When Lylia Kateb’s French manager introduced her recently to the big boss, he added reassuringly: “But don’t worry, she’s a decent person.” Despite being an Arab, was the implication.
Lylia’s tale of the slights faced as a young French woman of North African descent — even as a trained engineer — was one of hundreds of accounts of everyday racism mailed in to Le Monde newspaper last week.
In the year that Barack Obama was sworn in as US president, Aziz Medjeber told of having to change his name to the more French-sounding Laurent before he could find a job in Paris.
Now pregnant with her first child, Lylia admitted she was worried about giving him an Arab-sounding name.
The spark for the outpouring of real-life stories was an article by Le Monde reporter Mustapha Kessous, who told of his own experience of prejudice.
Being turned away from a club or fancy restaurant, stopped and searched by the police, told the job or apartment is already taken or having to put up with a racist joke: For many in France his story struck a powerful chord.
Within hours of publication the article drew 200 comments and was shared hundreds of times on Twitter and Facebook, where users were spotted changing their profile names to “Mustapha” in sympathy, Le Monde reported.
“Mustapha Kessous is every one of us,” ran an op-ed piece the following day as TV and radio debates raged about the hard truths of racism in modern France.
For days the 30-year-old journalist’s name was the most searched-for term on the French Internet and one week on his story was the second most commented in the site’s history with 464 support messages.
For many, the stories were all too familiar.
“The trouble with ordinary racism is that whatever you say has been heard 1,000 times before, it no longer has the power to shock,” Thierry Velnon wrote.
“But the fact this is coming from a journalist at Le Monde makes people sit up and listen at last,” said Imed ben Abderrahmane from Paris.
The riots in Paris’ sububs in 2005, fueled by anger among black and Arab youths who feel cut off from mainstream society, were an electric shock that forced France to face up to its checkered record on integrating minorities.
Since then, former president Jacques Chirac and his successor President Nicolas Sarkozy have promised tough action on discrimination, with the appointment in 2007 of three women ministers of African descent intended to send a powerful signal.
The French anti-discrimination watchdog, the HALDE, paid tribute to Kessous’ article as an “important and poignant testimony.”
“It’s a remarkable story that takes the cause forwards,” HALDE spokeswoman Marylene Courivaud said. “It jolts people into thinking, ‘This can happen to a journalist too’ ... We want people to understand that anyone can end up a victim.”
A French ban on gathering any kind of ethnic data — in the name of republican equality — has long hobbled its ability to measure, let alone tackle discrimination.
But an experts’ committee is to report back to Sarkozy later this month suggesting ways to measure diversity, while taking account of fierce hostility to any kind of racial statistics.
“After years of denial, French society is finally waking up to the massive and systemic nature of discrimination, for access to jobs, housing and business creation,” said Patrick Lozes of the CRAN black advocacy group. “There is a real break with the past.”
Earlier this month the government’s efforts were dealt a blow when Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux was caught on video making what seem to be anti-Arab comments. Hortefeux later voiced regret to the French Council of the Muslim Faith, but insisted his comments were taken out of context.
He stopped short of an apology and Sarkozy has refused to condemn his longtime ally.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS