Black Metropolis: how to translate a classic of African-American socio-anthropology?
Anne Raulin worked alongside Danièle Joly as co-director of the translation of Black Metropolis.
Being also the author of the book's preface, she now answers our questions on behalf of the entire translation team, sharing more insights into the specificities of translation in the humanities and social sciences.
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Can you introduce us to the book and its history?
Black Metropolis is a pioneering work in more ways than one. It's the result of a major study of Chicago's black neighbourhood conducted in the 1930s, which received federal funding under the New Deal and support from philanthropic foundations. It was one of the first social science books intended from the outset for an audience beyond academia.
Addressing the issue of interracial relations, which concerns American society as a whole, Black Metropolis is innovative first and foremost as a transdisciplinary work. St. Clair Drake and Horace Cayton, two African-American sociologists, combined sociological and statistical approaches, direct anthropological observation and the psychological perception of belonging to a discriminated minority. Coming from the southern United States to settle in Chicago, this internal population movement known as the Great Migration formed the largest black ghetto in the country after Harlem at the beginning of the 20th century.
John Gibbs St. Clair Drake à Roosevelt University, Chicago en 1946
But Black Metropolis also offers a vast historical panorama of the formation of the city of Chicago, a young metropolis in the Midwest barely a century old, which the authors unfold before our eyes in an engaging, often vibrant, sometimes almost theatrical literary style. In his preface, Richard Wright, a famous African-American novelist of the time, praises this ability to make ‘scientific use of insight and feeling’ and highlights the devastating effects of racism towards the black minority on the individual psyche.
Horace Cayton et Richard Wright examinant les cartes WPA de Bronzeville à Parkway Community House, en 1941
First published in 1945, it has been continuously reprinted – the latest edition dating from 2015 – with prefaces added over the decades that trace the transformations of this ghetto, which still exists today, while other ethnic neighbourhoods formed by European migration have disappeared as such. Bronzeville, as its residents affectionately call it, is a neighbourhood strongly structured by powerful Black institutions, including a highly influential press, an impressive number and diversity of churches, social clubs, and formal and informal businesses. We discover their trade union organisation and political participation in party life, first Republican then Democrat, and in municipal responsibilities – African Americans having gained the right to vote in the state of Illinois in 1870 – as well as their associations for the defence of their rights in public spaces and housing. It was in Bronzeville that Barack Obama, as a community organiser, gained first-hand knowledge of this urban reality, an experience that proved decisive for the campaign that would lead him to the presidency of the United States.
There is something miraculous about the fact that this complex, dense, sometimes challenging work is easy to read and truly thrilling
What makes Black Metropolis a must-read for urban studies and African-American studies?
Considered ‘one of the greatest books in American sociology’, it remains ‘a reference for an entire generation of sociologists, political scientists, criminologists, historians and urban planners’ (Pap Ndiaye). Black Metropolis makes an exceptionally rich contribution to topics that have been in the news in France since the 1990s, mobilising social actors and challenging public authorities. It offers analyses of the mechanisms of spatial segregation in a city with great ethnic diversity; it contextualises the notion of race, showing how it can be invoked for the purpose of emancipation, as indicated by the expression ‘race pride’, and how it can be used to serve the most exclusive forms of discrimination; It traces the history of urban riots and racist crimes, which have been a recurring phenomenon since 1919, and the actions taken to prevent them. It questions the status of urban minorities, exposing their internal structuring into social classes, which adopt contrasting and ever-unstable strategies between assimilation and individual and collective integrity.
How did you approach the task of translating this monumental work in the humanities and social sciences?
Translating it into French 80 years after its first publication was a necessity given the keen interest in France for the socio-anthropological work of the Chicago School, even though this particular work from that school remained little known. It was important to raise awareness of the ideas put forward by African-American researchers, which translations of W.E.B. Du Bois's works had begun to reveal to a French audience. The sheer scale of Black Metropolis alone would have justified a collective effort, but the opportunity to work together with colleagues on both sides of the colour line also motivated this openness. Bringing together different generations and experiences of American society allowed for debate based on specific linguistic sensibilities and historical perspectives. The gap of nearly a century required us to act not only as intermediaries between languages and between majority and minority cultures, but also between periods and their specific vocabularies. In addition, the transdisciplinary nature of the work and the variety of writing styles, ranging from the most colloquial with numerous quotes from interviews to the most reflective and theoretical, from detached descriptions to the reflections of committed authors, confronted us with many translation challenges.
In truth, it is something of a miracle that this complex, dense and sometimes challenging work is so easy to read and truly thrilling, providing crucial insights into contemporary debates on the concepts of race, class and even gender. This is due to the dynamic balance it strikes between internal and external perspectives, which is rarely achieved.
Anne Raulin
The African-American sociologists St. Clair Drake and Horace R. Cayton take us on a journey through the neighbourhoods of Black Metropolis, the largest black metropolis in the United States after Harlem, in the heart of Chicago, and reveal both the obverse and the reverse. An overcrowded black ghetto, the result of the practice of ‘restrictive covenants’ preventing mixed residential development; but also a city within a city, where numerous institutions, an intense social, cultural and religious life, schools, an influential press and a thriving formal and informal economy have developed - earning its inhabitants the nickname Bronzeville.
Black Metropolis. A city within a city. Chicago 1914-1945 describes the uniqueness of this urban minority and highlights racial discrimination, but also reveals how African-Americans constantly fought against it throughout the city's history, building a capacity for collective and individual action to win their rights and their place in American society. This book, the fruit of a vast collective investigation carried out during the New Deal period, has become a benchmark for the study of urban social problems and has helped to found Black Studies in American universities.
Richard Wright, the most famous African-American writer of the time, wrote the preface, in keeping with the literary character of this exceptional monograph, which is capable of both moving and provoking thought on these crucial subjects where race, class and gender come together.
Article published in the third issue of the FMSH Journal.
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Se souvenir d'Humoresques
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Sous les temps de l'équateur
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Black Metropolis
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