"I Wouldn't Have Rented to You If I'd Known You Were Black"

Hello friends,

This is another story from back in the dim and distant past of my life in France which was a place where I experienced racism daily for more than a year.

As I mentioned before I was sharing a flat with one of my teaching assistant colleagues who was racialised as white. She had made all the original arrangements with our landlady and so the first time I met her was when we went to make the first month's rent payment. She was living in an old, cluttered and dark apartment in a different part of the city - very different from the light, airy spaces I'd grown up with.

My First Double-Take

She was sitting in a big chair in the corner near a window, and as I came into the room slightly ahead of my flatmate, I could see her do a visible double-take. She then looked me up and down and said: "I wouldn't have rented to you if I had known you were Black."

I was taken aback, as this was my first brush with housing discrimination based on my racialisation. It had never occurred to me that my skin colour could be a barrier to renting a property. But apparently it might have been.

In the moment, I wondered whether I would soon have to look for a new place to live. But it seems that she decided that the fact that I had a white roommate and perhaps more importantly was prepared to pay in cash every month was enough to make my presence passable.

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“The Fact of Blackness”

Unpacking it much later I realized that like many people in that part of the town she actually knew nothing about Black people and assumed us to be somehow a different species and somewhat alien. This was no doubt the result of centuries of propaganda given that France was also a colonial power which enslaved people in the Caribbean and elsewhere. In fact to this day Martinique and Guadeloupe remain overseas territories of France and the colonial heritage is evident as you walk every street.

But it is interesting that the mere "fact of my Blackness" as Franz Fanon would say would be enough to exclude me from property rental. I maintained the property well, paid on time, spoke excellent French so we could communicate easily, had a job, and was well educated, but she still looked at me with a jaundiced eye every time the rent payment day rolled round.

UK Experiences

Sadly, that was not the last time something similar happened to me, because I also had a few issues in the UK. Though they never came out and said it, what else could have been the explanation for the place in London that was available in the morning mysteriously having been sold the minute I turned up to look at it? Or for trying to point out all the negatives of the place I was trying to rent in Southampton?

Given my work now, I see those experiences as part of the foundation that allows me to link experiences of racism globally. That year in France, as hard as it was sometimes, gave me an education in the day to day expression of racist values by seemingly otherwise nice people that I've never forgotten.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

Thanks for reading my perspective.

Sharon

Read the rest of the series:

• "I Think of You as White"

• Why Isn’t Your Name “More Ethnic”?

• "Why Don't You Want to Work for a Black Publication?"

Note: poll feedback is private - if you’re happy to share your thoughts in public, then please also leave a comment.

I am an anti-racism educator and activist, the author of “I’m Tired of Racism”, and co-host of The Introvert Sisters podcast.

© Sharon Hurley Hall, 2025. All Rights Reserved. This newsletter is published on beehiiv (affiliate link).