Lilian Thuram: “The title of the book is not“ the thought of the white people ””

Lilian Thuram, December 2, 2020, at the headquarters of his foundation.

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• Former footballer and president of the foundation against racism that bears his name, Lilian Thuram, has released a book, La Pensée blanche, which has sparked heated discussions.

• “Dividing people into categories related to skin color is to break solidarities,” he explains, emphasizing the deeply economic nature of what he calls “White Thought”.

• In the debate on the statues, the former footballer says he is on the side of those who debunked the monument to Victor Schoelcher, who decreed the abolition of slavery.

  “In the public space, children must be educated to understand that it is the oppressed who make reality change,” he pleads.

  
  

To be perceived as white or white is to be part of the dominant group.

It is to take oneself for the "norm", and as such, not to ask a whole bunch of questions that people perceived as black, Arab, Latino, mestizo, "non-white" in short, ask themselves constantly. .

It is being used to feeling like “universal”, “normal”, when racialized people * are still too often, in everyday life and in language, perceived as “others”.

Hence the discomfort felt by some white people who have seen the title of Lilian Thuram's latest book,

(Philippe Rey editions), without having read its content.

So much we are hardly used, as a white person, to the focus being placed on his person.

Did you think it was an anti-white manifesto?

Are you white and feel like it's directed at you?

No.

Because you are not white, says Lilian Thuram.

Neither is he black.

They are concepts, invented to dominate.

And this book demonstrates it brilliantly and pedagogically at the same time.

Interview with the author, who shakes up our conceptions (whom we also interviewed later on the PSG-Basaksehir match).

What is "white thought"?

Is it the making and use of race and race hierarchies to dominate?

It's exactly that.

It is a political ideology that has divided human beings into so-called races that are linked to a so-called skin color.

I say "alleged" because we use categories related to skin color which are false.

I had this experience with my son Khephren.

I told him "my love are you the only little black boy in your class?"

"He said to me" Well Papa, I'm not black, I'm brown!

".

I asked him what color were the others in his class.

He replied: “They are pink!

".

We use categories related to skin color but we do not know the history of these categories.

Until 1950 children in school were told that there was a superior race, the white race.

So it's very, very close to us.

You talk a little about yourself in the book, especially your family in the West Indies who, you say, had a forced abortion.

We don't realize it, but very often this [blank] thought would mean that some families would have too many children.

And besides, we don't say “families”, we say “women” have too many children.

Children in some part of the world are celebrated, others are not.

So we should control the number of children they could have.

In my family in Guadeloupe, there were people who were touched by that, they were operated.

Lilian Thuram, December 2, 2020, at the headquarters of his foundation.

- Christophe Saïdi / Sipa

You say that there is not state racism, but institutional racism.

What's the difference for you?

State racism is racist laws, and this is no longer the case in France.

There was a time, there was what we called the black code, it was racist laws made by the authorities [A text which endorses and frames slavery in the French colonies].

The native code is a text which says that depending on your skin color, you do not have the same rights.

When I speak of institutional racism, it is the sequel to that.

It is not because there are no more sexist laws that sexism does not exist in institutions.

Because institutions are above all a story of men and women.

Take the police.

In France, depending on your skin color, you do not have the same relationship with the police.

Some people are more controlled than others [Black and Arab youth are 20 times more likely to be stopped by the police compared to the general population].

Is this acceptable?

You tell your childhood to Avon, then to the Fontainebleau football club.

This is where you learned to see "where we're talking about".

Why do you think this is important?

If you don't think and understand that you are speaking from a specific point of view, you end up believing that there are no other ways of thinking.

Otherwise there are misunderstandings, it is in the discussion that we will understand why we do not have the same approaches.

I take the example of Christopher Columbus in the book.

I asked children, during an intervention in a school, if they knew Christophe Colomb ”.

They answered me “yes, he's the one who discovered America”.

So I left the classroom.

I opened the door on the way back and told them: “I discovered the class!

".

The children exclaimed: “It doesn't work, we were already there”.

And I tell them it was the same when Christopher Columbus landed in the Americas: there were already people there!

I heard "ah yeah?

".

Black people also internalize white thought, you say.

White thinking induces the idea that being white is better.

As the western world colonized the earth, this way of thinking became world-thinking, and still today many people think that being white is better.

When my mother was young, we - black people - told her that it was better to marry someone who had lighter skin in order to have children who would have "broken" skin, that is to say escape from the dark.

And just look at what is happening in Asia, India, Africa, very often women bleach their skin.

There is the idea that beauty is white.

Experiments prove it like that of dolls: we take a black doll and a white doll, and we ask children to say the prettiest doll, the nastiest, etc.

and the children put everything positive on the white doll and everything negative on the black doll.

Lilian Thuram, December 2, 2020, at the headquarters of his foundation.

