Valérie Pécresse not a fan of Angela Davis. This Wednesday, the president of the Ile-de-France region is calling on the State to decide on the attribution of the name of the American activist to a high school in Saint-Denis, due to critical positions taken on the France of the latter.
“The name of Angela Davis does not make consensus”, declared Valérie Pécresse to the permanent commission of the Regional Council, which had to deliberate on this appointment before deciding to “withdraw this deliberation and to personally seize the Minister of National Education and the regional prefect under the control of legality to analyze this question, ”she explained.
Valérie Pécresse criticizes the positions of the activist on France
“While waiting for the State to decide, I will turn to the educational community and the mayor of Saint-Denis to seek a new name for this establishment”, added the president of the first region of France, who jurisdiction over high schools.
If “the quest for dignity and equality is at the heart of the commitment” of the civil rights activist, a figure in the fight for equality for black Americans, her “conviction that racism is a systemic matter” is a a thesis that “feeds community withdrawal and can encourage violence,” says Valérie Pécresse.
“A number of recent positions taken by Angela Davis on France pose a problem,” added the right-wing elected official, aiming in particular for a platform co-signed by the academic in 2021. In the latter, intellectuals from around the world castigated the “colonial mentality (which) manifests itself in France’s governance structures, in particular vis-à-vis racialized citizens and immigrants, as evidenced by measures such as the dissolution of the CCIF (Collective against Islamophobia in France)” or even “the law against the wearing of the veil”.
Republicans prefer Rosa Parks
Positions that are not really to the taste of Valérie Pécresse, for whom “in a French high school, we must learn to be proud of France”.
In May 2018, 14 of the 17 members of the high school’s board of trustees had approved the choice of Angela Davis for the name of the establishment, built by the region and inaugurated the previous year. The mayor of Saint-Denis at the time, Laurent Russier, had validated this choice.
But since then, “the regional right has always, under fallacious pretexts, refused to formalize this name”, protests the environmental opposition group in a press release.
The Republicans and Related group proposed in an amendment to rename the school in the name of Rosa Parks, another figure in the fight against racism in the United States.