ARIS — Growing up in France, Maboula Soumahoro by no means considered herself as Black.

At house, her immigrant dad and mom confused the tradition of the Dioula, a Muslim ethnic group from Ivory Coast in West Africa. In her neighborhood, she recognized herself as Ivorian to different kids of African immigrants.

It was solely as a teenager — years after the invention of Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, “The Cosby Show” and hip-hop made her “dream of being cool like African-Americans’’ — that she began feeling a racial affinity with her friends, she said.

“We were all children of immigrants from Guadeloupe, Martinique, Africa, and we are all a little bit unlike our parents,’’ recalled Ms. Soumahoro, 44, an expert on race who lived in the United States for a decade. “We were French in our new way and we weren’t white French. It was different in our homes, but we found one another regardless, and that’s when you become Black.’’

Besides fueling heated debates over racism, the killing of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis has underscored the emergence of a new way of thinking about race in the public discourse in France, a nation where discussion of race and religion has traditionally been muted in favor of elevating a colorblind ideal that all people share the same universal rights.