Introduction: Racial advocacy in France

Any consideration of the subject of racial advocacy in France must, first and foremost, contend with the reality that The French Republic is one and indivisible. Enshrined in the first constitution of 1791, this principle underscores the commitment to protecting the rights of all citizens regardless of ethnicity, religion or other social associations. Implicit in the paradigm of indivisibility is the refusal to recognise autonomous communities, whose formation potentially threatens to undermine the equality of all citizens. In order to assess the various challenges confronting French society, one must consider the historical pertinence of such an approach, while also seeking to determine its effectiveness in addressing the complex and diverse contemporary realities of cultural, political and social organisation. Adopting a broad interdisciplinary framework structured around the research of historians, political scientists, sociologists and literary scholars therefore promises to offer a more accurate, comprehensive and rigorous contextualisation of these issues, while also improving our understanding of the multiple ways in which French society has been transformed by demographic changes and the accompanying claims for inclusion and belonging.

In recent years, several political leaders (such as David Cameron, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy) and scholars have critiqued the ‘multicultural’ and ‘integration’ policies of European nation-states. While evoking the ‘failure’ of these policies and in many cases instrumentalising their conclusions for the purpose of electoral capital, the kinds of indicators used to measure the projected expectations or outcomes of such postcolonial mechanisms remain vague. Yet, perhaps not surprisingly, these debates have also taken place within the context of increasing claims for racial representation and equal opportunities. France offers a challenging context in which to explore these issues precisely because Republican ideals and values remain indifferent to the ethnic identification of citizens referred to as ‘visible minorities’, thereby triggering heated debates between advocates and opponents of minority representation. The emergence in 2005 of organisations such as the Conseil représentatif des associations noires (CRAN) and the Indigènes de la République – organisations that are inscribed in a much longer history of racial advocacy – provide a strong indication as to the kinds of ways in which racialised communities conceive of political activism and visibility in France today. Motivated for the most part by a shared experience of discrimination – either in recent history or extending as far back as slavery – the paradox is such that these groups are less concerned with adopting ethnic factionalist positions than they are with fostering greater enfranchisement in the face of disquieting nationalism and increasingly entrenched and monolithic interpretations of identity. Indeed, as Fatima El-Tayeb has argued in her book European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe:

In order to deconstruct the particular forms of racialization shaping contemporary Europe, in their continental commonalities and national differences, it is necessary to be aware of the historical formations leading up to the present point; a point at which, after the major steps of economic and political unification have been implemented, the need to define what makes a European, to create common symbols and a shared sense of history in order to gain broad support for the new continental order, has increasingly moved to the center of policy debate. (2011: xxxix)

In actuality though, the French population is constituted by a remarkably complex history, anchored in slavery and the slave trade, colonialism, as well as a broad range of contemporary immigrant experiences. To this day, France continues to control Overseas Departments and Territories collectively known as the DOM-TOMs (such as French Guiana, Reunion, Martinique, and Guadeloupe), and the national population includes people from former colonial territories in Africa (sub-Saharan and north African), Asia and so forth. In many cases, the shared experience of discrimination provides the catalyst for mobilisation and organisation as well as the accompanying critique of the inadequacies of Republican mechanisms in applying those principles that shape the polity. The French Republic operates a colour-blind model in which official government records are not maintained concerning ethnicity. The consequence of this is that ultimately all claims for visibility and recognition are interpreted as expressions of ethnicity and therefore as challenges to sacrosanct principles of invisibility. How, therefore, can a society discuss a problem that does not theoretically exist? In recent years, attempts have been made to address this tautology by exploring the usefulness of statistiques ethniques or, as they have also been alluded to in order to evacuate the term ‘ethnicity’, as statistiques de la diversité.

