:: Home

'Lost in translation' in France

BY dominic thomas

The French republic considers all citizens equal and indistinguishable. The government maintains no official records about ethnicity, although minority populations are consistently subjected to racist practices; they are thus not only legally invisible, but government housing policies have also literally forced the underprivileged into the banlieues projects located at the periphery of urban centers.

Efforts to assimilate and integrate minorities have failed precisely because the official rhetoric has been systematically undermined by the semiology pertaining to minority subjects. Multicul-turalism is rejected for its perceived associations with discourses on civil and individual rights, which seek to protect citizens above and beyond the imperatives of the state.

Yet, paradoxically, the marginalization of minority groups has generated those very communitarian alignments that the French perceive as the inevitable outcome of American multicultural politics. Whatever one’s position may be concerning affirmative action and positive discrimination, these practices at the very least acknowledge that racism exists.

In attempting to assess the full extent of the crisis in France today, one should not ignore a broad range of economic and social factors that include the rising popularity of extreme right-wing politicians and the deep social fissures between young/old, rich/poor, rural/urban that were revealed in the May 2005 “no vote” on the EU constitution.

Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin’s appointment of the sociologist and critically acclaimed novelist Azouz Begag (born in France to Algerian immigrants) to the inaugural post of minister for equal opportunities somehow anticipated the centrality of these issues to the political landscape.

Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy described the rioters as “scum,” but over a decade earlier President Jacques Chirac had already declared that the main problem with immigrants was the “smell and the noise.” Well, France’s invisibles, as they are now commonly described, have been making a lot of noise lately.

In 2007, the national elections will undoubtedly bring these tensions to a head again, as “external” factors such as Islam and polygamy (alongside a long list of other scapegoats) will come to the forefront.

The French authorities must reconsider the legacy of colonial rule, confront internal apartheid and reevaluate the enormous contributions Africans have made to France’s position as a global economic power. Underscoring the constitutive nature of these relations would allow for a recontextualization of the cultural and demographic singularity of a nation in which not everyone’s ancestors are the Gauls.

There was a time when one could find refuge in France from segregation and political oppression. To where, one might ask, can one flee today?

Thomas is the chair of the Department of French and Francophone Studies and the author of a forthcoming book, “Black France.” This summer, he will direct “Global Challenges in Postcolonial France,” a new UCLA Travel Study Program in Paris.
Go to www.summer.ucla.edu/travel/GlobalStudies-France/overview.htm.