White establishment feel threatened by equality

A recent study led by Harvard and Tuft universities  show that White Americans believe they are more discriminated against than black people. In their paper “Whites See Racism as a Zero-Sum Game That They Are Now Losing” , Norton and Sommers write that “Despite the rush in some quarters to anoint contemporary American society as ‘‘postracial’’ in the wake of Barack Obama’s election as president, a flurry of legal and cultural disputes over the past decade has revealed a new race-related controversy gaining traction: an emerging belief in anti-White prejudice.” The methodology or the survey is simple: researchers asked 209 white and 208 black men and women to rate on a scale on 0 to 10 the racist bias from 1950 to today. Thus each group had to rate the racism against their own ethnic group, as well as the racism against the other ethnic group. The results show that white and black people both perceive that the racism against Black Americans decreased since 1950. The curve of the perception of the black group about the anti-black bias is very similar to the percetpion of the white group of that same bias, only with a versical shift.

On the contrary, the difference in the perception of the anti-White bias by Black and White test groups is dramatic: if both groups consider that the anti-white racism has increased since 1950, the Black group consider it is still extremely low inside the American society today, the White group consider on the contrary that the anti-white bias is quite strong nowadays, and even consider it to be stronger  that the anti-black bias since about the 2000′s. The curves of the anti-black and anti-white bias as perceived by the white group are even anti-correlated: for them, every decrease in the anti-black racism equals directly and automatically to an anti-white racism (this mechanism is called a Zero Sum Game). In other words:   not only the White Americans believe that in today’s American society, a white person is a victim of racism more than a black person is (!), they also believe that the improvement  since the 50s in the fight against the discriminations against black people is in itself a discrimination against the American White people. 

All economical and social indicators show clearly that if black people are, its true, less discriminated than they were in the past, they are still far from receiving equal treatment with white people. Access to labour market, housing, education, healthcare, bank loans: very few are the black people who did not experience these forms of daily and ordinary discrimination. So do the White Americans really believe that in today’s America, being white is tougher than being Black? Norton and Summers study does not allow to answer to that question, but the “Zero Sum Game” that is absent from the Black group and present in the White group might well suggest that aquisition of rights is perceived by White people as being a competitive race (due to a confusion between a right and a privilege), while it isn’t for Black people, maybe because fighting discrimination made to ethnic minorities requires the destruction of the paradigms of the White superiority. All at once, White people who were living inside a system where only white values were ruling things find themselves confronted to the existence of other types of values, making theirs non-universal. The White people not having to follow the rules of the others is not even an issue here: nobody ever asked them to; it’s the simple idea that their own rules now apply only to themselves and don’t extend to other that bothers them, basically.

It would be interesting to see if the same “Zero Sum Game” is observed in other societies where the domination of a group on another one existed and was (or still is) progressively abolished. A few cases could be studied, like for example:

1. Men/Women: do men feel that there is a anti-men sexism?
2. Rich/poor: do rich feel poor people have more rights than them?
3. Nationals/foreigners: do nationals feel they are dominated by foreigners?

And the ultimate one combining all others: is the life tougher for a White Rich man than for a Black poor foreign woman? Who knows…

French Football officials want racial quotas for the National Team

July 1998: France wins for the first time of History the World Cup. The whole country celebrates for nights and days the new heroes, symbols of solidarity, excellence, courage. The leitmotiv of the popular jubilation is “La France Black-Blanc-Beur” (“The Black-White-Brown France“): the multiculturality of France is proudly claimed, and the 22 young men of different color skin (black, white and brown) united under the French flag become models.

July 2010: France ends its participation to the World Cup in South Africa in the most disastrous situation ever. Not only the performances on the field were extremely weak compared to the usual standards of the team, but also the internal tension between the coach Raymond Domenech and some of the players proved how much the group was unbound. The ‘World Cup Fiasco” could have been considered to be the result of the growing pressure on players, the bad management, or even the too strong and self-centred personnalities, but it seems that some of the French Football Federation (FFF) officials want to blame it on the racial factor.

April 2011: French newspapers reveal that François Blaquart, the Technical Director of the FFF asked for the introduction of non-official racial quotas for the National Team: following his considerations, the ratio of Black and Arabs in the National Team should not exceed 30% there should be more white people in it. If not enough, it seems that the idea was accepted by some officials, including Laurent Blanc, the trainer of the National  Team. Laurent Blanc was a player during the 1998 World Cup; he was part of that “Black-Blanc-Beur” dream team, he held in his own hands this World Cup he won together with Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry or Lilian Thuram.

Apparently, ethnic diversity is a good thing only if the Black and Brown bring the world cups; in a difficult context, although, they are persona non grata. What is interesting here, is to point out that in the presence of players from migrant minorities has always been natural to French football and French sport scene in general. People like Luis Fernandez, Yannick Noah,  or Djamel Bourras who won competitions as French athlets were always pointed to the “Français issus de l’immigration” as being examples of successful “integration” (although there is absolutely no sense in talking about integration to the French society of somebody who is born in France and has always since then lived in France).

