How can racism be defined?

Racism is a form of discrimination based on the victim’s origins or ethnic or racial affiliations, whether real or assumed. Racism makes use of prejudice to devalue the person based on their physical appearance; it attributes character traits, abilities or physical or intellectual faults associated with clichés or stereotypes.

Racism seeks to attack the person’s dignity and honour, to nurture hatred and encourage verbal or physical violence. It tends to spread false ideas to set humans against each other.

Sometimes, it takes the form of an ideology, a theory explaining the inequalities between people, and thus proposes a hierarchy of human groups. Ideological racism began to develop in the 19th century with authors like Vacher de Lapouge, who wanted to create a biological basis for racism, but it became a real political system with apartheid in South Africa and the Nazism of the German Reich.

Racism can be redefined and adapted to suit new conditions and legal and social norms. Racism cannot be decreed out of existence. It transforms, takes on new forms, but it always follows the same paths: generalisation, essentialisation, inferiorisation, discrimination, violence, first through words, then through acts.

First comes a rehash of History and heritage, a spectre that repeatedly raises its ugly head in society and imagery alike. It forms what some describe as “systemic discriminations” (see Fondation Thuram), an everyday form of racism which, overtly or otherwise, continues to exclude and discriminate, whether in job-seeking, at work, at school, in access to housing, healthcare, leisure activities… This is where innuendo and dog-whistles co-exist alongside insult, aggression and refusal of service. Racism also rhymes with immigration.

These days, we dare not, nor can we, due to legislation especially, openly incriminate someone for the colour of their skin, their physical appearance or the congenital “savagery” of the man or woman claimed to be “inferior”.  Rejection or even hatred of the Other dress up in finer clothes these days, camouflaging themselves behind a few subtleties: culture difference is replacing racial hierarchy; if the Other has no reason to be here, it’s because he is culturally unassimilable; it is because he or she does not have the same relationship with work, knowledge, women, education, the sacred, violence, etc.  These days, the racist isn’t looking to dominate the Other, to force him to submit to his hierarchy of “races”, but rather to exclude him because he is too different, culturally non-integratable. Consequently, news events or sociological data are no longer analysed from the angle of individuals or socio-economic rationales, but rather as ethnic phenomena, as though being black or yellow, Muslim or dark-skinned, immigrant… could explain anything about these incidents. These beliefs are on display today, unashamed and unrestrained, to the extent of promoting pseudo-scientific theories, like the so-called “great replacement”. 

The ethnicisation of society is not just the doing of extreme right movements, it also results from an overvaluation of differences and identities which can drift towards new forms of racism, marked by the conflicting logics of groups that retain only one exclusive or dominant component as their identity: black, Muslim, Hindu, Arab, Corsican, Turkish, Jewish… The war of identities, just like the (rightful) denunciation of racism or discrimination suffered, can also stray into a racism against anything that is “other” and/or oppressive; to the point of generating another narrative, another form of racism, this time “anti-white”.

Under the effect of new fragmentations, and also under the effect of hierarchies, both old and new, racism continues to operate in our societies, but as Sophie Bessis warns: “The rejection of what is different always leads, in one form or another, to the threshold of disaster”.

The biological conception of racism is losing ground in French public opinion: in 2021, the “racism barometer” (Ipsos) for the Commission Nationale Consultative des Droits de l’Homme (CNCDH, see 2021 report) shows that only 8% of French people (- 3 points) think that “there are races that are superior to others”. While other indices are moving in the same direction (rejection of the notion of race, condemnation of discrimination, rejection of racist insults...), other elements worry the authors of the report. Hence, 62% of French people think that “nowadays in France, we no longer feel at home like we used to” and 73% think that “many immigrants come to France solely to take advantage of social welfare”. Same accusation when it comes to insecurity.

The CNCDH notes that racist acts increased by almost 40% in France in 2019. Black and North African people are subjected to “more discrimination than the rest of the population”. Alongside this racism come prejudices, stigmatisation and racist acts against the Roms and the Asian community, hostility towards Islam but not towards Muslims who, for 74% of those polled, are “French people like any other”.

According to the Service Central du Renseignement Territorial, racist acts increased by 38% in 2019. The breakdown: 27% for anti-Semitic acts (687 acts), 54% for anti-Muslim acts (154) and 130% for other racist acts (1,142). According to the Ministry of Justice, 6,600 cases were  taken to court (6,122 in 2018). And 393 racist offences were punished by prison sentences.

The “tolerance index” for French people progressed by 13 points between 2013 and 2019, but once again, the average conceals a few realities, thus the index is 79 for blacks and Jews, 72 for North Africans, 60 for Muslims and 36 for Roms.

Educational programmes to combat racism are essential, starting at school age, including for example prevention actions supported by non-profits, trade unions and the various institutions. March 21^st was proclaimed as "International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination", enabling the organisation of events and solidarity actions against racism, notably in schools.

Institutions such as the Defender of Rights or the CNCDH implement prevention, information, training and alert actions. The CNCDH also recommends becoming more familiar with how to file a complaint, improving treatment of victims and training of magistrates, and developing educational penalties (citizenship training).

Mustapha Harzoune, 2022