As sociologist Michel Wieviorka has pointed out, the ‘ethnicisation’ and ‘racialisation’ of society are

sources d’une formidable ambivalence, puisque d’un côté, elles permettent à des acteurs de se constituer collectivement, et d’agir, y compris pour faire reculer le racisme, mais que d’un autre côté, elles contribuent à la fragmentation culturelle, sociale, voire raciale, mettant en péril le lien social. (Wieviorka, 2008: 302)

He goes on to explain that some have argued that in order to ‘lutter efficacement contre les discriminations, il faut les établir, les connaître et les mesurer, ce qui peut passer par l’établissement de données quantitatives’ (Wieviorka, 2009: 39), thereby providing ‘individus défavorisés les moyens de pallier les inégalités sociales qui les affectent pour des raisons lourdes, ancrés dans l’histoire et dans les mécanismes du fonctionnement social’ (Wieviorka, 2009: 46). To this end, President Sarkozy commissioned a number of exploratory reports to determine what kinds of mechanisms might be feasible. Firstly, Yazid Sabeg (Commissaire à la diversité et à l’égalité des chances) headed the Comité pour la mesure de la diversité et des discriminations (COMMED) and drafted a report entitled Programme d’action et recommandations pour la diversité et l’égalité des chances: Rapport au Président de la République (2009) in which he outlined a number of initiatives while falling short of advocating the implementation of actual tools for measuring inequality. And, secondly, Simone Veil headed the Comité de réflexion sur le préambule de la Constitution that considered whether to augment the Republic’s motto – Liberté Égalité Fraternité – with the term Diversité, concluding that this was not advisable (2008). At the same time, a group of scholars and public intellectuals formed an alternative commission, the Commission alternative sur les ‘statistiques ethniques’ et les ‘discriminations’ (CARSED; see Badinter, 2009), denouncing these initiatives and what they characterised dismissively as the ‘return of race’ to French society.

The question of racial advocacy is an issue that has a genuinely tentacular reach in French society given the many ways in which the historical encounter with the ‘other’ has been framed and reformulated over time. Certainly, when it comes to the consideration of slavery and the slave trade, recognition of these practices has been crucial in redefining the official contours of French history and in incorporating that history into the national memory. To a certain degree, the French have been pioneers in this regard, certainly when it comes to a comparative European context, enacting the Taubira Law on 21 May 2001 (named after the Deputy Christiane Taubira from French Guiana) that recognised slavery as a crime against humanity:

Article 1: La République française reconnaît que la traite négrière transatlantique ainsi que la traite dans l’océan Indien d’une part, et l’esclavage d’autre part, perpétrés à partir du 15ème siècle, aux Amériques et aux Caraïbes, dans l’océan Indien et en Europe contre les populations africaines, amérindiennes, malgaches et indiennes constituent un crime contre l’humanité. (Liauzu, 2006: 164–5)

Of course (and we shall return to this dimension shortly in reviewing the article written by Nicolas Bancel for this volume on the symbolism of the French parliament’s support of a decree in 2005 in which the ‘positive role’ of French colonialism was declared), French colonialism has been denounced by many for the cultural superiority it embraced as justification for exploitation. Yet, in 2004, French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin appointed the Comité pour la mémoire de l’esclavage and a year later it published a comprehensive report outlining recommendations with implications for teaching, research and the commemoration of slavery and the slave trade (Comité pour la mémoire de l’esclavage, 2005). One of the significant outcomes of the committee’s report was the inauguration of a Journée nationale de commémoration, to be celebrated annually on 10 May (the day on which the French National Assembly voted on the motion) (see Vergès, 2001). Alongside these important developments, key forms of representation could also be noted, such as Gens de la Caraïbe, created in 1999 to strengthen Caribbean cultural networks, and associations such as Africagora that concentrate on improving professional opportunities for Africans, or the Collectif des Antillais-Guyanais-Réunionnais that focuses on the representation of these populations in mainland France and has emerged as a powerful lobbyist (see Blanchard et al., 2011).