Nevertheless, although colored athlets are common in French Teams, one has to note that officials in Federations are almost never, never, anybody else than “white” people: colored people are accepted as bodies of the French Sport, but not as brains. Here again, the FFF proved they shared these racist views: Laurent Blanc, during this meeting on quotas, also mentionned that the team needs more “little clever white guys able to play the game smartly” and less “big, strong and athletic black guys”. For Blanc and for other officials of the FFF, the problem of the ratio of black/brown/white people in the National Team is then not only a question of “identity”, or “adequate” representation of the French society; it goes far beyond: they simply assume that the simple fact of being black/brown/white enhances some type of abilities, more intellectual for white people, and more physical for black people. These are pure racial stereotypes. They are, sadly, more and more common in a France where the nationalist anti-migration party Front National is becoming day after day more popular.

Sport was maybe the only field in French labour market where people were selected without any discrimination regarding to the skin color or origin: only durations, speed, goals, points, performances could decide. Now, it might well become the sad mirror of a desintegrating society, where gaps grow bigger every day. If the Ministry of Sports doesn’t severely condemn the behaviour of the FFF and doesn’t force the officials that pronounced racist views to resign, France would simply give to the French people the clear message that yes, they now live in a real state of apartheid.

When humor is a weapon against racism

I was in the bus, looking through the window, wandering from one thought to the other. At one of the bus stops, climbed in a group of teenagers, 3 girls and 2 boys. Like all teenagers, noisy and careless about being noisy – most of people here in Switzerland consider this as being misbehaved, and from the angry looks they gave them one could easily say that they were highly bothered. As for me, this ‘annoyance’ is always most welcome to me, as I consider noisy teenagers perfectly embodying life; it is the only period of life where one have an organic reason to be stupid and in the same time to be enugh aware of things to make sharp observations. Should I mention also that they were obviously Arabs, given the mix of some Arab words in their french talk and that were Muslims given the veils the girls where trying to wear – they looked quite unexperienced to it though – and the qamiss the boys were wearing? It might be by experience or maybe am I paranoid but I think I could say that the other people in the bus were not looking at “noisy teenagers” but at “noisy Muslims”.

As their loud conversation was ongoing – they were mostly talking about the celebration they were going to attend in the mosque – one of the girl said a joke, half in arabic half in french (this girl was quite witty in fact), her friends couldn’t help to laugh – so did I. One of her mates told her “look even the Madam is laughing at you“. “I was laughing at the joke. And if the jokes are going on like this all day long, I wonder how funny must be school.“, did I reply. We all went laughing, and then started talking. They apparently wanted to talk about school; proud to list all the jokes and tricks they did to the teachers and other students. As I learnt they were living in France (the scene was taking place in a bus in Geneva, which is next to the French border), in an area I know a bit.

One of the little stories they told me was about one of their teachers that apparently was punishing them everytime she was hearing an arabic word in class. The problem is that her allergy to any mention to a foreign language was even extended to their private conversations during break; it seemed also she never missed any occasion to emphasize on the fact that French rules only have effect on their lives. As a consequence, the young teenagers – that were after all like so many of us here, born in Europe from Arab migrant parents, and do not want any of the two parts that constitute their identity and culture denied – began to “outbid” about their Arabic identity. One of the boys explained me that for the yearly class picture, they took Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian flags they waved just at the moment of the picture. When the teacher received the picture, she told to the class “We are in France here, it is shameful that none of you took a French flag“. The boy replied “La France aux Français Madame” (“France for the French people”, according to a famous moto of the Front National, the french right-wing party). She dismissed him, and before leaving class he told her “A demain, Inshallah“.

The witty girl then told me that they were going to re-shoot the class picture, as asked by the teacher for it was too unacceptable to have those foreign flags on it. I asked them: “And how do you feel about it?“. The other boy just told me “We won’t have the flags, but we will be scowling on the picture.“. To that they all went laughing – again so did I.

Their bus stop arrived are they noisily left the bus – a relief to all other passengers for sure – waving at me “Salam Alikoum Madame“. And while I was seeing them crossing the street through the window, I was thinking: we all understood that it would be helpless to complain to the principal – after all there is certainly something in the highschool rules and regulations against waving foreign flags or speaking foreign languages at school – and sometimes racism takes so subtle forms that only the targeted person can get it deep meaning (the teacher would easily dismiss all allegations, if she was asked), that still the best way to resist is symbolic: using humor, for sometimes a joke can be a weapon against hatred.

April 8th: International Roms’ Day

April 8th is the International Roms’ Day (Journée Internationale des Roms). The Rom community is about 12million people, forming thus the biggest minority of Europe.  Originating from the Indian subcontinent and installed in Eastern Europe since the Middle-Age, they have been so far, throughout History, among the most persecuted people. Today, though we learn in our schools that they were genocided under the third Reich, there seems to be almost no awareness among our ‘sedentary’ population on how much discrimination and racism are still extremely strong towards Roms.

Indeed, there is no racism as common as the racism towards Roms. As a Muslim Arab living in Europe, I know how it is to be in a group sometimes targeted by hatred and misconceptions; but I also know that nothing extremely dramatic could happen to us, that there is powerful associations to fight for our rights, that as a part of the sedentary society, our economical, mediatic and political weight is big enough to act as a protecting shield for us, to guarantee us a minimum of respect. Roms not having this same situation, they seem to be targeted by everybody and from everywhere without anything able to counter efficiently.

