Ni la race ni le 93 ne sont ce que nous croyons qu’ils sont / Neither race nor the 9-3 are what you think they are

This article aims at offering an American perspective on the study of Seine-Saint-Denis, a territory that has been the subject of numerous negative representations and that has often been compared to American ghettos. Like many American scholars, we use the concept of « race » (understood as a social construct) as a key lens for understanding geography and geopolitics. But France famously denies the validity of this lens. Both race as a critical analytical tool and Seine-Saint-Denis are the subject of distorting representations which prevent us from understanding their complexity. Consequently and in a comparative perspective, we will focus on three facets of this racial lens (racial politics, racialized stigma and questions of representation) to show both the complexity and utility of race as a concept, and the diversity and complexity of Seine-Saint-Denis as a place. We will insist on the necessity to develop a French way of understanding race in order to deconstruct fantasies and stereotypes, to struggle against the essentialization of racialized territories such as Seine-Saint-Denis, and to better comprehend the processes of domination at work in French society.