The chain hasn’t disappeared; it’s just changed its name – Dialogue on Servitude 2.0

The chain hasn’t disappeared; it’s just changed its name
Dialogue on Servitude 2.0

Christine Mirre & Yodith Gideon on the occasion of the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition (August 23)

Introduction

Instituted by UNESCO, the International Day for the Remembrance of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and its Abolition is observed on August 23 each year, in memory of the slave uprising in Saint-Domingue, now Haiti, which broke out on the night of August 22–23, 1791, and played a decisive role in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

The first official commemorations took place on August 23, 1998, in Haiti, followed by one in 1999 in Gorée, Senegal. Beyond a moment of reflection, this day aims to enshrine the tragedy of the slave trade in the collective memory of all peoples, in accordance with the objectives of the “Routes of Enslaved People” project.

It calls for a collective reflection on the historical causes, mechanisms, and consequences of this crime, as well as on the interactions it generated between Africa, Europe, the Americas, and the Caribbean.

 Its scope is twofold: commemorative, by breaking the silence that has long surrounded slavery; and political, by establishing memory as an indispensable foundation for all restorative justice and reconciliation.

Presentation

Yodith Gideon has dedicated her professional life to helping people build businesses, and she has done so on two continents.

For twenty-six years in Switzerland, at the heart of European finance, she mentored and trained entrepreneurs, from small businesses to startups.

Trained in business in Geneva and well-versed in the workings of the Western financial system, she founded Supi Consulting, then brought it back to Africa and steered it toward a single mission: to help people of African descent stop waiting and start building on the continent through real investment, real business, and a real network.

From this work emerged the Neo Panthers, a community of investors and builders from the diaspora dedicated to launching African businesses on African soil.

Yodith Gideon is the author of Sankofa: How Africa Feeds the World and Starves at Its Own Table (Neo Panthers Press, 2026), and the founder of Neo Panthers.

Christine Mirre is the director of CAP Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC), a nongovernmental human rights organization with consultative status with the UN (ECOSOC).

Through this civil society platform, she participates in the work of the Human Rights Council and other UN mechanisms, focusing in particular on documenting atrocities in Sudan and Ethiopia, as well as human rights violations in general.

She is the author of two major analyses published in 2026: one on France’s abstention during the United Nations General Assembly vote designating the slave trade as a crime against humanity (March 2026), and the other on the repeal of the Code Noir by the French National Assembly, 178 years after the abolition of slavery (May 2026).

As a descendant of a Guadeloupean family enslaved under the colonial regime, she bridges international law, historical memory, and restorative justice.

Memory as a Legislative Battlefield

Yodith Gideon, in Chapter 17 of « Sankofa », you write that school curricula in the French colonies erased African history and replaced it with that of Europe, and you cite the law of February 23, 2005, which mandated, for one year, the teaching of the “positive role of the French presence overseas.”

Yodith Gideon, author of «Sankofa», founder of Neo Panthers :

What the 2005 law reveals is that the colonial school textbook was never an accident. It is a component of the machine. In French West Africa, children read about “our ancestors, the Gauls” in a book written in Paris. They learned about every king of France but nothing about their own people, as if history began the day the white man arrived. And children caught speaking their mother tongue were punished. Even the sound of home became a transgression. I’m told that this kind of education died with the empires. No.

In 2005, the European Parliament passed a law mandating that colonization be taught as a blessing. Historians protested, and the article was repealed a year later, which is a good thing. But it was voted on, debated, and adopted during my lifetime.

That is why I say that memory is not an academic debate. It is a battlefield. A child who learns about Wilberforce learns that freedom is a gift you receive by waiting politely. A child who learns about Adwa, Nzinga, and Haiti learns something else: Africans said no, fought back, and won. No one gave them anything.

The first lesson poses no threat to them. The second one sets their system ablaze. The state that controls memory always chooses the first. Our job is to teach the second. Christine is fighting through the law and the courts. I’m fighting with the true history and money. It’s the same battle. Sankofa means exactly that: going back to reclaim what was stolen from us, including in textbooks.

Christine Mirre, you have analyzed how the Code Noir remained a “phantom text” in French law for 178 years after its abolition in 1848, and how its repeal in May 2026 avoided using the word “annulment” so as not to call into question royal legitimacy. In both cases, the French state seems to treat memory as a narrative to be controlled rather than as a truth to be restored. How does this bureaucratic management of history continue to shape the present from school textbooks to institutional discrimination in Africa as well as in the Caribbean?