When in France the authorities demolish their camps, when in Italy they are victims of the neo-nazi delinquent violence, when in Greece the police itself attacks them, when in Germany the government funds repatriation campaigns, when in Sweden 80% of Roms adults are unemployed, when in Romania and Bulgary they are subject to massive and institutional persecution, when in Switzerland the policemen write down the word “beggar”by hand in their passeports… do we need more to prove how far can go the democratic human-rights-friendly european societies with their own minorities? There is barely only in South of Spain that Roms and non-Roms seem to coexist in a mutual respect.

The most shocking fact here is certainly how “unshocked” the civil society is about this discrimination and persecution of Roms. After all, the perpetuation generation after generation of these behaviours wouldn’t be possible if a majority of Europeans would not have been that deeply hatefull towards Roms. Roms are generally accused by non-Roms to be thiefs, beggars, tricky, etc. As a consequence, the establishment make laws and (official and unofficial) procedures such as Roms can’t benefit from their full rights, nor reach a state of sustainable and satisfactory interaction with the non-Rom society.

Practically saying, everything is done for unallowing them to access work market, decent housing and freedom of undertaking their traditional lucrative activities; such a situation in itself would be already enough to justify much more criminality than what we are currently witnessing, but instead of being somehow aware of this and remedy to the problem, we see that an increasing repression on Roms is not only agreed by civil society, but also encouraged, for people do not  want to be bothered in having to bear the visible presence of those they discriminate (but besides this, of course, they have no problem in copying without any compensation their music and other artistic techniques). How far do we want to let this happen before to react?

Debate on Islam and secularitm: After 19th century ‘France des Lumières’, welcome to 21st century ‘France des Ténèbres’

Today, April 5th, took place in France a National debate on Islam and its place in the secular french Republic – more precisely, the initial debate on Islam in France that was renamed debate on secularism, in order to not stigmatize Islam and Muslims so pointedly. As often pointed out, President Sarkozy attempts with this debate to focus on Muslims in France issues in order to gather voices in prevision of the coming presidential elections. The different institutions representing the six most important religions in France (Catholicism, Protestancism, Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaim, Buddhism) declared they won’t participate, so did left parties. Even inside the presidential party and the government, the debate do not seem to be popular. Result: the announced “natinal debate” was finally no more than a “team meeting” of 10 on 30 ministers.

Were discussed: food in school cafeterias, mixity in hospitals, funding by State for the building of places of worship. The topics mentionned are all related to Islam in France: hallal meat, veil, the lack of mosques forcing Muslims to pray on friday in the streets. Given the context of North African unrest and more particularely of Libyan civil war, the migration trends towards Europe have slightly increased these last months: nothing massive, but due to improper instrumentalisation of the difficult situation faced on the Island of Lampedusa in Italy, Europe and particularly France lives with an rising fear of an invasion coming from South of the Mediteranean Sea, bringing with them poverty, unrest… and Islam. Thus, the debate on secularism and Islam of today was no more a debate: it was almost the first act of a trial where European Muslims and Migrant Muslims were accused of troubling a country that is explicitely insinuating it would look better and more prosperous without all those foreigners or foreigners’ children and all their too much visible foreign habits.

French President Sarkozy has been using and misusing Islam and Muslims in France since the beginning of his political career for electoral reasons. Today, the complete fiasco of his debate on Islam – he certainly expected to see the whole nation participating and thus enhancing a ‘snowball effect’ of explicit hatred towards Muslims that would have been beneficial to him – clearly shows to the world his weak posture: boycotted even by his own Prime Minister. After 3 hours of debate and 26 propositions (including a law on the “interdiction of prevailing religious beliefs on common rules regulating intereactions of public communities and individuals”), what is the real outcome? A further step towards narrow-mindedness of a center-right government shifting dangerously to extremist right-wing.

Nevertheless, if Sarkozy’s aggressive communication style and political skulduggery might have killed any hope for him to win the 2012 elections, his philosophy was deeply implemented in France these last years and is shared, consciously or unconsciously, on the minds of the majority of the French people. The people might well be annoyed by the President’s trick of using secularism for political reasons, still, when asked directly the questions that will be debated, a high percentage of people stick to quite islamophobic points of view, behind that same excuse of “secularism”: 42% of French consider Islam as a threat and 55% think Muslims are too much visible in France. When the French Minister of interior newly appointed Claude Guéant (life long Sarkozy’s ‘âme damnée‘, like we say in french) says that “The increase of the number of Muslims in France [...] is a problem”, there is merely none but the Muslims themselves or some dedicated associations (SOS Racism, MRAP) seem to be shocked or even paying attention to what one or two decades ago would have caused a French Minister to resign due to popular pressure. Last time a French ruler was pronouncing similar words, it was the General Pétain under the Vichy regime, talking about the Jews.

Shame for a country that deteriorated from nineteenth century “France des Lumières” (France of Enlightment) to twenty-first century “France des Ténèbres” (France of Darkness).