Race, gender and the city

Blog post by Mélodine Sommier, University of Jyväskylä, Finland
 
Discussions about racism and whiteness regularly make the headlines in France. In May 2026, this included, for instance, the Parliament adopting a law to restitute cultural items looted during colonial rule as well as polemics around white savior syndrome and racist stereotypes in a politician’s comic book. How do these recurrent national conversations translate into and permeate everyday life and everyday places?

In my Identities article, ‘Navigating the city, negotiating whiteness: white women’s experiences in and perceptions of Bordeaux (France)’, I look at how white women make sense of (their) whiteness as they talk about their experiences in the city of Bordeaux. One of the aims of the study was to complement research identifying discursive and rhetorical patterns of white talk. How is whiteness built into and reproduced through the things we (don’t) say? Since whiteness works on the premise that it is invisibilized, connecting it to space gives grounds to make visible the unsaid and the erased. After all, space is also a form of discourse, a terrain similar to other discursive practices where meanings are reproduced, contested, imagined and imbued with power relations.

Bordeaux, France serves as a relevant context to look at whiteness in and through space. While it is mostly known today for its wine and as a tourist destination, it was one of the main harbours involved in the slave-trade. The Bordeaux merchant bourgeoisie who benefitted from the plantation economy greatly contributed to transforming the city through its urban mobility as well as the urban projects it initiated and that gave rise to new neighbourhoods, courtyards, and squares, many of which are now listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites (such as the riverbanks in the photograph above).

Yet, the implications of Bordeaux’ colonial past are hardly mentioned in discourses from and about the city. The dominant urban imaginary associated with Bordeaux therefore exemplifies how national discourses of erasure about race, racism and coloniality can occur at the local level. Talking with white women about their experiences in and of the city offered a way into such erasures: how are the myth of whiteness and myth of Bordeaux co-constructed through space?

The article includes different examples of how the participants implicitly evoked whiteness by talking about the city, its atmosphere and their everyday practices. For instance, the participants talked of the charm and liveliness of their favourite areas in Bordeaux, echoing literature about white spaces being connected to ideals of cleanliness, order and modernity, and (upper) middle-class practices such as access to good cuisine and independent boutiques.

In a city where it can be difficult to find accommodation, the participants who were happy with their living situations explained they had been ‘lucky’ to find something in the neighbourhood of their choice. Being lucky often meant stumbling upon an unexpected housing opportunity and seizing it. What the notion of luck conceals, however, are the conditions that allowed the participants to be presented with such opportunities in the first place (often their personal network) and to seize them (typically by having the financial means).  
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Whiteness was also conveyed through the participants’ overall lack of knowledge about the city’s colonial past and its legacies into the present. While some of the participants had heard of some controversies, for instance about street names, or knew of some memorial sites about slavery, this knowledge was partial, fragmented, and did not structure their everyday experiences in Bordeaux. This sharply contrasts with the racial load experienced by women racialized outside of whiteness, and hints at the role of ignorance to perpetuate hegemonic whiteness. The distancing of race and racism with oneself was a recurrent trend across interviews that showed racism was mostly understood as consisting of isolated individual incidents rather than being structural and connected to white privilege.
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The distancing of race and racism also transpired through the terms the participants used to talk about – or rather, around –  race. The participants typically avoided the words race, whiteness and white during the interviews. Instead, they used phrases such as ‘people who look like me’ or ‘ordinary people’ (des gens lambdas). In some occasions, the participants also used silences, a well-documented aspect of white talk, by pausing where the word ‘white’ could have been used. These erasures and detours were also used when the participants talked of racialized people. In such cases they often used geographical and national denominations, referring to an ‘Algerian friend’ or someone ‘who comes from [French overseas Department of] Reunion’. These strategies of avoidance echo race-evasive discourses that dominate in France and Europe more generally.

As the participants relied on existing and dominant discourses about (the erasure of) race, the findings point to the importance of amplifying race-cognisant discourses. This seems crucial given the difficulty participants faced in simply talking about race, racism and whiteness for lack of vocabulary and practice. Developing race-cognisant discourses across society is critical to provide a wider palette of discourses to think and talk of race and of one’s privileges. 

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​This study is part of the ‘Racial Landscapes’ research project funded by the Research Council of Finland (funding decision number 347698).

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Image credit: Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

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Read the Identities article:
Sommier, M. (2026). Navigating the city, negotiating whiteness: white women’s experiences in and perceptions of Bordeaux (France). Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power. DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2026.2663658   OPEN ACCESS

Read further in Identities:

Are French people white?: Towards an understanding of whiteness in Republican France

The whiteness of cultural boundaries in France

Off-White: The tensions of Whiteness in Quebec