that I'm black and proud of it. Once I say that, I'm not going to continue. to make tautologies. Let the one who does not understand step aside, my train continues its passage until the next station. "