The Anglo Eye on France

One of the sidelines of work as a correspondent in Paris is the invitation to air your views of the country on local radio and television. The requests multiply at times of national soul-searching, like last spring's rejection of the EU constitution and the spring 2002 crisis over the rise of Jean-Marie Le Pen, the ultra-rightist, in the presidential elections.

We have been in demand again with the autumn riots. In giving my two centimes' worth of wisdom at the beginning and the end of the three weeks of fire-raising, I have been struck by the big shift in the way that France is facing up to its breakdown.

At the start, a frisson of disapproval went around a radio studio when I talked of ethnic riots, the term used in foreign media but not in France. Bringing up race in any context has long been taboo except for the xenophobes of the far right. Euphemisms were being used to describe the quartiers difficiles -- difficult districts -- in which "disadvantaged youths" were said to be venting their wrath over their "social exclusion". 

This weekend, on an evening talk show on RTL radio hosted by the estimable Pascale Clark, I was surprised to find the French journalists agreeing with the hitherto alien, "Anglo-Saxon", view that France practises racial discrimination and cannot face the facts. The unrest has worked shock therapy after decades of denial. Taboos are being breached in a manner that was unthinkable only a month ago. Jacques Chirac gave the signal last week when he finally emerged from the Elysée Palace to deliver his diagnosis. France, he said, is suffering from "the poison of discrimination" and needs to bring its ethnic Arab and black citizens into the national fold.

France has suddenly been forced to confront the hypocrisy of its Republican model of integration and its supposed colour-blindness towards its population. Libération, left-wing and politically correct, grappled with this on Saturday. "The inhabitants of the housing estates are victims of excessive inequality because, to put it brutally, of the colour of their skin," it said. "The unemployment level of these districts is correlated with the level of racism in French society."

This new readiness to acknowledge France's ordinary racism has thrown up an absurdity. How do you rectify the exclusion of non-whites from education and employment if there is no yardstick? Because of painful memories of the Vichy wartime regime and the registration of Jews, it is actually illegal to possess ethnic statistics. A 1978 law says: "It is forbidden to collect or deal with data of a personal nature which shows racial or ethnic origin directly or indirectly."

Pressure is now coming from business leaders and some government ministers, for the ban to be lifted. Azouz Begag, junior Minister for Equal Opportunity and one of only two government members from the minorities, caused a splash this weekend by calling for a "way of measuring the presence of children of immigrants among police, judges and in the civil service and private sector." Begag, who has been publicly anguishing about his role as Chirac's token Arab in the Government,  also wants some form of positive discrimination to repair decades of exclusion. Chirac has ruled this out as un-French, but Nicolas Sarkozy, his Interior Minister and would-be president, is pleading for American-style affirmative action. Others want British-style measures to promote the minorities through peer pressure, league tables, best-practice methods and government campaigns.
 
When you do the foreigner's eye thing in the local media, there is a danger of  sounding like the condescending outsider who is blessed with a superior view of France's failings. This happens because you have to reverse your usual role of trying to give a sympathetic explanation of Gallic quirks that baffle the outside world -- like the fondness for striking, the worship of Woody Allen,  murderous driving or the ban on Muslim head-wear. What our broadcasting hosts want is not a polite analysis of the Gallic scene but provocation. We are there as l'anglo-saxon de service -- the duty Anglo-Saxon -- and are expected to shed caustic light on French ways.

France's concern with the outside world's opinion is itself a sign of  insecurity. British broadcasters rarely consult French journalists for prime time diagnosis of the country's ills. In America, Frenchmen are not invited onto the air to pronounce on the state of the nation.   

Comments

[Robert Marchenoir]

I hope you are right.

However, I am rather inclined to think that after the riots, it will be back to business as usual.

Witness the (near empty) "motion de synthèse" painfully adopted at the Socialist party's congress: it puts the blame for banlieues' woes straight at the feet of... you've guessed it... "libéralisme". Segregation? Institutional racism hidden behind republican myths? Nowhere to be seen.

And how are we to create the jobs desperately needed to lift the ghettoes out of poverty, according to the socialists? Not with more, but with less liberalism, more state funds wasted on a faulty system, laws forbidding redundancies motivated by stockmarket issues...

That last one is a sure winner. I do agree that insisting on milking 15% returns for shareholders is a dead-end way to run the global economy.

But pass a law making impossible to fire workers in order to boost share value, and watch all listed companies stop immediately all investment in the country... A great way to create jobs, for sure...

[Felix Lowe]

France has traditionally used the foreigner’s view as a technique of shedding light on the inherent problems of their nation. During the 18th Century and the Enlightenment there was a huge fad for the outsider’s eye: this can be seen, for example, in Montesquieu’s Les Lettres Persanes, Mme de Graffigny’s Les Lettres Peruviennes, Provost’s Histoire d’une Greque Moderne and most famously Voltaire’s L’Ingenu. These novels are classics. They use the ostensibly naïve view of exotic characters who know little or nothing about the country they finds themselves in to reflects the ills of Western Society and, in particular, France itself – supposedly more progressive and tolerant that the very societies from where the characters have travelled or been snatched.

OK, I cannot exactly claim that the likes of Mr Bremner are exactly exotic, or that they know nothing of France (!), but their views nevertheless are welcomed – even if they are not wholly accepted – by a nation that is essentially paranoid about its own status. It is interesting to see that recent events have bellied France’s claim to be a progressive and tolerant country.

