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Tunisia’s former president, Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, fled his country on 14 January 2011 to find shelter in Saudi Arabia, after the series of uprisings that overthrew his government. Censorship was relaxed after the change in leadership and debates on previously taboo issues spread in the media and the academy. Racism against black Tunisians was one of them.
Before 2011, Tunisians did not speak about ethnic or religious differences. After the achievement of independence in 1956, Habib Bourguiba’s nation-building policy (1957-1987) stressed the belonging of all Tunisians to a common past as well as their religious, ethnic, and political homogeneity. Nonetheless, the painful reality of racism and social segregation continued, and many Tunisians still use the words wassif (servant) or ‘abid (slave) to refer to blacks.
