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Flashmag! Issue 172 May 2026 are underrepresented in big-budget productions, even though they make up a significant proportion of the Black American population. In France, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and the Netherlands, Afro-Caribbean and Sub-Saharan communities frequently replicate the same skintone hierarchies. The skin-lightening market— often dangerous depigmenting cosmetics containing hydroquinone or mercury— represents a global market estimated at over $ 10 billion by 2024 according to Grand View Research, a very significant portion of which is consumed by Black women in Europe and the Americas. In France, women from West Africa or the Caribbean use these products to, as they say,“ lighten their skin” and thereby attain a more socially valued femininity. This is a form of chemical self-harm made necessary by decades of colonial aesthetic propaganda.
Public Policy— Anti-Blackness in a Gray Suit
In the language of public policy, anti-Black racism never presents itself as such. It speaks of meritocracy, efficiency, and risk management. Take development financing, for example: Sub-Saharan Africa is systematically subjected to stricter borrowing conditions from the IMF and the World Bank than comparable regions in Asia or Eastern Europe with similar risk profiles. Senegalese economist Ndongo Samba Sylla has documented how the structural adjustments imposed on Africa in the 1980s – 2000s dismantled public services that Asian countries with similar economic trajectories were able to preserve
Focus: Redlining and Its Contemporary Ghosts American redlining— the practice of denying home loans to residents of Black neighborhoods, officially abandoned in 1968— continues to have documented effects. A study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition( 2020) showed that 74 % of neighborhoods once classified as“ dangerous” by lenders( code for: inhabited by Black people) remain low-income areas today.
In France, the debate over the CFA franc follows the same logic: 14 African countries use this currency, and since 1945, a portion of their foreign exchange reserves has been deposited with the French Treasury.
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