It is very rare that a film gathers a casting only made of Black or Arab people in France

Islamophobia in the country of human rights – Part 6

By Vincent Delbos-Klein*

In 2018, the word ‘race’ was even erased from the French Constitution in the name of the universalist credo

To understand this phenomenon, let’s keep in mind that a powerful state censorship has long closely monitored all matters related to colonisation. Some films such as Afrique 50 by René Vautier or La battaglia di Algeri by Gillo Pontecorvo, were simply banned for more than 40 years. This long term work forged the national empty memory and erased many tragic but key episodes from our history.

Every pupil must know the name and the tale of Charles Martel or Charles De Gaulle, but who knows the massacre of October 17, 1961, when more than hundred peaceful Algerian where killed because they protested against colonisation? Not many for those who are not directly concerned, and this is a very serious deficiency that keep people from the possibility to analyse the present in the light of the past.

Still nowadays, it is very difficult to lead a study about racism since ethnical studies are forbidden or only allowed in a very few conditions (https://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2019/03/19/la-difficile-utilisation-des-statistiques-ethniques-en- france_5438453_4355770.html) in the name of universalism : a tenet by which every citizen is equal. In 2018, the word ‘race’ was even erased from the national constitution in the name of the universalist credo.

(https://www.lemonde.fr/politique/article/2018/07/12/l-assemblee-supprime- dans-la-constitution-le-mot-race-et-interdit-la-distinction-de-sexe_5330615_823448.html).

These measures might appear as a positive thing, but it brings a national blindness about the reality of racism. You don’t cure a disease by destroying the thermometer, if you do so, you just rely on denial. And since the thermometer is broken, there is a split between the official tale and the everyday life for millions of people. What if your chances of being arrested and abused by the police dramatically increase if you are associated with Islam, sometimes just because you are Afro-descendant, because there is no study to prove it?

The French government uses this ambiguity to systematically takes the side of the police and strengthen its legitimacy. And as a creed that claims to be good for all, universalism does not tolerate alterity, especially when alterity can bring a counter power such as an anti-racist association specialised in Islamophobia.

Recently, the Minister of the Interior threatened some anti- racist organisation after a teacher was killed by a Muslim man. “Even if these associations hace no link with the murder,” he said,  “we will send the police to bring a message” (https://www.ouest- france.fr/politique/gerald-darmanin/lutte-contre-l-islamisme-gerald-darmanin-annonce-des- operations-de-police-en-cours-7020739). Some associations were dissolved such as Baraka City or the CCIF, surfing in the ambiguity between religion and terrorism.

Just like in Riz Ahmed videoclip : the Long Goodbye (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzz50xENH4g), this is not a nightmare anymore, but reality again. And censorship is not only made of policemen who ring at your door to send you a “message”, but also by tons of layers.

It is very rare that a film gathers a casting only made of Black or Arab people and if it does, there is mechanically a controversy about Communitarianism. If this happen with White people, there is… nothing, nothing because White Communitarianism is the norm of course. So in a way or another it is always considered as a problem when a racial person speaks and express its own point of view about what being racial means. For example in 2016, a national controversy broke out about the burkini, a full swimsuit that allows veiled women to go to the public swimming pool. Influenced by the far-right since the beginning  of the 21st Century, the French government uses a very biased law on the separation of the Churches and the State to justify the national obsession with the veil. Now this law is not about secularity anymore but mainly an excuse to harass and marginalise the minorities who can find in religion a way to gather and resist to the oppression.

The burkini is just one episode among a too another many seasons exhausting tv series. Many cities prohibit these women from accessing their swimming pool. In one case, the argument is as follows : the presence of the burkini in some beaches can bring public disorder because some fights broke out with white people (https://www.leparisien.fr/corse-du-sud-2a/corse-l-arrete-anti-burkini-de-sisco-est-legal-04-07- 2017-7108638.php).

In other term, you can be held accountable of public disorder if you are attacked by a racist person. But the core of the censorship here is even deeper. During this national controversy and just likes every previous national controversies about the veil in France, many people on newspaper and television – not journalist, but something that Howard Becker called moral entrepreneurs – gave their opinion. They explained (or should we say mansplained) with almost no contradiction to the public that the burkini was a tool to keep women from being free, totally disregarding the opinion of said women.

The logic is therefore very similar to the unveiling ceremonies : tearing women away from their culture, making their body speak out despite their conscience, turning them against religion and setting the logic of domination in marble. Most of the time, those people were male, White and not Muslim. In other words, they spoke instead of women, snatching their words from them. This propensity to dispossess a population of its own words by speaking for it is the mark of a colonial continuity and a systemic racism. Needless to say this article is written by a white man is part of the problem.

To continue…

*Vincent Delbos-Klein is a Paris-based filmmaker and a researcher in sociology