Another aspect of Ségolène Royal’s lack of vision is her attitude towards what the French call statistiques ethniques. At the moment it is illegal in France to ask on any official form, such as the Census, questions about racial origins or religious beliefs. In France there are only French citizens. Thus any figures about how many people of North African origin there are, or how many Muslims, are based on guess-work, and published totals vary according to the political views of the editor of each newspaper or magazine. It is simply not possible to say with any certainty how many North African, black African or Asian French people there are – nor therefore to get proper statistics about unemployment, housing, scholastic success, public health. There have been attempts to do so, initially by Michèle Tribalat, a researcher and more recently by other CNRS researchers, but their work remains unacceptable to many of their own colleagues, as revealed by a petition launched today to keep ethnic origins out of statistics.

At the moment, the only way to get figures about non-white French people is to assume someone’s racial roots from their name – which contradicts the idea of anonymity: you have to know his name is Mohammed Hamoun before you guess he has North African roots. But from there to say he is or is not Muslim (let alone whether or not he’s a practising or lapsed Muslim) is a mind-boggling leap into stereo-type. (It has always intrigued me that the French, who claim all immigrants leave their cultural baggage at the frontier and willingly adopt total Frenchitude, never wonder why couples of North African origin still call their children by North African names, and indeed talk in Arabic amongst themselves – on a train approaching Montpellier last week the air was full of Arabic as the French passengers phoned their families or friends).

However, moving in a more open direction, the Representative Council for Black Associations recently sent a questionnaire to all the presidential candidates, asking for their views on the principal of statistiques ethniques. Nicolas Sarkozy replied they are “necessary and useful”, in keeping with his sympathy for some discreet form of positive discrimination. François Bayrou replied that “Nothing is gained by concealing the diversity of our people,” which seems consistent with his honesty in other matters. Marie-George Buffet (Communist) and Dominique Voynet (Green) also said they are in favour of using ethnic statistics. Only Ségolène Royal demurred, saying interpreting ethnic statistics is “very delicate” because of “the risk of labelling”.

The fear of labelling people from other backgrounds is a hang-over from Vichy, when of course it became literally that, a label pinned to the chest. But that was a period when most “foreigners” had white faces and, without a star on their chest, could blend into the crowd. That is not the case today, when people from North and West Africa are rightly called the “visible minorities”. Meeting them, you don’t have to ask their names to know their roots lie beyond Europe. Denying on paper the evidence of your own eyes seems to me a glorification of blindness.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 8:48 am and is filed under General France, Political, The real issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.