These measures must of course be considered steps in the right direction. However, overall, problems remain unresolved. President Sarkozy had been an advocate of a French-style affirmative action policy known as ‘discrimination positive’, a model primarily concerned with redressing inequalities through economic measures rather than emphasising ethnicity as the root cause of these problems. Furthermore, Sarkozy also made three high-ranking visible minority appointments to his first administration: Rachida Dati as Minister of Justice, Rama Yade as Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Fadela Amara as Secretary of State for Urban Policies. To a certain extent, the recently elected François Hollande has applied a similar rationale in insisting that his cabinet better represent France, and he made sure that an equal number of women and men were appointed, as well as roughly 25 per cent visible minorities. Of course, affirmative action in the United States and the Race Relations Act of 1976 in Britain (which yielded the Commission for Racial Equality) constituted devices for ethnic monitoring while also offering legal recognition of discrimination. But the greater problem, as Achille Mbembe has shown, is that:

Purposefully forgetting the historical experiences of slavery and colonization, the neorevisionist networks claim that racism was never a fully integrated trope of French society and that, contrary to the United States, racial segregation in France has never been legal or institutionalized. In France, racism has always been subject to a symbolic prohibition and supposedly only ever been marginal. Accordingly, discrimination, when it happens, is negligible and, as some portend, would disappear if economic inequalities were greatly reduced. Others maintain that this marginal discrimination would be diminished if France could ‘select’ its immigrants. Furthermore, the country’s fundamental social problems are rooted in antiwhite racism. When racism against nonwhites is acknowledged, it is treated as a mere cultural difference. Under such conditions, advocacy for affirmative action is stigmatized, for affirmative action would put the republic at risk of ‘ethnicizing’ its social ties. (Mbembe, 2011: 108)

As a way of alleviating some of these pressures, one of the prerequisites would be to actually obtain an improved idea as to the contributions visible minorities have made to French society (thereby highlighting the constitutive nature of social relations and moving away from narrow and inaccurate historical accounts), while also attempting to ascertain the numeric presence. To this end, the recent publication of La France Noire: trois siècles de présences achieved both these objectives, while also confirming that:

Cette France noire est de facto composite et diverse. À la fois métropolitaine, ultramarine et diasporique, elle se revendique ou non comme ‘noire’ (ou ‘métisse’) selon les contextes et les postures. L’enquête du CRAN-Sofrès … apporte quelques données majeures pour mieux comprendre ces identités composites au présent. Un sixième de cette population se juge ‘métisse’ en métropole, au sein d’une population que l’on ne peut quantifier dans sa totalité avec les espaces ultramarins (par absence de statistiques ethnoraciales), mais qui doit se situer entre cinq et cinq millions et demi de personnes (soit 8 à 10% de la population) selon les estimations hautes, et autour de 5% de la population (soit environ 3 millions de personnes) pour les estimations basses. (Blanchard et al., 2011: 47)

Racial advocacy, mobilisation and representation have occurred in numerous ways in French history. What has remained constant, however, is the persistent juxtaposition of ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, namely:

one of the chief unspoken truths of the French republican ideal – the implicit ‘whiteness’ of being French … The republic wants to be secular and color-blind. The consequences of this radical indifference to difference are such that collecting ‘ethnic statistics’ is forbidden by law and any form of affirmative action decried. The perverse effect of this indifference to difference is thus a relative indifference to discrimination. (Mbembe, 2011: 93)

In some cases, we are finding evidence of racial identity formation not only according to national and transnational configurations, but also in a pan-European framework as a result of greater awareness of widespread discrimination throughout the European Union that comes from enhanced racial consciousness (see Hine et al., 2009; Raphael-Hernandez, 2004; Crumly Van Deventer and Thomas, 2011). As such, as El-Tayeb has shown:

Europe appears as a promising terrain to explore and advance the possibilities of new conceptualisations of minority identity, inclusive of but not necessarily limited to black Europeans. Taken in its totality and national differences admitted, black European communities show important commonalities, rooted in a perception of Europe as a white continent living on in current debates on postnational identities. Consequently, the various black populations of Europe are increasingly subjected to the same conditions and confront an ever more homogenous image of a continent that up to now has excluded its residents of color. (El-Tayeb, 2011: 50)

