I am currently taking a class called “Children, Youth, and Violence,” where we have looked at the different definitions of children depending on societies, the marginalization of people who don’t accept the white middle-class ideas of success, and the harmful discourse of “at-risk youth.” While there has been decent overlap already, our topic for this week connected well with the ending of If He Hollers Let Him Go.
This week, we began learning about the way France excludes populations of people that do not fit their perfect mold of being French. In order to be considered French, you must look like you are of French descent, live in Paris, as well as dress like and enjoy the culture of Paris. Many immigrants live in the outside neighborhoods of France, where there are possibly two trains a day that bring them into the city. Recently, their international airport made a new program to hire more ethnically diverse people called Papa Charlie, in order to promote the “internationalization” of the airport. This program infantilizes them through the name, keeps them away from Paris, as the airport is outside of Paris, and further denies their French identity by claiming them as international. However, this is the only job many can get, as a train ride to Paris takes upwards of three hours and often people who do not have a Paris address, French name, or look French (France requires headshots on their résumés) will not be hired.
As a result of this constant othering, many of the immigrants in the outlying neighborhoods are viewed as criminals and frequently harassed by the police. Everything came to head in 2005, when three boys ran into a power station to hide from police who were stopping them for a random search. Two of the boys were electrocuted to death and the third suffered severe injuries. The neighborhoods, outraged at the constant injustice, fear, and lack of help from the police, erupted into three weeks of rioting. One boy looked into a camera, held up his French ID and said, “I am French. What more do I have to do?”
Bob felt similarly marginalized from being American. He stated “They kept thinking about me in connection with Africa. But I wasn’t born in Africa. I didn’t know who anyone was.” Because he isn’t white, he doesn’t fit the mold of being American in his society. Therefore, he is not considered American. Alice can pass, and she knows how to play the game to acquire acceptance. Just as one black woman in France stated that she puts a Paris address on her résumé in order to become more favored in job searches, and it works. However, Bob cannot pass. There is nothing he can do that will grant him acceptance in his society. They will never allow him the status of being an American, which means he doesn’t get the same rights as an American in the justice system, even in a state like California. He will always be viewed as the other, the immigrant, the darkness, the one that doesn’t fit. Now he will be sent to die for a country that refused to claim him.
It is interesting how infantilization plays a significant role in identifying the “other” in a society. The program called Papa Charlie is reminiscient of the title of “If He Hollers Let Him Go,” a children’s nursery rhyme that is rooted in how runaway slaves were treated in the United States before the Civil War. Moreover, Hugh’s compulsion to act more Southern in order to gain his objectives in “The Expendable Man” reflects an expectation of those who are not considered to be “other”: the infantilization of the “other.” His manner of speaking becomes slower and incorrect; Hugh pretends not to know certain facts about where he is at and the consequences of his actions. In this way, infantilization plays a key role not only in the noir books that we study, but in the everyday lives of the modern “other.”