Good point about French journalists enlightening the debate for our own country’s ills – it just doesn’t really happen. The deal seems to be one-way. Our views are appreciated only in as much as they serve to help the average Frenchman’s understanding about their own nation. The only French people we see on TV over here are the likes of Eurotrash funnyman Antoine de Caunes, and his tongue-in-cheek play on the French makes them seem a nation insatiate by weird sexual desire but which ironically only plays on our own salacious tendencies. Touché.

Although there is probably another reason for the lack of French presence on British TV. The Brits just do not take French people seriously. They laugh at their accents, they make fun at their antics and they expect constant sexual innuendo. (Maybe Eurotrash and Messrs Gaulthier and de Caunes are to blame here… Indeed, the latter is in fact quite a respected actor in his home country). On the other hand, the French love it when the English speak their language. They find the accent ‘mignon’, easy on the ear and compelling. A voice of reason, even. As such, our opinions are seen as necessary as they are welcomed.

Anyway, I waffle. Keep up the good work.

[John Gregory Flinn]

Dear Mr Bremner,

Your weblogs are so predictable, so guardianesque, so stereo-typically liberal, so presumptive and, despite your attempts to curb it – so 'superior'.
They are 'freudian' in so many respects that I am sure you are 'dog-whistling' to a select audience!
For example, the following assertions of yours are typical of what I mean -
'Chirac's token arab',
'the xenophobes of the far right',
'(France's) ban on muslim headwear', and
'(France's concern with...) is itself a sign of insecurity'.

I can see an obverse to the above which the French might also agree with, as follows:-

Azouz Begag almost certainly got into government on his ability, which is more than can be said for most, if not all the 'ethnics' littering the British establishment.
The 'xenophobes' are actually nationalists who, incidentally, have integrated foreigners into their party on merit, to represent them as (elected) Frenchmen.
I do not support Turkey's entry into the EU, but at least they have seen the wisdom of a (similar) ban on muslim headwear – and they are a muslim nation! It denies a political context to the religion of Islam.
On the contrary, the fact that the French invite British (and others) to comment on their problems shows how mature, polite and self-confident they are. The British never invited French comment on the July bombings or any other incidents - so convinced as they are of their own rectitude! Also, they could not bear the French poking fun (as they do) at the craven 'political correctness' that currently infests and cripples debate in Britain, nor do they want their sacred 'multi-culturism' to be shown up for the wreckage (sic Le Figaro) that it is!

I hav'nt lived in France more than 2 years but its long enough to apreciate the refreshing self-confidence and pride they have about themselves, their culture and their country. On the other hand the British seem embarrassed about celebrating this sort of thing, regarding 'flag-waving' as something for the far right. They (the British) have even invented 'multi-culturism' so that any single expression of cultural identity can be masked, or submerged. However this has allowed others to politicise their own, for example, 'Pakistani/Islamic culture' and create a sense of 'separateness' within Britain, which the British are now beginning to regret.

I wonder if you will publish my views – it hardly responds to your 'dog- whistles', and I've noticed that this is a prerequisite.....!

Yours/J.G.Flinn/29-11-05

[Lucy Gaidukowski]

Mr. Flinn seems to this reader to be a bit off the mark in his assessment of Mr. Bremner’s writing, and in the examples he gives of of Mr. Bremner’s “stereo-typically liberal” presumptiveness.

As I read it, “Chirac’s token Arab” was not an assertion of Mr. Bremner’s, but rather a reference to Begag’s own publicly expressed concern.. The “Ban on Muslim headwear” was just used as one of several examples of what those outside of France perceive as its quirks. It seems to me that the examples cited by Mr. Flinn are not necessarily expressions of Mr. Bremner’s personal opinions, just descriptions of views expressed by others. I believe that’s what journalists do?

In point of fact, I didn’t find this blog entry to be particularly liberal or conservative. It was a discussion of the shift in France’s self understanding, and of their dealing with an issue that is bubbling to the surface much like it has in the past and present for the US, the UK and countless other countries.

I find Mr. Bremner does an elegant job of appreciating France’s qualities, trying to understand its differences from Anglo-culture, and regarding with warm bewilderment some of it’s more complex quirks. And without getting in to the specifics of my own biography, I can assure you that I am not a dog, nor am I being whistled at.

[Roger Goodacre]

France is experiencing an unusually prolonged period of 'morosité' - rather more than just an annus horribilis - and it seems natural that French commentators should look increasingly for comparisons with the Anglo-Saxon world, which they see as representing the most directly relevant alternative social and economic model. It's not entirely surprising therefore that they turn to American or British observers for a view from the enemy camp, as it's often portrayed, especially since their German camarades are not going through the best of times either.

Whatever their troubles, the Americans rarely seem overly concerned with the views of outsiders, who are mostly less economically successful. As for the UK, I doubt whether many Brits are willing to draw many useful lessons from the French economic model, nor from partisans of the stuttering Euro project.

That being said, BBC News 24 does have a weekly discussion group made up of foreign correspondents based in London, where we are treated to the views of outsiders on topical UK issues.

[Chuck Unsworth]

Of course if one was slightly cynical you could say that there are many advantages in seeking the opinion of foreigners. One side of the debate may be able to discount the expressed views on the basis that 'they' don't understand - whilst the other side may welcome the 'unbiased insights'.

In any event I'm grateful for Charles Bremner's untiring efforts to explain how the French think.