R A C I S M

Surveys showed French public opinion strongly
hostile to the immigrant presence, intolerant of cultural
difference, and favorably disposed to expelling immigrants
with irregular status while "integrating" the rest.
         - Paris Match, 14 December 1989

Does It Occur?

                                                                                            To be sure, there are many proposals by distinguished                   
                                                                                            students of French immigration for a new French pluralism.                   
                                                                                            But what is emphasized in such proposals                   
                                                                                            is, first of all, to redress the failure to remember the                   
                                                                                            long French history of immigration and to acknowledge                   
                                                                                            France as the home of xenophobia as well as of                   
                                                                                            the Rights of Man, not merely for historical reasons,                   
                                                                                            but to ameliorate the plight of today's immigrants,                   
                                                                                            who suffer from a debilitating sense of difference                   
                                                                                                - Gerald Noirel in Le Monde, 20 October 1989                   

Is It A Reality?

It must be stressed, that this French model of integration
[emphasis in the original] is inspired by a system of that
which rejects the determinisms of ethnicity, class and religion
and is based on a collective desire to live up to the past, and
especially to work together for common aims and ambitions.
          - from the High Council of Integration (HCI)
           Jean-Claude Zylberstein L’Integration a la Francaise 19983, p 8

Does It Even Exist?

                                            We are without doubt one of the least racist countries in the world
                                            … it would be counter-productive to campaign against what doesn’t exist,
                                            in the sense of a systematic tendency or an organised movement.
                                                - Prime Minister Jacques Chaban in response to
                                                  requests to take anti-racist actions to defend targeted groups
                                                                 Le Monde, 6 February 1971
 
Local governments, by their actions, generally formulated public 
policy towards immigrants in exclusionary terms.  They tended
to define the “immigrant” problem as one of ethnic relations 
between native White Frenchmen against nonwestern immigrants,
a problem of how to approach integration of people who were racially
and (especially) culturally different, rather than a problem of how to 
deal with temporary labor.  One indication of this definition of 
the issue is the fact that citizens from the overseas territories 
were frequently included as part of the problem. P-418.

Is there Racism in France?

 ?