Ambivalent Desire: The Exotic Black Other in Jazz-age France

The 1920s have long been known as an era of negrophilism in France, a time when everything associated with blacks and black culture became fashionable. The exotic appeal of the negre manifested itself in a variety of ways, from the popularity of jazz and celebrity of Josephine Baker to a flourishing of love across the colour line - and contributed to the reputation of France as a racially tolerant society. Yet upon closer scrutiny, Berliner argues, it becomes clear that French attitudes to blacks were at best ambivalent, and the ideal of racial tolerance more myth than reality.