Christine Mirre, Director of CAP Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC) :

Imagine if, even today, French law still contained a provision declaring certain people to be “furniture”. Yet that is exactly what happened: the Code Noir of 1685 remained a “ghost provision” in French law for 178 years after its abolition in 1848. In May 2026, the National Assembly voted to repeal it, but refused to use the term “annulment,” which would have acknowledged the text’s illegitimacy from its very inception, thereby preserving royal legitimacy.

This bureaucratic maneuver is not insignificant. Two months earlier, France had abstained at the UN on a resolution designating the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity. We acknowledge the past in words, but we deny justice in deeds. The result is a “double punishment”: the crime, followed by denial.

Françoise Vergès, author of La Mémoire enchaînée, wrote that we must “no longer be slaves to slavery.” This work of remembrance requires breaking the silence that still surrounds the slave trade in society and institutions. For as long as the state treats memory as a narrative to be controlled rather than a debt to be repaid, the colonial past continues to shape today’s discrimination in schools, the workplace, culture, and the way we view our own bodies.

The Economics of “Freedom”: Compensating the Master, Indebting the Slave

Christine Mirre, you point out that France compensated slaveowners 126 million francs under the law of April 30, 1849, which was repealed only in 2017, and that Haiti was forced to pay France the equivalent of USD 560 million for its own independence, until 1947.

Christine Mirre, Director of CAP Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC) :

Yes, the mechanism is exactly the same, and what makes it so persistent is that it has been legalized each time. The chain was not broken in 1848 : it was legally reclassified. The law of April 30, 1849, provided for compensation for plantation owners (126 million francs), while the freed slaves were left without land, without capital, and without reparations. This law was not repealed until 2017.

The case of Haiti is the starkest example of this: the country was forced to pay the equivalent of USD 560 million through 1947, amounting to more than USD 100 billion in losses over two centuries. People are freed, but they are then required to pay the price of their own freedom.

Éric Williams showed that slavery was not a marginal phase of capitalism, but its central pillar. From colonial indemnities to the CFA franc, from Haiti’s debt to mining contracts, the structure is the same: those who work and those who own are never the same. The Code Noir has evolved; it has seeped into enslaved currencies, glass ceilings, and denials of credit. Freedom without economic means is just another name for servitude.

Yodith Gideon, you show that raw cocoa leaves Africa and returns as chocolate, that gold is sourced in London and refined in Dubai, and that fourteen African nations still have their currency printed in Paris. From colonial reparations to the CFA franc, from Haiti’s “debt of freedom” to mining contracts, don’t we see the same mechanism at work everywhere: those who work and those who own are never the same, and freedom without economic means is merely a change of channel?

Yodith Gideon, author of «Sankofa» and founder of Neo Panthers :

Yes, it’s the same mechanism everywhere. And I want everyone to understand how it works today, because it’s no longer called “indemnity” or “debt of freedom.”

Take cocoa, for example. The price of our cocoa isn’t set in Abidjan. It’s set in London and New York by traders who’ve never even touched a cocoa bean. Whenever they want, they lower the price. And we can’t say no. Why? Because the contracts have already been signed. It’s the same with gold, cotton, and oil.

So the real question is: how were these contracts signed? Here’s how. They arrive with the aid. It’s all part of the same package. They come to see you and say: we’re going to help you; we’re going to fund your roads, your hospitals, your budget. And during that same visit, they sign the mining contract, the tax exemption for their multinationals, and the agreement granting access to our ports. The requirement to purchase their goods and services with aid money that’s what’s called tied aid. The money leaves Paris and returns to Paris, passing through our budgets.

The IMF and the World Bank use the same method: to receive the loan, you had to sign. Open up your markets, privatize your public enterprises, cut funding for education and health care. Aid is the gateway to the contract. It is not a gift. It is trade in disguise, and the contract is written by the one who gives.

This is where the continuity lies with 1849 and with Haiti. Yesterday, the master was compensated and the slave was billed. Today, we are “helped,” and we are made to sign the receipt. The chain has not disappeared. It has simply changed its name.

That’s why I reject the word “aid” when we talk about Africa. You don’t “help” someone you’re charging. And my conclusion in « Sankofa » is simple : no one will tear up these contracts for us. The right to say no is something we build. It’s called our factories, our warehouses, our banks, our united front. Ownership isn’t something you ask for. It’s something you build. And it’s possible. Just look at the Sahel, Ghana, Namibia. It’s already happening, right before our eyes.

