Wednesday, October 28, 2009
France is Not Racist!
Call me crazy, but I think it is hard to write a sensible op-ed without providing some context and relying on hard facts. A French Legislative Rainbow Named Desire, printed in the last edition of The Citizen, gets both the context and the facts wrong. The op-ed is a violent charge against France, where “political alienation among minorities” supposedly is the rule. According to the piece, in France, minorities are not acknowledged by the government while politicians can get away with blatantly intolerant sound bites. Ouch.The piece follows the public release of an amateur clip showing Brice Hortefeux, France’s Janet Napolitano, commenting, “One… is okay. It’s when you have many of them that problems start emerging.” Although he denied it, Hortefeux was talking about the French-Arab minority. The fact that this remark was uttered at a quite informal Party convention and that the minister was ostensibly joking – he directed his comment at a young Frenchman of Algerian descent who later backed up Hortefeux’s denials of racism – does not make it any more acceptable. Whatever type of humor he fancies, a member of the government should never make this kind of comment in public, especially since France is in need of a more diverse political personnel, as the article correctly pointed out.
Yet the op-ed’s main argument makes very little sense. The analogy between the French of Arab descent and African-Americans in the U.S. is inaccurate for at least two reasons. First, it neglects the religious divide between a largely Muslim French-Arab population and the non-Muslim Caucasians. Second, it completely ignores history. African-Americans have a long record of dialogue and fights in the American society: where is the Parisian Rosa Parks, where is the French-Arab Martin Luther King?
A French Legislative Rainbow Named Desire shows the same disregard for history when quoting an extremely suspect French study. Researchers have found that voters are more likely to support a candidate named “Marianne” than a candidate named “Samira.” Anyone who has ever sent a postcard from Provence or Bretagne knows that Marianne is on every French stamp; she has been the symbol of our Republic for more than 200 years. Would Americans not vote for a candidate with the Star-Spangled Banner Flag as a campaign logo?
The piece then moves on to the absence of “ethnic labeling” in France, which is hugely controversial on the national scene. Yet these debates are not even mentioned in the article, and readers are led to believe that Frenchmen have decided to ignore ethnic minorities altogether. The truth is that ethnic statistics are disputed because they conflict with the republican myth that treats French men and women as citizens first, not as representatives of an ethnicity or members of a church.
The key assertion that “not a single elected official in France protested against this repugnant remark” – reprinted in bold later in the article for effect – just boggles the mind; for several weeks, it has been impossible to escape the comments, analyses, denunciations and refutations around Hortefeux-gate. As one of a myriad of examples, Hamon, Royal and Besancenot, all three members of the opposition, have asked for Hortefeux’s resignation. Just google it – a precaution that might have been a helpful step before submitting the op-ed for publication.
Other instances of questionable judgment include referring to former President Chirac as a symbol of tolerance towards minorities – he too made quite acidic comments in his day – and the idea that “French law forbids positive discrimination for minorities.” Sciences Po, my alma mater, started implementing a well-known affirmative action policy almost a decade ago. Other institutions have since been inspired by the school’s approach.
It is still unclear if Hortefeux was joking or not, but regardless, his rather despicable comment is highly inappropriate. I agree with the piece that France would benefit from a revamped voting system with more proportional representation. However, I cannot be satisfied with an op-ed that shows such disregard for the facts.
France is not racist – of course, it can still do a lot to achieve better representation of ethnic (and other) minorities in government, but the conversation should start in a healthier place. This debate is not over, and the Hortefeux case will actually give The Citizen an opportunity to raise this issue again, when the minister appears before court in mid-December; yes, in France, racist comments in public are forbidden by law!
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- Bernard (Byn or Bun) Walters on Your comment is awaiting moderation. October 28th, 2009 5:01 am Of course France is racist, always has been, ever since they changed the name of Gaul to France. The Gaulish population was Celtic, the French were Franks, Germanic,and it was made worse after the revolution when every citizen was forced to become a Parisian and speak the language of Paris, which is langued’oïl, whether or not you spoke Provençal, Langue d’oc, Occitan, Breton, Basque, Catalan, Corsican or Flemish. A third of the male population of Brittany gave their lives for the Patrie during the first world war, hardly one of them could speak langued’oïl, then when the war was over the French Government decided it would annihilate Breton because it was bad for the unity of France, during the second world war it was the Bretons who answered De Gaulle’s call, when the rest of France was collaborating with the Nazis, then after the war, people going to Breton classes were imprisoned. Definitely racist, they don’t need Arabs and Muslims when they’e got their own to work on. Think Native Americans. And by the way, the Senegalese were taught that their ancestors were Gauls. There’s none so blind….
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