Well, this is one of those "better late than never, but really late" moments. France's National Assembly recently voted unanimously to repeal the Code Noir – the infamous "Black Code" that governed slavery in its colonies since 1685. Yes, you read that right: 1685. It's only now being formally struck down, 254 votes to zero.
Let that satisfying number sink in. Two hundred and fifty-four lawmakers looked at a 339-year-old law that classified human beings as "movable property" and said, "Yeah, probably time for that to go."
King Louis XIV signed the Code Noir into existence, not just defining enslaved people as property but also demanding their conversion to Catholicism and prescribing charming punishments like ear mutilation for escape attempts. France officially abolished slavery in 1848 and declared it a crime against humanity in 2001. But the Code Noir itself? Just chilling on the books, a relic of a truly dark past, until this month.
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Start Your News DetoxMore Than Just Tidying Up
The Senate still needs to rubber-stamp this repeal, but President Macron is already on board. Max Mathiasin, a lawmaker from Guadeloupe who championed the bill, got understandably emotional during the vote. And Steevy Gustave, a Greens lawmaker, put a fine point on the language: "We are not descendants of slaves. We are descendants of human beings who were born free, then reduced to slavery."
While symbolically huge, activists are quick to point out that a legal tidy-up isn't the finish line. Dieudonne Boutrin, an activist, dryly observed that the repeal "changes nothing. Black people are still looked at the same way." He and others are pushing for formal reparations, tackling educational inequality and the systemic racism that still lingers.
Serge Letchimy, an official from Martinique, articulated the "lasting historical, cultural, social, economic and psychological harm" of slavery, citing a 10-point plan from Caribbean nations that includes debt cancellation and investments in healthcare. It's a reminder that the past isn't just past; it echoes. Haiti, for example, after gaining independence in 1804, was forced to pay France a staggering sum – reparations to its former colonizers for their "lost property." Haiti only cleared that crushing debt, taken out with high-interest loans, in 1952.
France, it's worth remembering, was Europe's third-largest slave trader, transporting over a million Africans into bondage, mostly to Caribbean plantations. This unanimous vote finally closes a legal loophole that should have been slammed shut ages ago. Now, the conversation turns to what comes next.
