I came to France to see how the country is responding to November’s violent suburban riots and the increasing social diversity they symbolized. What I found was a nation that has been forced to acknowledge the existence of its alienated minorities yet stubbornly refuses to concede that the French model of integration has failed.
It’s not easy to talk about race or ethnicity in France. For one thing, it is against the law for the government and private firms to collect data based on those criteria. As one leading French commentator told me, “Race isn’t a natural subject here as it is in America.”
As a result, people either use code words or approach the subject indirectly. French policymakers hold Britain’s now-tarnished social model of separate-but-equal multiculturalism in great contempt. And they don’t think much more of what they call American communitarianism — our acknowledgment that society is a patchwork of many distinct groups.
This refusal to allow ethnicity or race to have a legitimate role in civic life comes from the nation’s republican ideology, which discourages any loyalties — be they ethnic, racial or religious — that compete with fealty to the nation.
The problem, of course, is that a difference-blind state does not automatically translate into a difference-blind society. A survey in March by the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights found that 30 percent of French people openly consider themselves to be at least somewhat racist, up from 25 percent a year ago.
It’s not that France doesn’t have a tradition of welcoming and assimilating immigrants. Indeed, Nicolas Sarkozy, the minister of Interior and leading conservative candidate in the upcoming presidential election, is the son of a Hungarian immigrant, albeit of aristocratic background. But utter assimilation is the key.
More than a century after the United States largely abandoned a strict Anglo-conformity social model — in favor of the melting-pot ideal in which different groups are expected to add new elements to the nation’s cultural milieu — France still adheres to the notion of Franco-conformity. Newcomers can become French only if they can squeeze into the narrow cultural parameters of Frenchness, which include elegantly choreographed language, propriety and style.
Philippe Maniere, director general of the Institut Montaigne, a center-right think tank in Paris, has been looking for specific ways to deal with the country’s difficulty with difference. For example, in an effort to combat widespread workplace discrimination against minorities, the institute is encouraging companies to accept “anonymous” resumes that list only a candidate’s professional qualifications and give no indication of background. They are also pushing for affirmative action — called positive discrimination — an idea that candidate Sarkozy has flirted with.
Not even all French minorities are likely to agree with a new recognition of difference. Moroccan-French novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun opposes the idea of affirmative action. “Any discrimination is negative,” he told me.
In a world that’s getting smaller and smaller, France adheres to its own model of monoculturalism at its own peril.
— Gregory Rodriguez is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.
