Pascal Perrineau is a university professor and researcher at the Center for Political Research at Sciences Po Paris (Cevipof) of which he was the director from 1991 to 2013.
For several weeks, following the death of Georges Floyd, African-American killed, during an arrest on May 25 in Minneapolis, by a white police officer who kept his knee on the neck for almost 9 minutes, a wide A protest movement against racism and the violence of certain police elements in the United States started and gradually spread to other parts of the world. The echo of this drama took a particular turn in France in that, very quickly, the emotion was recovered by the Adama Traoré committee formed in 2016 following the death of a young delinquent who had fled, on July 19, 2016, during an identity check in Beaumont-sur-Oise and had been caught by gendarmes neutralizing him by putting him on the ground. The distant similarity of the neutralization techniques and the skin color of the deceased were enough to trigger an amalgam in which the French police were accused of the same excesses as the North American police and French society to be seized by the same racist demons as American society.
This work to build a parallel between the French case and the American case was the work of an active committee in the field, led by Adama Traore's sister.This work of building a parallel between the French case and the American case was, among other things, the work of an active committee on the ground, led by the sister of Adama Traoré, some experienced activists, activists of Indigenous movements, elements of the far left and some media support. Following a medical expertise ruling out the responsibility of the gendarmes, the "Truth for Adama" committee calls for a rally on June 2 before the Paris court. Carried by the emotion of the Georges Floyd affair, the prohibited demonstration brings together 20,000 people and signals the capacity of this small committee to lead the mobilizations against racism and "police violence". The slogans seem to circulate between the two shores of the Atlantic: "Black Lives Matter", "Adama-Georges", "I can't breathe", "From Minneapolis to Beaumont, make racist afraid again", "Fin à l ' police impunity ”…
On June 13, the same committee and other organizations called for a new demonstration in Paris and other cities in France. Assa Traore, Adama's sister, calls to “denounce the denial of justice to denounce social, racial and police violence (…) The death of George Floyd echoes the death of my brother. It is the same in France ” . In an astonishing reversal of situation the death of George Floyd is nothing any more but the echo of that of Adama Traoré and France a vague federated state of the United States of America. "The man in the grip of misfortune seeks a consolation in the amalgam of his punishment with the punishment of others" wrote Milan Kundera in La joke . Certainly, but beyond the individual sufferings, France and the United States remain profoundly different societies. The slavery and segregationist past is not the same, the level of violence in societies and the police has nothing to do with it, the racial divisions at the very heart of the electorates have no equivalence, the census of race and of ethnic identity is a reality on the other side of the Atlantic and is refused here… All these profound differences must avoid any amalgamation and yet some of the analysts and activists think French society in terms of an American society they hate . They are helped in this by a current of social sciences which, over the years, introduced the idea of a deep fusion between "class struggle" and "race struggle". As on American campuses, the social question has thus been ethnicized. The themes of "white privilege", "systemic racism", race as "social relation", "racialization", post-colonialism and anti-universalism gradually invaded the tiny world of critical sociology and installed an ethno-differentialist ideology which has established itself in many sectors of the University and of research.
Men and women would thus be locked in their racial, social, sexual differences and could not claim any individual emancipation in the name of a universalism which gives priority to what brings people together and not to what divides them into a multitude of communities.
A large majority of French people do not find themselves in the idea that their country is the place of systemic racism.It is in the name of a very specific anti-racism that the protest movement against police violence and racism is trying to develop in France. But, unlike the United States where a community and multiculturalist logic is strongly established, this anti-racism which paradoxically constantly appeals to race does not convince a French society which does not believe in its majority that we are fighting against racism by blowing on the identity embers. A large majority of French people do not find themselves in the idea that their country is the place of a systemic racism maintained among others by these important elements of the state apparatus that are the police and the gendarmerie.
First, it should be noted that the police, like the gendarmerie, are the subject of high confidence in France. In June 2020, 64% of those questioned by the FIFG declared their confidence or sympathy with the police. Only 25% expressing concern or hostility. Admittedly, among young people aged 18 to 24 the latter percentage rises to 41%, among supporters of the left at 45% and among people of another religion (especially Islam) at 47%. But in no category did the rejection of the police reach an absolute majority. The same applies to the gendarmerie, which is the subject of even greater confidence: 89% of the people interviewed by Elabe at the beginning of June declare that they personally trust the gendarmerie. In the same survey, 65% consider that police violence is more linked to "aggressive behavior by certain individuals" than to "a feeling of police impunity" (29%). Even around half of young people or left-wing sympathizers share the idea that police violence is often a counter-violence in the face of the aggressiveness of certain behaviors: 50% among 18-24 year-olds, 47% among supporters of the left. Finally, as for the personal confrontation with the racism of certain members of the security forces, this remains very minority: only 9% of the people questioned declare having been "personally confronted with racist discrimination by the police or gendarmes " They are 15% among young people aged 18 to 24, 15% among workers and 23% among supporters of rebellious France.
IFOP
Based on all these elements, only 27% of those questioned would "want to support the demonstrations to denounce racism and police violence". The percentage rises to 44% among those under 35, 46% among left-wing supporters and 46% among individuals claiming to be of another religion (mainly Islam). On the other hand, 42% of French people are ready to "support demonstrations to denounce the violence committed against the police and the police". 53% of people over 65, 54% of voters in the center and 59% of those on the right share this desire. A majority of French people remain very far from these notions of "state racism" and "white privilege" conveyed by a number of anti-racist demonstrators. On the other hand, the concept of "anti white racism" is considered a reality by almost one in two respondents: 53% of men, 61% of workers, 53% of liberal professions and senior managers, 64% of supporters of the right share this feeling. It is therefore not surprising that a very large majority of our fellow citizens (71%) are reluctant to any process of revising a History of France taken as a whole with its share of shade and sun. Even among young people under the age of 35 (51%) and among leftist sympathizers (54%) this desire to refuse the unbolting of statues or the denomination of "incorrect" names is in the majority. The national community remains attached to a unitary vision refusing any ostracism and any collective guilt vis-à-vis the past as of the present of a French society whose tolerance has not stopped increasing over the years.
In the last report of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (June 18, 2020) we learn that over the past twenty years tolerance towards the various groups constituting the national community has increased very significantly and that on a scale of 0 to 100 (the closer the index gets to 100 the more it reflects a high level of tolerance) the index which was at 53 in 1999 reached today 66. The same index vis-à-vis blacks is 79, vis-à-vis the Jews of 79 and towards the Maghrebis of 72. Many attitudes of French people reluctant to live as members of a society tapped by racism and violence are to be understood from this context. They are well aware of the many political, social and territorial divides which cross the country and do not want to add to it a supposed racial divide. The remark of the Algerian writer Kamel Daoud resonates more than ever in the ears of our fellow citizens: "Antiracism is a just fight, it must not become an act of intellectual vandalism or disorder in this fragile world." (Le Monde, June 23, 2020).
IFOP