How Do You Talk About Race?

I just listened to an NPR Talk of the World podcast called “How Does Your Country Talk about Race?” Don Gonyea of NPR asks a worldwide audience if the election of Obama has changed the way people in other countries discuss race, and if so how.

The piece is fascinating for me because it focuses heavily on the race conversation in France and illustrates many of the differences between the U.S. and France concerning this topic. As always, I’m a huge fan of NPR and suggest the podcast.

Living here in France has helped illustrate for me the influence of culture on the way people analyze issues and think. You might hope you analyze situations independently, but move to another country and you realize how deeply your cultural upbringing dictates what you think. One of the areas where I see this in France is the resistance to acknowledging any racial or ethnic differences as a means of creating equality.

The French, in theory, want everyone to be equal, and so refuse to recognize racial differences at the political level. In France you cannot ask someone to identify their race, ethnicity or religious affiliation. Thus, there are no hard statistics in France that include any of these categories.

However, as Pap Ndiaye, a historian, professor and guests on Talk of the World points out, non-white French citizens are routinely discriminated against in France. There are no statistics to prove it, but you will find very few Algerians or Africans (or people from other non-white ethnicities) in high positions in government or business in France.

The belief in “egalité” is held to with such vigor in France that people become offended when race is brought into the conversation at all. Recently, a French student of mine who works with me to learn English became livid during a conversation that brought up cultural differences. We were reading a short article describing how Athabaskans, a North American language group of Native Americans, dislike speaking when meeting a stranger. The article said that when an Athabaskan speaker is uncertain of the relationship she should have with a stranger, she prefers not to speak until the relationship becomes more clear. Thus, “introductions” are rather silent affairs where nothing much is said.

After my French student read this he could barely speak, he was so frustrated. He threw down the paper I had given him and exclaimed that the article was completely racist. He explained that for him, saying that Athabaskans speak less is racist. Clearly, my student thinks it is wrong to generalize based on ethnicity.

This summer I was trying to explain to a different student why I liked Obama over Hillary Clinton, and one of my many reasons was that he was black. My student became visibly angry and upset by what I had said. So, I explained again: yes, I think it is important that Obama is black and that I think his race changes what he can do for the country. My student vehemently argued that a candidate’s race should not change the way you think about him, that I should want a good president and should ignore everything else. I argued that, all else being equal, a good black president could do more for race relations in our country than a good white president.

Obama has been and still is extremely popular in France. This is not because he is black. I personally believe Obama is loved in France for one very simple reason: he is not Republican like the much hated, much ridiculed George W. He is adored here for that reason as well as for his charisma and the sense of honesty he emits. Although the French are hesitant to dwell on his race, Obama’s election has indeed sparked a conversation about the absence of non-whites in French politics. The thought that the U.S. – a country the French consider fundamentally racist – could elect a black president before France has caused shock waves here and a bit of introspection. There is now also more talk about “positive discrimination,” the French way of saying affirmative action which has been fairly taboo up until now. This change can be seen with the recent appointment of Yazid Sabeg, a supporter of affirmative action, as Commissioner of Diversity.

Of course, differences do exist and people in France remark racial differences and discriminate accordingly. In the NPR piece, an English instructor working in Paris talks about how his students with Algerian roots will describe themselves as “French” only to have a white French student correct them by saying, “no, you are Algerian.” The first student will then respond that he is a French citizen, that he has always lived in France, and that he is indeed French. As in this example, the adjective “French” is often reserved for people who have historically resided in France. French thus means “white” French.

Differences exist. They are not always good - it is not a good thing that Africans are discriminated against in France nor African-Americans in the United States. But if you don’t acknowledge differences you can’t acknowledge systematic abuses taking place, nor celebrate diversity.

I dislike being judged as a certain way simply because I am American. No, I don’t eat at McDonald's all the time, no, I do not think we should have gone into Iraq, no, I don’t always think about money. And yet it is helpful to talk about “American tradition,” “American culture” and “Americans.” I often make general comparisons between French and American cultures because they are fundamentally different, even if each individual is particular and unique. For example, there is a very different conversation about race going on in the two countries, and a different approach on how to discourage racial discrimination.