Interview with Lilian Thuram: France’s ex-world champions on racism – Sport

Lilian Thuram, world champion captain in 1998, has written an analysis on “The White Thinking”. A conversation about racism, dreadlocks and scapegoats in the French election.

Interviewed by

Christopher Ruf

Lilian Thuram, 50, is France’s record capper with 142 appearances and was the chief of defense for the side that won the 1998 World Cup on home soil. Even then, when the World Cup triumph was stylized in some places as the result of a functioning multicultural society (“black, blanc, beur”; “beur” stands for people with Maghreb roots), Thuram was skeptical. And felt vindicated when the then Interior Minister and later President Nicolas Sarkozy demanded in 2005 that the banlieues, i.e. the suburbs, be cleaned of “rabble” “with the Kärcher”.

source site