Paving the way for a post-racial France : Interview with Rokhaya Diallo

by Anton Mukhamedov

The concept of race will never not arouse heated debate in France, where just in July of this year the National Assembly removed the word itself from the Constitution.

From the perspective of French republican universalism, for all French nationals to be treated as citizens with equal rights, their ‘particular’ characteristics, such as ethnicity or gender, must be omitted, rendered invisible, which justifies an official ban on ethnic statistics.

Yet, French national identity is inextricably linked to the social construct of race, whether we are talking of systemic racism,—the denouncing of which cost activist, researcher and journalist Rokhaya Diallo her place at the French Digital Council—the police violence against the non-white population of the suburban neighbourhoods, or the nation’s attitude to their diverse football team.

So when I met Rokhaya Diallo in Paris as she welcomed the arrival of a solidarity walk heading from the French border with Italy to Calais, we talked about making French identity more inclusive at a time when Emmanuel Macron’s government is increasingly reneging on its progressive promises.

Anton Mukhamedov: In 2010, you co-authored the “Call for a Multicultural and a Post-racial Republic” with public personalities including retired football champion Lilian Thuram. Will solida-rity with migrants who arrive to France to escape political violence or poverty help pave the way towards such a republic?

Rokhaya Diallo: These mobilisations certainly lead up to that ideal, which conceives of France as a multicultural nation. This country is composed of all of the descendants of the historical waves of immigration, whether those were forced or voluntary. There has been immigration caused by slavery which has nourished the Carribean territories and today—continental France.

A post-racial France will be that nation for which the racial divides won’t carry the same meaning that was historically attributed to them. So we are certainly on a path feeding that ideal.

If you had to write a similar call or manifesto today, would you change anything in the original text?

Diallo: I believe that the hundred proposals which we formulated at the time with public personalities of all different walks of life are as relevant today. Unfortunately, we have even regressed on certain subjects: some views audible back then are today completely unthinkable, inconceivable even. Eight years after its original publication, this call is still as meaningful and I would advise everyone to re-read it.

What are you referring to when you say that we have regressed on certain issues? Islamophobia?

Diallo: Islamophobia has become a central and an obsessive topic,—which is sad, really. Several of our proposals back in the day were related to that. Perhaps as a society, we progressed on the question of media representation [of ethnic and racial minorities], but not significantly so.

Your call was published at the time of Barack Obama’s election in 2008. Today, with Donald Trump empowering white supremacists across the Atlantic, do you believe this echoes any transformations of the French society?

Diallo: There is an echo, which is the fear of a “great replacement”. Indeed, there is this fear that between 2040 and 2050 white people will have become a minority in the US. The fear of becoming a minority has expressed itself in Donald Trump’s election,—so basically, a response to that of Obama.

In today’s France, those who talk about closing all borders, who sometimes actually go out on boats to prevent migrants from coming, demonstrate that they’re afraid of being invaded and replaced by the people who they consider are strangers to the nation. The boats [of these identitarian groups] are financed through crowdfunding, and some funds are coming from the U.S. So there is a pretty explicit ideological convergence.

How can we counter this movement, apart for demonstrating in the streets?

Diallo: Mobilisations don’t only take place in the streets. There are those who help in very concrete ways by hosting migrants at home or by helping and supporting them in other ways. In certain cases, this may lead to confrontations with the judiciary [interviewer’s note: such as when Amnesty volunteer Martine Landry was arrested in summer 2018 for helping underage migrants cross the French-Italian border]. In my view, such actions are fundamental.

When it comes to public personalities such as myself, who appear in the media a bit more often, not only do we have to continue to bring the issue up, but we must also write about it, document it and try to be physically present at events such as this solidarity walk. Walking is a very simple form of mobilisation, but it still works and can attract public and media attention.

In 2017, the government removed you from the National Digital Council (an advisory council on digital development) just a week following your nomination. To what would you attribute this back-lash?

Diallo: In France, it’s very difficult for a black woman to be accepted in an official institution while denouncing institutional racism, even on a purely voluntary basis. France is not fully ready to let minorities freely discuss all social issues. I believe that my speech was rejected not just because of the contents of the speech itself, but because such a speech was formulated by a black person.

Do you believe that the government of Emmanuel Macron has regressed on the issue of racial equality?

Diallo: Let’s just say that from the start, there was a lie: we have a president who presented himself as a progressive and who is—when it comes to immigration at least—responsible for the harshest policy since the end of the Second world war. When Macron travelled to the U.S., his immigration policy was even [praised by Trump], as in ac-cordance with Trump’s own. Let’s not forget that Trump is capable of separating families at the borer, using parents’ attachment to their children to dissuade migrants from coming to the U.S.

Last May, a TV appearance of veiled student union leader Maryam Pougetoux provoked a scandal, and the then-Minister of the Interior tweeted outrage at her veil. How can we counter these negative representations of French Muslims?

Diallo: This polemic mostly ridiculed the people who started it. Maryam Pougetoux was elected to her position as student union president and is therefore fully legitimate to express hersef in the name of her organisation.

There really is a generational divide between these fifty-year olds who had nothing better to do other than post photos of a nineteen-year-old on Facebook and a more progressive, young generation of her student union, for whom the legitimacy of Maryam Pougetoux is not even in question. She is a student, she won her union’s elections, so for them, she’s legitimate and this is not even subject to a debate!

Even though many young people join the far right, there are lots of others who see things very differently.

Photo credits : Philippe Huguen/AFP/Getty Images