The uprisings that took place in the French banlieues projects in 2005 provided compelling images of social disenfranchisement and of the glaring inequities in French society. When the authorities interpreted these protests as examples of failed integration, they demonstrated an unusual degree of ignorance pertaining to the circumstances in these neighbourhoods and the responsibility of longstanding racialised mechanisms in creating this dissymmetry. The emergence of new racial advocacy organisations such as the CRAN, committed to promoting tolerance and Republican unity, and the Indigènes de la République, whose members self-designate as ‘Nous, descendants d’esclaves et de déportés africains, filles et fils de colonisés et d’immigrés, nous, Français et non-Français vivants en France, militantes et militants engagé-es dans les luttes contre l’oppression et les discriminations produites par la République postcoloniale’, underline the transhistorical dimension of the questions they seek to address. The creation of these new organisations was not a coincidence, responding as they did to the new political and social circumstances of the twenty-first century. In fact, the civic-mindedness of this new generation of global citizens reflects a desire to contribute to society. Nicolas Sarkozy’s decision in 2007 to establish a Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development was therefore strikingly at odds with the hopes and aspirations of these new groups and heralded the deep-seated divisions in French society between those who value and embrace a diverse society and those who prefer instead to adhere to outdated models that have no correlation with the realities of today’s globalised world.

In addition to the above-mentioned organisations, a range of initiatives saw the light of day, confirming the tremendous public interest in finding solutions to these social problems. An Appel pour une République multiculturelle et postraciale suivi de cent propositions pluricitoyennes was published in the magazine Respect (Thuram et al., 2009) and an impressive array of books has been published on various aspects of the ‘black question’ in France: Durpaire (2006), D and É Fassin (2006), Cottias (2007), Lozès (2007), Yade-Zimet (2007), Onana (2007), Ribbe (2007), Ndiaye (2008), Dorlin (2009), Foix (2009), Thuram (2010), Diallo (2011), Mbembe (2010) and Mabanckou (2012). In each and every case, these initiatives emerged from a long French tradition of racial advocacy: from the Marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme (1983) to the sans-papiers movement in the late 1990s, and then all the way up to the uprisings and the post-2005 era.

France thus offers a unique socio-cultural context in which to examine these challenging issues. Exploring the longer history of racial identification and representation and contrasting it with recent moves towards racial advocacy and recognition, this special volume of French Cultural Studies provides compelling insights into contemporary debates that have and are continuing to shape the fabric of twenty-first-century French society where questions of national identity, memory, immigration, racism and ethnic identification are at the forefront of political discussions and exchanges. Naturally, as we shall see, the implications are far-reaching and not without consequences for the very future of French Republicanism.

David Murphy turns his attention to black internationalism during the interwar era, with a particular focus on Lamine Senghor (1899–1927), a young Senegalese man who became one of the most influential black anti-colonialist figures. Excavating Senghor’s activism serves to reveal the magnitude of his contribution in shaping the architecture of racial advocacy in France, while also providing us with invaluable insights on the cultural, political and social circumstances that would heighten race consciousness and help articulate anti-colonial discourse. Additionally, of course, inroads made by Senghor and his close collaborators also facilitated the kinds of interconnected networks that would subsequently mould the theorisation of Negritude, one of the twentieth century’s most influential cultural, intellectual and political movements. One of the main challenges Senghor confronted – indeed, one that each and every successive racial advocacy organisation has had to tackle – concerned the question of balancing the agenda and objectives of advocacy groups with the imperative of building strategic alliances with mainstream political organisations.

In 1788, the abolitionist Société des amis des noirs relinquished the word ‘nègre’ – which was too closely associated with slaves – in naming their organisation, preferring instead the label ‘noir’. As we can see, in the context of advocacy, the representational mode has played a defining role in announcing the political goals of the organisation. We can thus see how the manoeuvring that took place in 1788 was but a precursor to the kinds of negotiations and decisions found in the minutes of meetings of future organisations. La Ligue Universelle de Défense de la Race Nègre (LUDRN) was created in 1924, but Senghor was a strong believer in the need for independent black organisations in order to promote the interests of black people, and in 1926 created the Comité de Défense de la race nègre (CDRN): ‘the CDRN posited slavery and racism towards black people as a betrayal of the ideals and values of Republican France’ (Murphy). As Murphy points out, one of the central questions during the interwar period concerned the various ways in which a (trans)national politics of communism and pan-Africanism shaped racial advocacy, one in which Marcus Garvey was especially influential (and for whom the term ‘Negro’ served as an affirmative designation:

