{"id":19032,"date":"2020-11-02T07:26:42","date_gmt":"2020-11-02T11:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/?p=19032"},"modified":"2020-11-02T07:27:05","modified_gmt":"2020-11-02T11:27:05","slug":"les-representations-raciales-menacent-lideal-national-francais","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/les-representations-raciales-menacent-lideal-national-francais\/","title":{"rendered":"Racial stereotypes threaten the French national ideal"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0We don't do that here!<\/h5>\n
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by Lydia Pouga<\/a><\/div>\n
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Illustration: Director Ladj Ly, artist JR, and former French President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande in Clichy-Montfermeil, April 2017 \u00a9 POOL\/SIPA Report number: 00803023_000011<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Protests and the removal of statues of historical French figures to denounce \u00abstate racism.\u00bb Actresses speaking out against French cinema deemed \u201canti-Black.\u201d While the concept of human races remains a subject of scientific debate, do these French citizens\u2014who brandish their phenotype as a banner in the fight against racism\u2014and these cries of outrage against a supposedly racist country signal the advent of a racialized society?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n
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Human races: a controversial concept with no real relevance to society<\/b><\/h3>\n

Scientists who oppose racial categorization will tell you that there are no genetic criteria in humans that allow for the establishment of a reproducible boundary between different human groups(1)<\/strong><\/span>. According to other researchers, it is possible to establish a genetic classification of individuals that corresponds to their geographic origin(2)<\/strong><\/span>. And after all, in medicine, we use the concept of \u00abethnic origin\u00bb to guide diagnostic testing or tailor certain treatments.<\/p>\n

The United States doesn\u2019t just flood the world with its language and arts; it also exports its vision of society. The racialist ideology from across the Atlantic is making its way into France<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Human races or not, when it comes to the \u00abBlack race\u00bb and \u00abBlack culture,\u00bb we\u2019re off topic: given that certain African populations are genetically closer to European populations than they are to other African populations, it\u2019s hard to know what a \u00abBlack race\u00bb would actually entail. And if there are \u00abBlack cultures\u00bb that should be contextualized (to paraphrase Sartre, \u00abNegritude\u00bb as the negation of the negation of the colonized Black person? African American culture as the negation of the negation of the Black slave?), it is difficult to determine what a \u00abBlack culture\u00bb common to all people with more or less dark skin tones around the world would be. The relevant question for people and the societies in which they intend to live together is not so much whether the existence of human races is scientifically proven, but whether the phenotypic differences we perceive\u2014which might be called \u201cracial representations\u201d\u2014 shape our behaviors and mold our societies.<\/p>\n

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Combating Phenotype-Based Ethnocentrism<\/b><\/h3>\n

In the 2000s, a series of studies conducted in the United States revealed that white people showed greater activation in a region of the brain dedicated to detecting salient information in the environment (e.g., danger) when they perceived the face of a Black person compared to the face of a white person\u2014even when that face was presented in a way that could not be consciously perceived. It was as if skin color were a cue that automatically triggered our surveillance system. However, subsequent studies have shown that context can cause people to overlook skin color. When play groups are created that mix Black and White participants, both White and Black participants activate this brain surveillance system more strongly when they see the faces of participants on the opposing team.\u00a0 Similarly, when we are told an individual\u2019s political affiliation, our brain\u2019s tendency to categorize them based on skin color disappears in favor of their political affiliation.(3)<\/strong><\/span>. When a sense of belonging to a group is fostered, this information becomes more relevant than skin color.<\/p>\n

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Ethnocentrism is a universal behavior that involves favoring individuals whom one considers to belong to one\u2019s own group, a group defined by characteristics such as phenotype, language, and religion. In situations where resources are limited, ethnocentrism ensures that individuals continue to cooperate even at the expense of their own benefit.(4)<\/strong><\/span>. The danger of ethnocentrism lies in its tendency to base the definition of a group primarily on a criterion that could be described as primitive and immutable: the phenotype. The French national ideal\u2014this aspiration toward a community of individuals bound by culture beyond their phenotype or the geographic origin of their ancestry\u2014 appears to be a more effective strategy for maintaining bonds between individuals in the long term, regardless of economic conditions, than the multiculturalist model toward which our society is moving\u2014all the more so given that the cultures involved are at odds over fundamental values, such as the importance placed on phenotype or religion.<\/p>\n

Toward a Racialized Society\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n

In their \u00abexorbitant privilege,\u00bb the United States does not merely flood the world with its language and arts; it also exports its conception of society. Can we draw a parallel between the institutionalized racial discrimination of the segregationist United States of the last century\u2014and its consequences\u2014and the discrimination complained of by certain French actresses? Fellini said he chose faces, not professional skills. Why are James Bond girls always women with perfect physiques, Hitchcock\u2019s heroines always blonde and ethereal, and Spike Lee\u2019s heroes always Black? The acting profession is cruel, but every director is free\u2014until the dictatorship of affirmative action also invades the arts\u2014to infuse his imagined world into society through the bodies and faces he wishes to glorify. Can we compare this to an American police force that kills twice as many African Americans as white Americans, according to a recent study (this study also shows that white Americans are twice as likely to be killed by the police as Asian Americans!)(5)<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0 and a French police force that doesn\u2019t dare to use its weapons, regularly insulted and humiliated\u2014if not directly threatened by \u00abcarefully planned ambushes,\u00bb as Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Ploquin\u2019s investigation has shown?(6)<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

No, the French state is not racist. The ambition of the French nation\u2014this community of individuals made free through education, equal under the law, united in brotherhood by shared values and a common purpose, and built upon a foundation that transcends blood ties\u2014is to strive toward a community that is culturally homogeneous, not phenotypically so. Yet, the racialist ideology originating from across the Atlantic is making its way into France. It is gaining ground in the minds of a youth deprived of a national ideal (the transmission of culture undermined by a condescending or repentant elite: a censored national narrative, the French language mistreated, etc.) and seduced by African-American demands, which take on the appearance of a quixotic struggle on our soil. Meanwhile, an elite is shrewdly exploiting the importation of these North American ideological products to take its revenge on the white colonizer and reshape the country according to its inclusive ideal: more Black people on TV, more Black people in the National Assembly, more Black people in the collective imagination. The French dream of a nation\u2014not post-racial (a term borrowed from the United States that implies \u00abrace\u00bb is or has been a variable in society), but non-racial (closer to the French model that denies \u00abrace\u00bb)\u2014 is now reduced to this half-hearted attempt\u2014nipped in the bud\u2014to transcend phenotypic divisions, a faltering will that bows its head in shame and repentance before this emerging model of a racialized society.<\/p>\n

\"AissaAissa Maiga made headlines by counting the Black people in the audience at the 2020 C\u00e9sar Awards, causing some discomfort \u00a9 JP PARIENTE\/SIPA
\nReport Number: 00947527_000008<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Pas de \u00e7a chez nous ! par Lydia Pouga illustration : Le r\u00e9alisateur Ladj Ly, l’artiste JR et l’ancien pr\u00e9sident de la R\u00e9publique Fran\u00e7ois Hollande \u00e0 Clichy Montfermeil, avril 2017 \u00a9 POOL\/SIPA Num\u00e9ro de reportage: 00803023_000011 Des manifestations et des d\u00e9boulonnages de figures historiques fran\u00e7aises pour d\u00e9noncer un \u00ab\u00a0racisme d\u2019\u00c9tat\u00a0\u00bb. Des actrices qui s\u2019insurgent contre<\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":19033,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_robots":null,"rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-latribune"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/antilla-martinique.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}