"Preventing fantasies from flourishing" is the objective that Sibeth Ndiaye claims to achieve. While 15,000 people campaigned this Saturday against police violence and racism, the government spokesperson has signed a column in the daily Le Monde and raises the question of ethnic statistics. Banned since the 1978 computer law and freedom, with a few exceptions such as research, according to Sibeth Ndiaye, these data would "name things, say that a skin color is not neutral, that a name or a first name stigmatizes. "
Measuring diversity and combating discrimination
Having precise figures on the different ethnic groups that make up the French people would also allow, still according to the spokesperson, to measure diversity, but also to fight against discrimination. These statistics are moreover a usual practice in certain countries like the United States, where each citizen also declares an ethnic category in the civil status.
>> VIDEO - Paris: blows exchanged on the roofs on the sidelines of the anti-racist demonstration
"Dangerous" figures?
But importing this concept into France is a slippery slope and very dangerous for Hervé le Bras, demographer and director of studies at the Graduate School of Social Sciences. "From the moment that everyone is obliged to classify themselves in a group, it becomes dangerous because they become more and more a member of this group", he explains at the microphone of Europe 1. This classification "therefore increases communitarianism, but also the danger that the majority will be more and more hostile to minorities: it would recognize itself as a majority, which is not at all the case in France."
What about categories
Not to mention that these statistics raise above all the question of the categories themselves, which are often arbitrary. If Russia counts more than 150, there are only five in Brazil. If the proposal makes its way, the first obstacle on its path will therefore be to first reach a consensus on this point.