the CDRN’s use of the term ‘nègre’ as a proud badge of self-identification … In an era when the term ‘noir’ was widely gaining prominence as a more dignified replacement for ‘nègre’, which was seen as derogatory and demeaning, Senghor and the CDRN deliberately chose ‘Nègre’ as the term that encompasses all black people … The ‘nègre’ is an individual who has been downtrodden and oppressed through slavery, colonialism and segregation: the terms ‘noir’ and ‘homme de couleur’ are seen merely as escape routes for educated blacks seeking a place in a dominant white society. The first step towards liberation is to embrace one’s identity as a ‘nègre’, for that allows one to see the true nature of Western oppression of the black world. (Murphy)

Gillian Glaes’s article shows how a future generation of activists were able to build on the inroads made during the interwar period and how these provided the foundation for post-war and postcolonial racial advocacy. Of particular interest to readers at this juncture, is the manner in which racial advocacy movements aspired to collapse the concern with representation with the actual mobilisation of their target membership. The interwar period witnessed the increasing visibility of the Algerian nationalist organisation Étoile Nord-Africaine and the emergence of African immigrant trade unions such as the Union des Travailleurs nègres (UTN); the Union Générale des Travailleurs d’Afrique Noire (UGTAN), established in 1955, can therefore be seen as an outgrowth of these. As Glaes reveals:

In undertaking this type of political and social mobilisation, twentieth-century colonial and postcolonial migration to France forced French society to come to terms with the challenges of ethnic and racial diversity much sooner than many contemporary studies take into account, as confirmed by the activities undertaken by the UGTSF. Colonial workers, students, artists and intellectuals from North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and Indochina took up residence in metropolitan French cities (migration patterns that of course continued to varying degrees after decolonisation) and established important networks of sociability and support which translated into various forms of racial advocacy. (Glaes)

Under the charismatic leadership of Sally N’Dongo, the Union Générale des Travailleurs Sénégalais en France (UGTSF) concentrated its efforts during the 1960s and 1970s on the economic circumstances of postcolonial African immigrants in France. Closer scrutiny of this period serves to document the political and social ‘condition’ of these workers, while also introducing a record of advocacy in the domain of equal opportunity in France. These organisations also ‘marked the transition from anti-colonialism to anti-racism within the immigrant associational realm’, and ‘immigrants from West Africa and other regions of the French empire demanded rights within metropolitan society, decrying racism and highlighting the exploitation they endured as immigrant workers’ (Glaes). This new approach had a significant impact since it effectively extended the realm of advocacy into the domain of immigration and broadened its constituency by expanding membership categories beyond uniquely racial configurations, thereby forcing French society to revise its perception of immigrants and evaluate their role in society.

The poor living conditions and exploitative work environments facing African immigrants were now compounded by the introduction of increasingly harsh immigration policies that resulted in them being targeted for deportation, and it ‘was not a coincidence that African immigrant political activism became more vocal and visible within French society during this period’ (Glaes). Particular attention needs to be paid to the changes taking place at this time in the meaning of the word ‘immigration’ in France and in French. As Alec G. Hargreaves explains:

The use of the word ‘immigration to encompass what are in many respects post-migratory processes, is itself symptomatic of the difficulties experienced by the French in coming to terms – both literally and ontologically – with the settlement of people of immigrant origin … such people are commonly referred to as ‘ethnic minorities’ or ‘minority ethnic groups’, and a large part of what the French call ‘immigration’ is commonly known as ‘race relations’. (Hargreaves, 1995: 1–2)

Furthermore, as Michel Wieviorka has shown, a symbolic shift has also taken place from the early category of ‘travailleurs immigrés’ towards terms such as ‘Arabs’, ‘beurs’ and ‘blacks’: ‘the transition from a social definition of immigration to an ethnic, national, religious, or racial one is a complex phenomenon that owes much to exclusion, stigmatization, or racism’ (Wieviorka, 1996: 16). Thus, not only were African immigrants the object of policies aimed at restricting their circulation into France, but also increasingly questioned in terms of their assimilability and compatibility with French society. Naturally, such a line of questioning obfuscates the longer history of African and French relations, relegates African contributions (among others) to the margins, highlights ‘the legacy of colonial racism within French society after decolonisation’ (Glaes), and serves to bolster a singular interpretation of France’s experience in the world. As we know only too well, these are precisely the kinds of questions that continue to define contemporary debates.