Colonial Psychology: From the “Lobotomized Brain” to the Industrial Prison

Yodith Gideon, you cite WHO Monograph No. 17, published in 1953 by J.C. Carothers, « The African Mind in Health and Disease », and you point out that a slave’s desire for freedom was once classified as a mental illness: “drapetomania,” as described by Dr. Samuel Cartwright in 1851.

Yodith Gideon — Author of «Sankofa», founder of Neo Panthers :

I want the audience to really hear the dates, because people always think I’m talking about the distant past. In 1851, a doctor published a paper on drapetomania: a slave’s desire for freedom, diagnosed as insanity. Recommended treatment: the whip. This was published medical literature, taught in journals.

I am told that this science died along with slavery. So I open WHO Monograph No. 17, published in Geneva in 1953, seven years before the Congo gained independence. In it, the author argued that the normal African brain functions like a lobotomized European brain. Our so-called incapacity was not just a perception. It was a doctrine with international endorsement.

That’s the continuity you’re looking for. Yesterday, a Black person was labeled “sick” when they wanted to be free. Today, they’re labeled “suspicious” simply for being present. The diagnosis has changed its name, but not its function. Its function is to justify control. A resume set aside because of a first name is the same act as Cartwright’s diagnosis: categorizing a person before even meeting them.

And this system of classification doesn’t need die-hard racists to function. It’s embedded in procedures, sorting algorithms, and racial profiling. It’s a prison that runs on its own. All the more reason to name it for what it is. We can’t cure a disease that we refuse to diagnose in the real patient: the system, not us.

Christine Mirre, you denounce “racial profiling” and “glass ceilings” as contemporary manifestations of the Code Noir, and you study state violence. From the pathologization of rebellion to the over-incarceration of Black populations (in both the United States and France), including hiring discrimination based on first names, the study by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2003) showing that a resume with a “white” first name receives 50% more follow-up calls and that state violence seems to have simply changed its diagnosis. How would you describe this continuity between the “sick body” of the past and the “suspicious body” of today?

Christine Mirre, Director of CAP Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC) :

What we are seeing is a technical reinvention of the same system. Black bodies have never ceased to be a security problem for the colonial order; only the vocabulary used to manage them has changed. In the past, they were restrained, exploited, and subjected to forced medical treatment; today, they are monitored, profiled, and locked up.

Cartwright’s “drapetomania” in 1851 was not an isolated medical error: it framed rebellion as a pathology to avoid acknowledging the rejection of domination. J.C. Carothers revived this logic in 1953 under the auspices of the WHO, infantilizing the African mind.

Elsa Dorlin shows that the Code Noir was a “mechanism of disarmament” that “is coupled with a true discipline of the body designed to keep it defenseless”. The slave becomes “a servile, defenseless body, always presumed guilty.” This is the “sick body” of the past: a body rendered defenseless, then designated as a threat to justify state violence.

Today, young Black men are not arrested for committing a crime, but because their presence instills “reasonable fear”. Medical terminology has given way to security terminology, but the structure remains the same: to produce defenseless bodies and to portray this powerlessness as their very nature.

Yodith Gideon, in «Sankofa» you describe how Africans today must “erase themselves, erase their names, soften their accents, and hide their natural hair in order to gain access to the circles that matter ?

Yodith Gideon, author of «Sankofa», founder of Neo Panthers :

I didn’t read about this injunction to remain invisible in some archive. I lived through it during my twenty-six years in Switzerland. Not just at work. Everywhere. In meeting rooms, at church, at the hospital, with my Swiss in-laws, at the dinner table. When it happens everywhere, it’s not an isolated incident. It’s a system. They soften your name into sounds that fit in their mouths. They lower your voice on the phone.

In the United States, laws had to be passed, state by state, to make it illegal to fire a Black woman because of her natural hair. Think about what this statement reveals: her hair, just as God made it, was by default a violation of the dress code. Four out of five Black women say they have to change their hair just to be accepted at work. So no, wigs and hair relaxers aren’t a matter of vanity. They’re armor bought with our own money against a verdict we didn’t write.

And notice the double standard: a French accent in English is charming; an African accent is quietly filtered out during an interview. Same grammar, same words. Only the people behind the accents are categorized differently.

This is how the denial of history plays out in the present: since the official narrative claims we’ve contributed nothing, our very presence becomes an anomaly to be corrected. Yesterday’s denial creates today’s invisibility. That is why I answered this question with a poem, “My Accent.” My accent is not a pronunciation error. My accent carries Adwa. The day we stop erasing ourselves, the room must renegotiate with history itself.

