- The National Consultative Commission for Human Rights (CNCDH) today released its annual report on racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
- This report devotes a focus to anti-black racism, a minority among those most affected by discrimination.
- Black people are, however, among the most accepted minorities in polls for the institution's tolerance index, which attempts to explain this paradox.
Do what I say, not what I do. This proverb somehow sums up one of the main lessons from the latest report of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH), which this year is devoting one of its focuses to anti-black racism. If black people are one of the minorities best accepted by French men and women according to polls, they are also undoubtedly among the most discriminated against in fact.
To measure racism, the CNCDH has conducted every year, since 1990, a survey based on 69 series of questions, which allows it to establish a "tolerance index", noted from 0 to 100, 100 being the highest. tolerance level.
This index stands today at 66 points. It has been progressing fairly steadily for years, and generally places black people at the head, before or just after Jewish people. These two minorities, for example, collected 79 points this year, far ahead of the Roma (36 points).
Thus, 92% of French men and women believe that it is "serious" to "refuse to hire a black person qualified for the position". "Yet in public debate, on social networks, in stadiums, it is towards blacks that the most crude, inferiorizing and animalizing racism is expressed," notes the CNCDH.
Overrepresented in marginal activities
People perceived as black are thus the most exposed to racist comments and behavior at work, according to the Defender of Rights and the International Labor Organization (ILO). They are overrepresented in low-skilled trades, and are hampered in their access to the most visible trades.
This is what the filmmakers and actresses say in particular in the Black Book is not my job , which also deplores the invisibility of black people in the media. There, "black people are rarely invited as experts", notes the report, particularly in the information programs. In fiction, non-white people are also strongly over-represented in marginal or illegal activities.
The litany of numbers does not stop there. Like this rental in Levallois-Perret which indicated this message "Attention, important for the selection of tenants: French nationality mandatory, no blacks", a black person 32% less likely to find accommodation. Black people are also more likely to be stopped by the police. According to another 2016 Defender of Rights survey, 40.1% of people who consider themselves "perceived as black" say "they have personally undergone an identity check by the police or the gendarmerie" (compared to 16% for the rest investigations).
"Darker realities"
How to explain this paradox of a minority which seems appreciated in the polls, but rejected in the facts? According to the historian Pap Ndiaye, author notably of The black condition: essay on a French minority , the existence of discriminatory practices and declarations of good intentions are perfectly compatible: "The progress of tolerance does not systematically reduce discrimination. These can come from "people who don't think of themselves as racist." The question of opinion is not the alpha and the omega. There are much darker realities that motivate this racism. ”
In the manner of a powerful beacon, the report of the CNCDH sheds light on these gray areas, and deconstructs the myths that populate our unconscious, be we of good will. First, there is the "myth of black hyper-virility", according to which black people are bound to be muscular, enduring, as told among others by Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Mangin in a book published in 1910, La Force noire . In contrast, since valued for their bodies, black people undergo an under-evaluation of their intellectual capacities, as expressed by the term "primitive". It is also the myth of the "good savage", which can still be found today in a fresco commemorating slavery painted by Hervé di Rosa in the National Assembly.
Good feelings
These prejudices, built over centuries, are so ingrained in our unconscious that they sometimes emerge in statements from public figures. This is the case of candidate Anne-Sophie Leclère, head of the list of what was still called the FN, who had compared the former Keeper of the Seals Christiane Taubira to a "baby monkey". Or this coach of the France hopes football team, which proposed “to integrate other types of players. Because the game is intelligence, so it's other types of players. "
Racist prejudices sometimes marked by good feelings. Historian Pap Ndiaye says he was invited to participate in a reading initiation club when he came to register at the local library.
White privilege
To combat these prejudices, the report makes a whole series of recommendations. At school, "The story of" great men and women "should also include people of different colors to break down prejudices against blacks. In the media, communication campaigns against stereotypes towards black people should be disseminated, and the Superior council of audio-visual (CSA) should encourage the representation of black people, in particular in functions of expertise. "For children, this projects a possible future," says Pap Ndiaye. A black child who has never seen a black presenter or doctor, how can he imagine the possibility of being a doctor himself? "
Everyone can also work at their level, especially white people. "White people have to put themselves in the place of black people," and think about their "privileges," to use a phrase coined by Peggy McIntosh in 1988. "It is acknowledging that being white is not neutral, that it's a color in a way, ”explains Pap Ndiaye. The latter considers the expression useful, because it forces white people to "wonder about their situation". And to add: "What white people can do is be adamant with regard to everyday racism, little jokes, innuendo. Being aware of these questions does not necessarily mean being an activist in the classic sense, but it is important to have a form of awareness of the intimate wounds that everyday aggressions can cause to non-white people. "
Tocqueville paradox
The CNCDH also recommends the funding of victimization surveys and testings, which will make it possible to grasp the specificity of anti-black racism, and to measure its evolution. As recalled on Wednesday by a column published in Liberation , real surveys followed over the long term are better than "occasional soundings that only allow a blurred image of discrimination". "We have photos, no film," says Pap Ndiaye.
Such testings measured over time would perhaps also explain another, more general paradox, revealed by this report: while demonstrations against racism have not experienced such vigor for decades in France, French women have never been so little racist in their statements, as the index of tolerance shows. Biological racism, for example, has become very much a minority: this year, 6% of French people believe that "there are races superior to others", the lowest figure ever recorded. But this is also the case for more "soft" forms of racism, such as so-called cultural racism.
In the absence of real so-called “longitudinal” surveys, it is difficult, however, to say with certainty whether racial discrimination has stagnated, decreased or increased. These studies would have made it possible to understand in particular whether the current outbreak of contestation is the result of increasing discrimination in certain fields, or if it does not rather fall under what is called the Tocqueville paradox, otherwise known as the "paradox of growing dissatisfaction ”: the more a situation improves, the more intolerable the deviation from the ideal situation. In the absence of data, we are all reduced to guesswork.
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