Fighting Against Racism and Pursuing Education: A Firsthand Account

The first time I understand that I will not be easily allowed to choose my orientation because of my skin color, I am in college, in 3^e. I have just obtained my certificate with a score of 12/20. Nothing extraordinary but it’s enough to allow me to go to second general as I wish.

In any case, in theory, because I quickly become disillusioned when I meet the CPE: he wants to push me towards a manual profession, of the mechanical type. I then wrote to the director of the college to plead my case and as I am good at football, he agreed to put me in the second general sports-studies option. At that moment, I understand that I will have to fight to stay on the path I have set for myself.

I arrived in France in 2003, from the Democratic Republic of Congo, with my mother and my three brothers and sisters. We left Kinshasa overnight because of the political situation. I was then 11 years old. In an irregular situation, we first lived in Paris in a hotel in 9^e district – the Paris-Opéra, whose fire in 2005 left twenty-four dead, including eleven children – time to take the necessary steps.

Then we were sent to an accommodation center in Bayonne (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) before being regularized in 2010. I am lucky to be integrated into Segpa. These are special classes for middle school students in difficulty, particularly foreigners who need to learn French. Football also helps me a lot to make friends.

“Ordinary racism”

We live in HLM, in a ZUP. There is not much social diversity, we are “among ourselves”, that is to say between immigrants. My mother works as a cleaner. In the neighborhood, I try to avoid bad crowds. It’s sometimes tense with the police: we hang out with young people and we often get stopped, for no reason. We are teenagers, it gives us a feeling of revolt. In high school, I repeated my second year, I even thought about quitting school but I didn’t want to disappoint my mother, so I held on.

At the time I was an average student, neither excellent nor bad. On the other hand, I really want to get out of it, maybe that makes the difference. I work a lot. In my final year, I found a student job in a large fast-food chain. It’s a trigger, I say to myself: “If you don’t have at least a baccalaureate +2, you’re going to end up there”. I obtained my baccalaureate with a fairly good distinction, then I enrolled in a DUT in marketing techniques in Orléans.

I need to find a two-week internship but I don’t have a network. I ended up submitting a request to a bank in Châteauroux. I don’t know anyone in this agency but it’s right next to the football training center, I pass by it very often so I give it a try. And it works ! Three days after submitting my CV, I received a positive response. Why did they take me? It’s a question I’ve always asked myself…

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