France

Official Policy

The structures and attitudes concerning contemporary racial/ethnic minorities in France were forged during the French Revolution of 1789. The Abbé Gregoire, a prominent revolutionary era parliamentary tribune, authored a bill passed into law by the national assembly that granted political equality to French Jews. Slavery in French colonies was abolished in 1794 (only to be reestablished under Napoleon before being definitively abolished in 1848). Yet at the same time, the affirmation and very existence of racial/ethnic communities and identities was viewed as incompatible with the revolution's social and political ideology. The revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity for all citizens were seen as irreconcilable with any allegiances to social groupings such as ethnic, racial, and religious communities. This tradition, along with the use of racial categories as justification for colonization of non-Europeans, a history of racial/ethnic discrimination, and their nearly exclusive use by contemporary far right wing ideologues, has had a profound effect on government policy and antiracist thought and practice—a situation often referred to as “antiracism without races.”

In 1972, a law was passed outlawing discrimination and racist acts in both the public and private domains. Heavy fines and jail sentences could be imposed to punish violators. The Gayssot Law of 1990 increased the number of acts that are considered racist crimes and stiffened the penalties established in the 1972 law. However, French antiracist legislation has not been designed to bring about racial equality or to compensate members of racial groups for past discrimination. This approach has had an effect on research on race and ethnicity. Government bodies do not gather statistics for racial/ethnic groups. Information on immigration is gathered, but people who immigrate are no longer counted separately once they or their children become citizens, thereby disappearing from official existence.

[Page 507]Public discourse in France on issues of cultural groupings centers on questions of integration, a term roughly equivalent to the notion of assimilation as understood in the United States. But whereas in the United States multiculturalism has arisen to challenge assimilation as the goal of public policy toward minorities, debate in France continues to center on how to integrate communities in the national fabric or, as the far right xenophobic National Front (FN) argues, whether some communities can be integrated at all.

...