Nearly 7,000 km separate Nanterre and Minneapolis. But the deaths of Nahel and George Floyd, both killed by white police, and the anger that these tragedies have generated, have been widely compared on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, the racial question is at the heart of society. In France, it is taboo, even in vocabulary, in a country which has always hidden behind the ideal of its republican universalism, accuses American sociologist Crystal Flemming.
Teacher-researcher at Stony Brook University in New Yorkand author of the book The Resurrection of Slavery: Racial Legacy and White Supremacy in France, she insists: “The French government must do much more to educate its population about the history and impact of colonial racism. »
What parallels do you draw between the death of George Floyd and that of Nahel?
The death of George Floyd, an African-American, like that of Nahel, a young Frenchman from North Africa, are not random events. In the United States, killings by police disproportionately target Native Americans and African Americans. In France, most people killed by the police since the 2017 law (on the use of firearms by the police) are French Arabs and blacks. The statistics in both societies reflect long histories of colonial racism, as well as state violence targeting these groups. Today’s uprisings in French suburbs are a response to police brutality and everyday forms of racism.
How do you view the French ideal of a “color blind” society, which refuses to talk about race?
When I came to France over twenty years ago, I was intrigued by the idea of “racial color blindness”. I also knew the history of 20th century African-American writers and intellectuals who were more accepted in France – and in Paris in particular – than in the United States. What I didn’t know at the time was that African Americans were often pressured to be quiet about French racism if they wanted to live comfortably in France. The writer Richard Wright kept silent about colonial atrocities, while James Baldwin And William Gardner Smith denounced the bad treatment inflicted on the French Arab population. Again this week, Valérie Pécresse absurdly forced a Saint-Denis high school to change its name from “Angela Davis” to “Rosa Parks”, precisely because Davis criticized French racism.
Wanting to treat everyone equally in society is of course admirable. Unfortunately, due to centuries of colonial racism and other forms of oppression, France never applied these ideals. It is terrible for a society to treat its citizens unequally while pretending that these discriminations and biases do not exist. I will never forget my class on the sociology of youth with a white French professor who told me that racism was an “American problem, not a French one”. More than ever today, we must recognize the reality of French racism.
Does the French choice of assimilation rather than integration come from colonialism?
Yes, a colonial-era mindset continues to create prejudice and discrimination that prevents French people of color from being treated equally. Young people from the suburbs frequently describe the daily humiliations and harassment of the police. The French government itself has acknowledged that young Arabs and blacks, particularly men, are stopped 20 times more often than others. For centuries, French colonial discourses and practices have labeled the peoples of Africa as “savages”. We hear this same language used today to describe the young people who take part in the revolts.
These are clearly racist ideas that have a long history in France and reflect the myth of European and French superiority over groups considered “uncivilized”. French colonization has been justified for centuries as a “civilizing mission”. It is a fundamentally racist idea which is incompatible with a functioning democracy.
Has France pushed secularism to the extreme, to the point of intolerance, especially on the veil?
It is instructive to compare the different reactions and rules between French Muslim women and nuns in contemporary times, to see the maddening inequalities. The widespread stigmatization of Muslims in France is a key feature of anti-Arab racism. This is important because French Arabs are the largest minority population. When the majority population demonizes Muslims and controls the dress of women in particular, these dynamics inevitably lead to cycles of social exclusion and dispossession.
Why haven’t we seen the emergence of a French equivalent to the Black Lives Matter movement?
France has influential anti-racist organizations, a long history of protests and marches against police brutality and racial discrimination, but there are differences with what we see in the United States. On the one hand, it is much more difficult for racial minorities to organize themselves in France. The policy of “anti-communitarianism” is a weapon to demonize minority groups. On the other hand, the international visibility of American anti-racist movements like Black Lives Matter tends to reinforce, among white Europeans, the misleading idea that racism is primarily an American problem rather than a social reality of their own country. Rather than making connections between racism in the two countries or expressing solidarity with anti-racist movements in France, white French people often say things are much worse in the United States.
Emmanuel Macron refused to apologize to Algeria. Is it a mistake ?
There are French people and organizations who confront the colonial past and resist the forces of denial and erasure for generations, such as Francoise Verges, Kaoutar Harchi Or Rokhaya Diallo. The Martinican psychoanalyst and author Frantz Fanon was one of the greatest theoreticians of colonial racism – and sadly, it is rarely taught in France
Apologies are important, but more importantly, action is needed to implement policies to address inequality and discrimination. The irony in France is that the state was the first in the world to recognize the slave trade and slavery as a “crime against humanity”. However, the Court of Cassation has just rejected a request for compensation from Martinique. What is the point of recognition without compensation?
Why does France find it so difficult to examine its conscience?
Centuries of colonial oppression and white supremacist ideology do not disappear overnight. The prejudices we see today are rooted in this history. French intellectuals like Arthur de Gobineau were indeed among the very first to develop and spread the ideology of white supremacy. It is very often said that the United States “exports” ideas about race, but the reality is that the French exported racist ideas and violent methods around the world in the context of colonialism. These ideas have been used to justify the theft of land and resources, as well as the exploitation of people considered uncivilized and ‘less than’.
Acknowledgment and apology are a start – but the French government needs to do much more to educate its people about the history and impact of colonial racism in their country. He must also understand how white supremacist racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are linked. I know from the work I do on anti-racism in the United States that it is very difficult for people to deal with the trauma and violence that racism has produced. However, the only way to build a more just and inclusive society is to be brave enough to recognize injustice. To paraphrase James Baldwin, “You can’t change everything you face, but nothing can change until you face it”.