Ahmed Boubeker examines the impact of advocacy during the interwar and early postcolonial period on the genealogical descendants of these previous eras. The situation is all the more paradoxical given that the label ‘immigrant’ remains inseparable from the individuals and groups we are now concerned with, even though they were for the most part born in France. As the novelist, sociologist and former Minister of Equal Opportunities (2005–7), Azouz Begag, has pointed out:

If we review the main terms currently in use, notably in the media, we come up with the following typology, based on territorial, ethnic, religious, and temporal criteria [visible minorities, banlieues youth, people of Maghrebi/immigrant/Arab descent, Muslims, etc.]. In all there are around thirty different appellations, riddled with fallacies, contradictions, and ambiguities embodying the unease of the Republic vis-à-vis ‘citizens’ who are not like ‘us. (Begag, 2007: 19–21)

In the early 1980s, a new generation of activists entered the public sphere and drew attention to social exclusion and marginalisation. The Socialists were elected in 1981, and the prevailing winds favoured a droit à la différence. Competing racial advocacy organisations were born – most notably following the 1983 Marche pour l’égalité et contre le racisme and then SOS Racisme, albeit in a tenuous political climate in which the Far-Right National Front achieved its first electoral successes. Egalitarian principles and an inclusive multiculturalist society were thus proposed in the face of rising nationalist and exclusionary rhetoric, but the situation was further complicated by what Boubeker describes as ‘increasingly vocal and powerful critics who saw in this discourse evidence of rising factionalist (communitarian) tendencies and threats to Republican ideals and values’ (Boubeker).

Several changes are associated with the 1980s and 1990s. First, social uprisings and riots, predominantly in the underprivileged housing projects located at the periphery of large urban areas (the banlieues), brought attention to the glaring inequities in French society as well as to the failure of integration policies. These also exacerbated tensions with the authorities, especially when it came to relations with the police. Second, ‘these autonomous movements have been unique in their capacity to persevere and innovate – through protest, media campaigns, counter-investigations, civil action suits or monitoring judicial compliance – while also inventing new forms of activism in response to the changing landscape of political and social challenges’ (Boubeker). Thus, whereas during the early period of decolonisation racial advocacy organisations had focused on the economic, political and social circumstances of migrant workers, organisations now emphasised problems associated with housing, racial profiling, police brutality and rising Islamophobia as examples of lingering social exclusion. Additionally, these claims took place in the context of large-scale mediatised deportations, sharp increases in control over immigration, and governmental actions that often resulted in collapsing both facets of immigration – migration policy and race relations. Boubeker’s article thus allows us to situate the chronology and maturation of racial advocacy in French society, while developments during this period equip us with the kind of historical contextualisation that is often sorely lacking in the analysis that has accompanied more recent instances of social uprising (such as the events of 2005).

Racial advocacy and representation in France has not exclusively been concerned with addressing racism and discrimination. As Abdoulaye Gueye demonstrates, the ‘current black organisational dynamic did not emerge ab nihilo but rather inscribes itself in a long line of collective endeavours’ (Gueye), and has also been concerned with deploying structures in the French context aimed at enhancing the professional advancement and range of opportunities available to minority populations. In this regard, such an approach stands to offer interesting insights on a different facet of the question of racial advocacy. Indeed, as Gueye argues:

Compared with the interwar generation of organisations, twenty-first-century associations are striking by their avoidance of racial categories in the composition of their names, dodging the option of racial designation. Indeed, until the creation of the CRAN in 2005, not a single organisation concerned with the promotion and the defence of the interests of French people of African heritage had inscribed into its official name the term black or its outdated and disparaged equivalent, negro. (Gueye).