- Christophe Saïdi / Sipa

To excuse Colbert, Montesquieu or Jules Ferry who defended racism and colonization, some say that at the time everyone thought as they did.

You say it is false: the deputy Camille Pelletan or Georges Clémenceau opposed it.

In the construction of these categories, if we don't remember that there have always been men and women who stood up against injustices, we might end up believing that everyone thought like that.

We're trying to tell you that we can't escape categorization.

But we can escape it, when we position ourselves as a human being.

In other words, these categorizations are deliberate and unnatural constructions.

And it was not the poor who constructed these categories.

It serves an economic ideology.

Dividing people into categories linked to skin color is to break solidarities.

You very often make comparisons with women and with male domination.

Why ?

And does studying racism make you feminist?

These are the same mechanisms of domination.

In categorization what we are trying to make forget is that we are human beings.

When there are categories, there is always one which is positioned as a “norm”, which does not say that it is dominant.

As "neutral" ... The "generic masculine" in grammar ...

Exactly.

And since those who are dominant, whether they like it or not, are not aware that they are dominant, we must challenge them.

I had to do some work around sexism and we always looked at the percentage of women.

We said "there are only 10% of women".

And I said to them: no that's not what we have to say, we have to say that there are 90% of men.

All of a sudden the men look around and feel threatened.

It is a way of becoming aware.

Most of us are unaware of what we are not experiencing.

Myself as a man I took a long time to understand that public space was not experienced the same way if you were a man or a woman.

You castigate some form of universalism.

And you advocate a renewed universalism, a "in common".

Explain yourself.

This is what we just said: pooling different perspectives to grow together.

Except that some would like their gaze to be considered universal.

When I hear universal, I mean plurality.

It starts with listening.

The idea is that we can grow up as human beings.

Unfortunately, some say they defend universalism but do not want to denounce racism.

You claim to be on the side of those who debunked the statue of Victor Schœlcher [who negotiated and then decreed the abolition of slavery on April 27, 1848].

Doesn't this contradict your desire to highlight people who have fought against racism?

The Foundation for the Memory of Slavery, for example, condemned this act.

Why don't you agree?

It is perhaps because I am West Indian, I am from Guadeloupe and I would like us to retain those who fought slavery, who freed themselves by themselves.

It is the revolts that make the institutions change.

All the equality movements came from the people.

That Schœlcher is in museums is normal.

But in the public space, children must be educated to understand that it is the oppressed who make reality change.

We forget that it was the slaves who won their freedom ...

You say that “white thought is not white thought”.

Why then call it "white thought"?

Why didn't you say “white racist thought”?

Feminists, for example, do not or rarely speak of "male thought", they will rather speak of sexist, macho thought.

Or male domination.

Is there not a risk of amalgamating white and racist?

The title of the book is not "White Thought".

Why do some people mix it up?

Because they are disturbed when they hear the word white or white.

It appeals to me.

Some people don't want to read the book just because of the title.

White thinking is not the thought of whites, it is this idea that "being white is better", and like I told you, no matter what color you are, aren't we educated in it? think ?

Lilian Thuram, December 2, 2020, at the headquarters of his foundation.

- Christophe Saïdi / Sipa

This is also said by the ex-spokesperson for the Indigenous Party of the Republic Houria Bouteldja, that whites are not just white people… [“The categories I use: 'Whites',' Jews', 'Indigenous women' and 'indigenous women' are social and political, ”she says in

Les Blancs, les Juifs et nous

] White then becomes synonymous with capitalist, bourgeois, Westerner, liberal, racist ... But, and it is what Martine Storti says in her latest book, isn't that mixing everything up?

The invitation that I make is to question identities.

We don't have to accept the white, or black, or feminine, masculine mask.

Perhaps we should return the question to people: why do you perceive amalgamations, where there is none?

Why do we feel amalgamated by this, in something we don't want to be?

Because maybe you live this categorization fully and you don't think outside of this category.

A lot of people say they don't see the colors, but the reality is that you see them… I often ask people a question in my lectures, I ask them: "who here would like to be treated the way people are treated?" not white?

And no one raises their hand.

So they know.

One thing I think is important to say is that you are not asking people who perceive themselves to be white for guilt, but for recognition.

Above all, it is already knowledge.

I manage to talk about these topics calmly because I have learned the history of racism.

We are responsible for change.

When we hear of repentance, of guilt, it is never the people who suffer racism who ask for it.

They are the people opposite.

Your book ends with a plea for respect for the land.

And for you, ecological destruction is the work of white thought.

White thought is above all an economic system which has hierarchized human beings and constructed the idea that nature was at its disposal.

In both cases, the exploitation is legitimized.

It is important to remember this and to return to a certain humility.

I'm trying to say that every living species is doomed to survival.

There is every interest in getting out of this system because nature can do without us.

* The idea of ​​“racialization” refers more directly to the social construction of racial groups, in relation to the use of the term “racialized”.

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