As far as I know, at the time people who came from France's colonial possessions to the metropole were usually a) quite rare and b) looked down upon. So that while treatment of people of African descent in the French colonies might have in some cases been less harsh than say in the British colonies; the political climate within France made if difficult for them to enter France or even marry there. This made me wonder how Thomas-Alexandre Dumas was treated at the time, since he so clearly went against all these conventions (having a noble father wouldsurely have helped). As a follow up, I'm also wondering if the French Revolution's temporary abolishment of slavery might have had any influence on him and his career.
Dumas rose to the rank of division general in he 1790s, serving under Napoleon in Italy & Egypt - this short encyclopedia article has a bit more background. This page by the British Library includes pictures, like this one.
Tom Reiss wrote a biography of Thomas-Alexandre Dumas called The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal and the Real Count of Monte-Cristo. In it, he argues that Dumas was rarely discriminated against once he gained rank in the French Revolutionary Army, and that Napoléon's late discharge of Dumas was more a result of rancour than racism.
He compares their life trajectories : both rising stars of the early years of the French Revolution, leading armies through various assignments (in the Alps and then in Northern Italy, in the Rhine army) while escaping sanctions from the Committee of Public Safety. They fought together first in Italy from late 1796 to early 1797, and later on in Egypt.
Its relation with Napoléon is caracterised by Reiss as complex, as Napoléon recognised in Dumas a real military talent, requesting him to lead his cavalry in Egypt, but also a potential threat. Indeed, Dumas always put first the ideals of the Republic, and then the orders of his superior. It was made clear during the forced march from Alexandria to Cairo in Egypt, where Dumas organised a meeting between several high-ranking officers (Lannes and Murat among them) to discuss and potentially defy the orders of Napoléon. Napoléon confronted him about it, and shortly after Dumas asked for a new assignment. He was captured by the Naples kingdom on his way home, and was ignored by the new French government lead by Napoléon for the next year and a half.
During this time, the French Army started discriminating against peoples of color, ultimately banning any colored soldier from approaching Paris in 1802. This law presumably prevented Dumas from trying to recover in person the money he was owed by the army, and his letters were thoroughly ignored as well. According to Tom Reiss, and in his Memoirs Alexandre Dumas agrees with him, it was Napoléon's rancour that left him stranded in Tarente and then almost pennyless.
Reiss also compares his life with the Knight of Saint-Georges, a colored duel specialist turned leader of the American Legion. The Legion was entirely manned by colored people from the French colonies in America, and Saint-Georges chose Dumas as his second-in-command. The fall from grace of Saint-Georges was the result of his years in the royal army, not his origins.
Dumas would rise in the Army, the ideals of equality under the law of the Republic helping him go from a slave sold by his father to general-in-chief until Napoléon ended his career and brought back discriminatory laws from the monarchy years.