A cursory overview of some of the most active and influential organisations confirms this: Collectif Égalité, Collectif DOM, AFIP, Africagora, Cercle d’action pour la Promotion de la diversité (CAPDIV) and COFFAD. ‘At best’, Gueye reveals, ‘geographical and anthropological references only are included in the nomination, as exemplified by COFFAD, Collectif DOM and Africagora. The other organisations do not hint in any way at the racial identity of its founders and are effectively race-neutral’ (Gueye). As we asked earlier, how does one reconcile the objective of advocating for a particular group while conforming with Republican colour-blindness? As it turns out,

During the interwar period, French society was not race-blind and the designation of French citizens and subjects by racial terminologies was a common option … In an environment in which the authorities did not shy away from racial designation, black organisations were in safe waters when they inscribed racial signifiers such as black or Negro to their organisations’ names. (Gueye)

However, to say the very least, French society is today both confused and uncomfortable with racial terminology, a reality that may appear all the more

paradoxical [given] that the state has been committed implicitly to a philosophy of racial equality inherited from the Revolution, while at the same time denying the existence of race itself, thus making France the fascinating and maybe only society where there existed an anti-racist stance without race itself. (Gueye)

As Gueye goes on to show, the CRAN’s decision to foreground the racial marker in its name was absolutely crucial: ‘Reclaiming blackness and inscribing it at the heart of its name and then advocating in favour of the generation of official racial statistics have proved to be groundbreaking moves’ (Gueye).

As Nicolas Bancel’s article reveals, the demands made by organisations such as the CRAN and the Indigènes de la République for greater acceptance in French society came at a time when anxiety pertaining to the status of French identity and grandeur had reached a high point. In many ways, this new form of racial advocacy could be explained by the prevailing political climate and persistent characterisation in the media and by politicians of immigrants and ethnic minorities as outsiders, whose very presence and multicultural aspirations in French society both threatened and undermined its foundational principles. It is therefore all the more interesting to note that this anxiety over France’s postcolonial circumstances expressed itself by a return to French colonial history, most notably in the revisionist ‘Loi n° 2005-158 du 23 février 2005’. This law aimed to rehabilitate French colonialism by highlighting in school textbooks the positive role of French colonisation and by sponsoring numerous commemorative and monument-based projects around France aimed at valorising the French colonial project. Bancel’s article thus shows how racial advocacy groups not only denounced the injustices generated by discrimination and advocated for better representation in French society, but simultaneously located the roots of this discrimination in the history of slavery and colonisation. This position was therefore framed by a completely different assessment of colonial history than the authorities were embracing in their endeavour to strengthen their appeal to powerful electoral constituencies and associations composed of repatriated communities from French Algeria. Although these distinct approaches and interpretations of colonial history have proved extremely polarising, there is a paradoxical dimension to the extent that:

In both cases, these positions reflect acute social and political dissatisfaction. In the case of the rehabilitation of the colonial era, the associations of repatriated are always at the centre of these projects and they thus become a means by which to reassure them and to recognise the historical sufferings that they have endured. In the case of the CRAN and the Indigènes de la République, it is more a matter of responding to the injustices generated by discrimination and to understanding them over a longer history that includes slavery and colonisation. (Bancel)

The early years of the twenty-first century proved to be crucial in crystallising some of these positions, and as Bancel shows, 2005 was especially significant given that the ‘Loi n° 2005-158 du 23 février 2005’ was voted on that year, both the CRAN and the Indigènes de la République were created, and the violent uprisings that took place during the autumn forever altered the context in which racial advocacy would henceforth occur in France. But this period has also proved to be all the more important in helping us better contextualise more recent political debates and policy-making in France, as well as understand the appeal of disquieting nationalist rhetoric, the rise in anti-immigrant and anti-Islam campaigns, and widespread denunciations of multiculturalism and diversity. These have been evidenced not only on the Far Right in the pronouncements made by the Front National, but also in the various ways in which these positions and exclusionary paradigms have been appropriated and mainstreamed by other political parties.