Christine Mirre, you mention the “double punishment” suffered by the descendants of slaves: the original crime, followed by the state’s denial, which refuses to provide reparations and refrains from recognizing the slave trade as the “most serious crime against humanity” at the UN. In both cases, the harm is not limited to the past: it reshapes the present. How does the denial of history translate today into a demand for invisibility, whether in a job interview in Paris or at an investment bank in Geneva?

Christine Mirre, Director of CAP Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC) :

The “double punishment” I am referring to is both a legal and psychological construct: first, the crime of slavery and the slave trade; then, the state’s denial, which refuses to recognize this crime as the basis for an unpaid debt. When France abstains at the UN in March 2026, it renews this denial. It tells the descendants: your pain has no name in our legal language.

Myriam Cottias, a historian of colonialism and chair of the scientific committee for the UNESCO program “The Route of Enslaved People”, proposed the term “enslaved” to challenge the normalization of that status: “It is a person who is enslaved, who is a slave by status, but who is not a slave in their very being.” She warns against transgenerational trauma, which “entrenches the status of victim rather than that of resister.” I share this concern: the double punishment lies in the fact that the state, by refusing reparations, keeps descendants in a position of supplicants.

This denial of history manifests itself today as a demand for invisibility. In a job interview for a senior leadership position or a human resources role in Paris, or at a bank in Geneva, you’re asked to be present, but not too much; visible, but not threatening. Self-effacement is not a career choice, it’s an adaptation to a system that doesn’t recognize your right to exist fully.

Symbols vs. Action: What Comes Next After August 23?

Christine Mirre, you write that the repeal of the Code Noir is “a step, not an end,” and that symbolism is not enough without material reparations. One of you works on restorative justice and international law; the other on concrete economic sovereignty. Are these two paths complementary, or does one necessarily precede the other in order to break down what you each, in your own way, call “prison” whether mental or legal?

Christine Mirre, Director of CAP Liberté de Conscience (CAP LC) :

I don’t believe we have to choose between restorative justice and economic sovereignty. They are two branches of the same tree. Without an international legal framework, any economic action remains vulnerable; without concrete economic action, any legal decision remains a dead letter.

International law, however, offers concrete tools. The General Assembly resolution of March 2026 describes the slave trade as “the gravest crime against humanity.” The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) is drafting a general recommendation on reparations. Through its Slave Routes initiative and its Dialogues for Restorative Justice, UNESCO supports states in their transformation processes.

Doudou Diène, who spearheaded the Slave Route initiative at UNESCO in 1994 and participated in the Durban conference in 2001, warned of “the ambiguity of commemorations, repetitive rituals that obscure the fundamental issues”. He described slavery as a “crime without punishment” and called for “ethical, historical, educational, and social reparations”. Remembrance is not just a ritual on August 23: it is the first step toward global justice.

After August 23, we must use these two approaches together. The dialogue on restorative justice must be fueled by concrete proposals: reparations funds, the return of cultural property, and the cancellation of illegitimate debts. August 23 is a symbol. Action begins on the 24th.

Yodith Gideon, you conclude «Sankofa» with a call to immediate action: “Invest your first money in the first African company,” and you founded Neo Panthers to turn members of the diaspora into investors. One of you works on restorative justice and international law; the other on practical economic sovereignty. Are these two paths complementary, or does one necessarily precede the other in order to break free from what you each, in your own way, call a prison whether mental or legal?

Yodith Gideon, author of «Sankofa», founder of Neo Panthers :

The two paths are not in competition; they are the two hands of the same body. Christine’s work establishes the legal truth: naming the crime, repealing the law, demanding redress. Without that, we’re being asked to build while pretending nothing happened. But I have to be honest with the audience: none of these victories will put capital in your hands next week. Repeal is a step as Christine herself says , not an end. And I refuse to let us spend yet another generation waiting for the justice system of the former master to give us back what it took from us. Waiting is precisely what the mental prison has taught us: to wait for a gift, to wait for permission, to wait for a decree.

So my answer is the one that sums up Sankofa: Invest your first money in the first African business. Not someday—now. That’s why I founded Neo Panthers: to transform people of African descent, from the continent, Europe, and the Americas into owners and investors, not bystanders in their own cause. Every franc invested in an African business is reparations that we haven’t asked anyone for.

And here’s how the two paths converge: an economically sovereign people negotiates reparations from a position of strength, not as a supplicant. Justice opens the cell door. The economy gets us out and helps us build a home. We need both, but no one has to wait for one to begin the other. On the morning of August 24, the question is no longer what France must do. It’s what we’re doing.