Pap Ndiaye, a specialist in American social history and director of the Museum of the History of Immigration, is THE surprise appointment of the government of Elisabeth Borne. At 56, he replaces Jean-Michel Blanquer in national education and youth, deemed too divisive. May 23, The worldwhich covered the transfer of power, headlined in the newspaper “After Blanquer, Ndiaye opens a new era”, to better underline the ideological volte-face embodied by the new tenant of the rue de Grenelle.
His name was mentioned for the first time on May 8, 1992, in a file of the “World of books” signed Bertrand Le Gendre, entitled “United States: roots, crisis and decline”. At the time, the future minister was barely mentioned in a catch-all candle (“Other publications”) as being the translator of White-collar America. The invention of the tertiary sector: 1870-1920, by Olivier Zunz. Discreet beginnings, then.
“In France, when we talk about skin color, we take out the republican missal. » Pap Ndiaye, in 2009
It reappears a few years later, and in particular in July 2006 the day after the Football World Cup, this time presented as “historian of black worlds” in an interview led by Laetitia Van Eeckhout on integration through sport: “It’s a double myth. On the one hand, this concerns only a very small minority of people (…). On the other hand, sport, even when it is expressed in a joyful way, does not abolish the racist stereotypes which want blacks to be characterized by their sporting prowess, their physical strength: they reinforce them, on the contrary. he tackles.
First portrait in 2009
Alléché, it is Benoît Hopquin who signs his first portrait, on January 3, 2009. Pap Ndiaye is described there as “the rising star of the French intelligentsia” and is revealed there in full page and in photo under the title “Republican of stock”. “The historian discovered the reality of the black question in the United States during his studies, says the journalist. Member of the Representative Council of Black Associations, he wants to feed the debate on positive discrimination in France. » “In France, when we talk about skin color, we take out the Republican Missal”, quips Pap Ndiaye.
At the time, he was already accused of heresy by hardline Republicans and treated as “white nigger” by supporters of radical communitarianism. “He gets used to the idea of taking blows on both flanks”, observes Benoît Hopquin. After his American studies, Pap Ndiaye returned to the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), where he admits having had “struggling to fit into the strictly republican mould, within the morally regulated framework of the social sciences, which “struggle to take into account variables other than class” “. This, at a time when President Nicolas Sarkozy readily hysterized these questions.
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