The degree to which colonial memory remains a mobilising force in French society as a way of bolstering Republican ideals in the postcolonial era is troubling. It will come as no surprise that the decisions taken by the new racial advocacy actors have been followed by fresh accusations of communautarisme. The irony, as Dena Montague points out, is that these organisations are ‘led by minorities and became vocal advocates for a Republican society that would permit equal access and equality for all’ (Montague). Both the media and official governmental responses to these positions have proved incapable of disentangling those ‘efforts to create an independent movement founded on broad inclusiveness’ (Montague) from what they have persisted in interpreting as indicators of a repli communautaire. Montague’s article analyses how a ‘Republican consensus’ emerged whereby ‘The consensus helped solidify the idea that any measure of ethnic identity was threatening to the Republic’ (Montague). We thus find ourselves having travelled full circle back to those inescapable principles enshrined in the 1791 constitution, according to which The French Republic is one and indivisible. What remains frustrating in this context is the fact that these positions have refused to acknowledge ‘that mobilised French minority citizens were demanding equality, not separation or special treatment within the Republic’ (Montague). Of course, closer scrutiny of the political landscape in France today can assist us in better understanding these positions, especially when one considers the rising popularity of the Far Right and the ways in which the Sarkozy administration mainstreamed many of these policies under the aegis of the Ministry of Immigration, Integration, National Identity and Co-Development (see Keaton et al., 2012; Thomas, 2013).

Both the Chirac (1995–2007) and Sarkozy (2007–12) presidencies positioned ‘immigration’ at the forefront of policy-making. However, it would be a mistake to attribute such choices exclusively to the French Right. As Trica Keaton’s article convincingly shows, Manuel Valls, the Minister of the Interior in François Hollande’s newly elected Socialist administration, has relentlessly pursued worrying plans to implement contrôles au faciès, in other words, ‘racial profiling’. ‘The French Republican model’, Keaton argues, ‘functions in this context as an authoritarian mode of assimilation and universalism that seeks to destroy difference at the expense of equality and inclusion’ and

the idea and influence of the ‘French exception’ should not be underestimated in French society. Forged by Jacobin revolutionary ideology, its mainstay is a powerful and interpellative discourse of universalism that cements French citizenship to France’s principle of equality and thereby to ethno-racial, religious and social indistinction. (Keaton)

As other articles in this volume confirm, this turns out to be a recurring feature of racial advocacy in France, re-articulating age-old problems:

But how can profiling that is actually racial be identified in race-blind countries without a social concept of race: that is, one in which race (and its proxies) is understood as a social construct or invention that has real effects, and one that shifts as historical and social contexts shift in a society? Moreover, how, in the pursuit of justice and equality, can the pernicious effects of thinking and classification in racial terms be avoided when using such a concept? Not only does race-blindness deny the obvious, but when it is law or policy, deprived of historical context, it strips anti-racists of the rhetorical weapons they need to battle racial oppression. (Keaton)

New organisations have emerged in response to these latest developments, such as the NGO, Stop le contrôle au faciès, who have launched a public awareness campaign. What remains unequivocal in this discussion is the fact that:

We must therefore place the question of race at the center of the production of democracy and of the reflection on French citizenship. This time, to be credible, the project of radical equality must be aware of its contingency. It cannot be a matter of numbers, of arithmetical or geometrical progression. Race, coupled with poverty and unemployment, ultimately creates a class of sans-parts, that is, of pseudocitizens who, because of their race, not only are excluded from the mechanisms of distribution but are refused recognition, dignity, and respect. (Mbembe, 2009: 64–5)

The history of France and of France’s historical encounter with the world is inextricably linked to conceptualisations of the other and to the hierarchisation and racialisation of difference. Any consideration therefore of the history of racial advocacy in France, whether in the context of abolitionism, anti-colonialism, postcolonialism or contemporary globalisation, must necessarily entail a concerted engagement with slavery, colonialism and immigration. Such a framework is a prerequisite to accurately determining the cultural, political and social factors that have shaped the activism and mobilisation of minority populations in associations and organisations committed to remedying social injustice and resolved to exposing the ways in which Republican ideals and values have fallen short in the process of applying and extending foundational principles to all members of French society.