The Justice Minister and the Banana : How Racist is France ? : The New Yorker

The Justice Minister and the Banana: How Racist is France? : The New Yorker
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/11/the-justice-minister-and-the-banana-how-racist-is-france.html?mobify=0

Egalité makes France officially color-blind: the government is not allowed to count, let alone consider, whether individuals belong to a racial, ethnic, or religious minority. And yet, the reality is that the Algerian workers who were encouraged to come to France in the nineteen-forties and fifties were placed in temporary housing on the periphery of France’s cities, and these geographically segregated banlieues are where later immigrants have continued to live.

#racisme #joan_scott

The Justice Minister and the Banana: How Racist is France? : The New Yorker / November 14, 2013
Posted by Alexander Stille
▻http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/11/the-justice-minister-and-the-banana-how-racist-is-france.html

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/christiane-taubira-580.jpg

There has been a sudden spike recently in expressions of racism in French public life—one that has provoked a national debate and may lead to legal action this week. It began last month, when a candidate for the right-wing National Front likened Christiane Taubira, the Justice Minister, who is black, to a monkey, pairing her photograph with one of a chimpanzee on a Facebook page. Although the leader of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, forced the candidate to withdraw, the attacks continued. During some of the protests against France’s new gay-marriage law (which Taubira, as Justice Minister, pushed), the crowds chanted “Taubira, t’es foutue, les Français sont dans la rue.” (“Taubira, you’re fucked, the French are in the street!”) At one rally, a twelve-year-old child symbolically presented Taubira with a banana.