France’s political elite never champions virtues of a multicultural nation | Elise Vincent

Good piece by Elise Vincent of Le Monde on the problems with France’s approach to diversity and integration:

The problem with the approach of both Sarkozy and Hollande is that it reveals a defensive attitude, never a proactive one. So when the government begins to accept meatless menus in canteens or creates Muslim areas in cemeteries, the impression given to the French public is still that of an “abdication” faced with the claims of Muslim “lobbies”. It doesn’t, as it could, suggest an approach that’s chosen and is beneficial to the French Muslim minority and so, in turn, to the whole of French society.

Similarly, constantly brandishing the idea of a republic “one and indivisible” – as the saying goes – France judges that it is defending itself against Anglo-Saxon “multiculturalism”.

In truth, on the ground, things are very similar. De facto community organisations exist in France, as in the UK. But there’s one key difference: by acting as it does, France prevents the emergence of moderate “community leaders”. Those who manage to emerge in public debate are those who shout the loudest: the radicals.

While failing to review its “model”, France is ignorant of the extent of its mixed relationships and the children born to them. How, without accurate ethnic statistics, can we address properly this grassroots transformation of France? How to measure properly the failures of integration or the success of many immigrants, whether Muslim or not?

The way of speaking of “living together” in France is often too negative, obsessed by the most extreme behaviour, or, alternatively, it is too celebratory, as if it were absolutely necessary to embellish reality to better fight the rise of the Front National. The analyses are often coarse, unnecessarily judgmental. The always subtle, complicated reality of identity and life on the ground is regularly overlooked. All these small shifts in what and how people feel have much more to do with everyday tensions than blind terrorism.

Physicists know that the smell of a dangerous gas is detectable in the air long before becoming harmful and ends in an explosion. There are still two years before the next presidential elections. Two years to prevent French voters massively supporting the Front National, as predicted by many polls. Stopping this leak will not necessarily protect France from terrorism, but it will at least guard against another cataclysm.

France’s political elite never champions virtues of a multicultural nation | Elise Vincent | Comment is free | The Observer.