By Agnès Poirier Nicolas Sarkozy's national debate on French identity is meaningless, vain and too often descends into racism
Stop now and don't even think of stretching this silly debate any further. That's what, in essence, a petition launched by the association SOS Racisme and a string of French personalities are telling President Sarkozy (pictured below) and his immigration minister, Eric Besson. You may remember Besson: he was one of Ségolène Royal's close advisers, and suddenly joined Sarkozy's team just before the presidential elections of 2007 and rose among his newfound leader's ranks by being more Sarkozist than Sarkozy. 
The self-proclaimed debate on national identity is supposed to be held in French town halls until 4 February, with a white paper with conclusions and recommendations published soon after. As often with Sarkozy's big schemes and ideas, the French were at first a little surprised, intrigued even, almost interested. After a few weeks though, they saw through the political ploy - the regional elections are only a few months away. A majority, as revealed by a survey, disapproves of the way this debate is developing. Many meetings in town halls are indeed ending up being a fracas of nasty and racist comments with no intellectual content: "Actually much worse than what you would expect a discussion at a local bistro to be," sums up a prefectural member of staff at the city of Orléans. In fact, for many weeks now, many voices, including some from Sarkozy's own party, such as former prime minister Alain Juppé, have publicly branded the debate silly - and perhaps more importantly, meaningless and vain. Juppé declared that such debate was not necessary, simply because for the majority of French people, it is obvious what to be French is. It all dates back to the French revolution and its ideals of liberté, egalité, fraternité. Grand words - too grand - but a worthy aspiration nonetheless. Eric Cantona didn't pull his punches when asked about the national debate: "They talk of the Marseillaise, of the French language, but politicians are asses. To be French is to be revolutionary and refusing all this politicking crap." Precisely. Historical events have shaped the French mindset more than any debates will. The struggle of the French revolutionaries and the first republic up in arms against all the monarchies of the continent was the start of a profound shake-up and national identity construction. The Napoleonic setback and royalist restorations throughout the 19th century sharpened the minds, created deep national divisions, but also prepared for the glorious revolutionary episodes of the second republic (1848-1852) and the Commune (1870). The Franco-Prussian war, the Dreyfus affair, the Third Republic, the law of separation of church and state, followed by the two world wars, Vichy, the Résistance, the Algerian war and decolonisation at large made France as we have known it to be: confrontational, contradictory, unruly, restless, but also profoundly republican and secular.
And let's remember that, according to the National Institute for Demographic Studies, a quarter of the French have at least one grandparent born outside France. If I look back a few generations, what do I see? My great-great-great-grandmother was an African-American slave who, once emancipated, married a Scottish soldier; I have Kabyle (Algerian), Vietnamese, Spanish, German, British and American relatives; and a few pirates to make good measure. This makes me a French citizen, naturellement.
(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk)
Agnès Poirier is a political commentator and film critic for the British, French, Italian and Polish press, and a regular contributor to the BBC on politics and films. She is also the author of Les Nouveaux Anglais (Alvik, 2005), Touché, A French woman's take on the English (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006) and Le Modèle anglais, une illusion française (Alvik, 2006). |
