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RACE, STEREOTYPES AND POLITICS 85the root of the positive appreciation the French had of Tamasheq society. Thisstereotype is strongly connected to the stereotype of the Kel Tamasheq as slaveholders described below. Both the French and the new African elite held thisstereotype and appreciated it in different ways. The French obsession withracial difference linked to social inequality at the beginning of the colonialperiod can be easily explained in the way outlined above. However, the persistenceof this obsession in the late colonial period is less easy to explain. It ishowever very likely to have still been based on ideas of ‘white superiority’, andlinked to an idea of ‘white’ physical inaptitude to labour in Africa. Exemplary isthe Governor General’s circular of 1949 on the ‘bellah question’, which includedthe following observation:It is a striking observation that populations living in servile conditions are to befound in the Saharan and Sahelian zones of West Africa, where all attempts atliberation are blocked by particular difficulties: The existence of a nomad populationof the white race which, for historical and physical reasons, (...) can hardly be forcedto perform manual labour. 33Whatever its reasons, the image of the ‘white’ Kel Tamasheq and Bidândominating ‘black’ servants persevered. The social and economic emancipationof the former Tamasheq slaves was postponed partly for this reason, and dealtwith only at the instigation of Soudanese politicians in 1946. The stereotype ofTamasheq society as racially divided between ‘white’ lords and ‘black’ slaveshad by then been absorbed by the Malian political elite, often colonial civilservants themselves. The Soudanese political elite rightly regarded certain exceptionson colonial practice made for Tamasheq society as being based on aracist preference for the ‘white’ nomads over other, ‘black’, colonial subjects.For example, the ‘white’ Kel Tamasheq and Bidân had always been exemptedfrom conscription in the colonial army. That armed service gave some advantagesto the conscripts after their service – exemption from forced labour; asmall pension; and some status at a local level – was forgotten. However, theTamasheq slaves, the iklan or bellah, were enlisted in the colonial armies,which indicated to the Soudanese political elite that the exemption of the KelTamasheq from conscription was based on racial rather than ethnic grounds. 34 Asecond privilege was the exemption of the nomads from forced labour. Indeed,forced labour took a heavy toll in Southern Soudanese societies, and it musthave soured the conscripted labourers in the Niger Bend to see their nomadicneighbours being exempted. Again, bellah were not exempted from forcedlabour. These exemptions led many Soudanese to believe the Kel Tamasheq3334Haut Conseiller, Directorat Général Interieur no. 730 INT/ AP2 aux GouverneursMauritanie, Soudan, Niger, 17/08/1949. ACK.Mariko, K. 1993: 191-201.