To provide its readers with keys to understanding the polemics and controversies surrounding the racial question, La Vie des Idées asked the same six questions to five specialists in human and social sciences. Their answers reveal the great diversity of academic approaches.
In 2014, The Life of Ideas published a dossier entitled “La race, parlons-en” inviting discussion of the uses of the notion of “race” in the social sciences. Five years later, in 2019, it is clear that we talk a lot about race, but not necessarily in the terms of the scientific debate. The racial issue is experiencing acute and conflicting current events: controversies are multiplying and growing around the opportunity to remove the word “race” from the French Constitution, around a fresco deemed racist in the National Assembly, around the condemnation of the French State for racial profiling, around single-sex meetings organized by certain unions, around plays or exhibitions accused of reproducing racist stereotypes, around ethnic and racial profiling in football clubs, around a supposed “decolonial” and “intersectional” offensive on university benches and a new “obsession with race, sex, gender and identity”, etc.
The animosity of the debates that saturate the media sphere is on a par with the misunderstandings and misunderstandings surrounding the terms “race” and “racism,” the definitions of which vary depending on the context and point of view. Their semantic porosity, reinforced by their controversial nature, partly explains the polemical turn taken by several recent debates, during which the protagonists accuse each other of being “racists.” But the violence of the controversies is mainly due to the deeply political questions raised by the examination of the racial question in France: it reactivates the memory of the colonial, slave and Vichy past, and raises the question of its contemporary ramifications. It questions the construction and perpetuation of social inequalities, according to modalities that are not only those of gender or class. It raises the question of responsibility (individual, collective, institutional) and the means (legal, political, linguistic, intellectual, redistributive) to be implemented to remedy the glaring inequalities that persist (in access to housing, employment, education, etc. as shown by numerous studies). Finally, it concerns the legitimate definition of individuals and groups, and the recognition or not of differences in order to advance the cause of equality. The answers given to these questions outline marked divisions within French anti-racism and the citizen debate in the broad sense.
However, the polarization of media debates in often binary terms does not do justice to the complexity of scientific discussions and the range of positions of researchers who deal with these subjects. This is evidenced in recent years by the proliferation of seminars and conferences devoted to racism and the racial question or the publication of numerous books and special issues of journals on the subject. The questions that emerge from these works and controversies are particularly rich. What exactly do we mean when we talk about “race” and how can we ensure that the use of racial categories in social science research does not lead to a reification of the phenomena they observe? What is the status of race in relation to other categories of the social world such as gender or class? Is racism the work of malicious individuals alone or is it inscribed in the structures of our society? Is “whiteness” an operational concept in the French context? Does republican ideology affect the way we conceive of these questions? Can and should research on race and racism be done independently of political and activist considerations?
To provide its readers with some keys to understanding these issues, the Life of Ideas called upon five researchers in the human and social sciences who agreed to take part in the difficult game of an interview. A philosopher, a sociologist, an anthropologist, a lawyer and a political scientist, each of whom had addressed issues of race and racism in their work, responded in turn to the same six questions. The diversity of their answers reveals that there is not one or even two, but many ways of addressing the racial question in France, depending on the disciplines, methods and positions.
The researchers who participated in this report represent only a fraction of the academic field devoted to these questions and this contribution cannot claim to reflect the extreme diversity of work carried out in French universities.
The series of interviews collected here, however, aims to reveal some of the richness and complexity of these debates, in the hope that it will encourage our readers to look into them more closely.
1/ Race and intersectionality (June 11)
2/ Structural racism and white privilege (June 14)
3/ Republican ideology and the limits of scientific neutrality (June 18)
Participants in the case
Magali BESSONE is a professor of political philosophy at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, member of theISJPS (Institute of Legal and Philosophical Sciences of the Sorbonne, UMR 8103) and associate member of CIRESC (CNRS). His research, carried out in particular as part of his participation in two projects ANR (Global Race, coordinated by Patrick Simon, and REPAIRScoordinated by Myriam Cottias), focus on contemporary theories of justice and democracy and critical theories of race and racism. She has translated and edited WEB From the Woods, The Souls of Black People (La Découverte, 2007); she is the author of Sans distinction de race? (Vrin, 2013) and co-edited with Gideon Calder and Federico Zuolo How Groups Matter? Challenges of Toleration in Pluralistic Societies (Routledge, 2014) and with Daniel Sabbagh, Race, racism, discrimination: an anthology of fundamental texts (Hermann, 2015). She also directed the collective work Methods in political philosophy (PURE2018). A book entitled Making Justice of the Irreparable: Colonial Slavery and Contemporary Responsibilities is to be published by Vrin.
Rachida BRAHIM is a doctor in sociology and an associate researcher at the Mediterranean Sociology Laboratory (AMU, CNRS, BLADES, UMR 7305). In 2017, she defended a thesis on structural racism based on a sociohistorical investigation into the denunciation and criminal treatment of racist crimes committed against migrants and descendants of Maghrebi migrants between the 1970s and the end of the 1990s. She is the author of various articles on the subject, including: “What about a sociology of ethnicity in France? A Foucauldian reading of racial violence” (The American Sociologist48(3), June 2017); ““We abhor racism”: migration control and treatment of racist crimes in France in the 1970s” (Cultures & Conflits, 107, November 2017); “The political antiracism of May 68, Marseille 1968-1983”, in Marseille, années 68under the direction of Olivier Fillieule and Isabelle Sommier (Presses de Sciences Po, 2018). She continues her work on subaltern epistemologies by questioning the way in which writing history from below can help transfigure the traumas caused by the coloniality of power.
Gwenaële CALVES is a professor of public law at the University of Cergy-Pontoise. A specialist in French, European and US non-discrimination law, she co-leads with Daniel Sabbagh the multidisciplinary research group “Anti-discriminatory policies” (CERISciences-Po Paris). Latest published books: Send racists to prison? The trial of Christiane Taubira’s insulters (LGDJ2015), Positive discrimination (Puf, coll. What do I know?, 4e ed., 2016) and Disputed territories of secularism (Puf, 2018).
Ary GORDIANresearch officer in anthropology at CNRS (LARCA UMR 8225), has just completed a postdoctoral contract at the University of Vincennes Saint-Denis within the Circle of Studies on Racism and Anti-Semitism of the Institute of History of the Present Time. Member of the CIRESC (CNRS), he also teaches at the University of Paris Descartes and at the EP of Paris. He is currently conducting research on anti-racist associations in Seine-Saint Denis. His main fields of study are the French and English-speaking Caribbean. As part of a previous postdoctoral contract within the project ANR Repairs (Compensations, indemnities and reparations for slavery, XIX–XXIe century), he conducted a study on the Jamaican Reparations Commission. He defended his thesis entitled Nationalism, Race and Ethnicity in Guadeloupe. Ambivalent Identity Constructions in a Situation of Dependence at Paris Descartes University in 2015. Her other research interests include gender and sexual minorities, as well as the anthropology of dance.
Nun MAYER is emeritus research director at CNRS attached to the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics at Sciences Po. Her research focuses on political attitudes and behaviors, racism and anti-Semitism, and votes for the radical right. She is a member of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) since 2015 and coordinates the report on its annual survey on racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. Recent publications include “Measuring Racism?” in M. Wieviorka (ed.), Antiracists. Knowing racism and anti-Semitism to better combat them (Paris Robert Laffont, 2017); “Evolution and structure of prejudices: the researchers’ perspective” in CNCDH, The fight against racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia. 2018 (Paris, La Documentation française, 2019, p. 73-159, with G. Michelat, V. Tiberj and T. Vitale).