Racism in France - one man's experiences

It's hard to overlook a piece* written in Thursday's issue of the national French daily, Le Monde, by the journalist Mustapha Kessous.

It's another reminder as to just how racism persists here in France.

And of course it couldn't be more timely in light of the recent remarks made by the interior minister, Brice Hortefeux at the ruling centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) party's summer conference at Seignosse in southwestern France at the beginning of the month.

Hortefeux was captured on video saying in the presence of Amine Benalia-Brouch, a young party activist of Algerian origin, that he (Benalia-Brouch), "Doesn't match the prototype. We always need one. It's when there are lots of them that there are problems."and the reaction there has been to them.

Many viewed the comment as a racial slur, but others shrugged it off and tried to explain it as part of the minister's "sense of humour".

Kessous of course begins his piece with a reference to that incident, describing how he first met Hortefeux for an interview in April 2008 when he was still the immigration minister.

"I had never met him before," he writes.

"We waited at his ministry and when Brice Hortefeux arrived, he shook my hand, smiled and said 'Do you have your papers?"

Kessous outlines some of the difficulties he has had even in his job as a journalist for such an illustrious newspaper simply because he is "of Arab origin with a slightly darker complexion and a Moslem."

He writes how he thought that his status as a journalist at one of the country's most respected newspapers would somehow shield him from encountering racism.

He was wrong.

When he covered the Tour de France in July 2008, one spectator refused to talk to him preferring instead to be interviewed by one of his colleagues, who later admitted that an employee for the organisers had also rung him to ask whether Kessous was his chauffeur.

Kessous tells of the time when he wanted to interview the director of a psychiatric hospital, and how he easily got an appointment with her when he introduced himself over the 'phone as Monsieur Kessous from Le Monde (dropping his first name).

"When I arrived, the director's secretary informed her that I was there," he writes.

"A woman on crutches passed in front of me and when I opened the door for her she looked at me without saying 'thank you' or 'hello'," he continues.

Then the woman, who was in fact the director with whom he had an interview, asked the secretary where the journalist was and received the reply that he was just behind her.

"'You have your press card? You have your identity card?'" was what Kessous was asked, reminding us that there had been no welcome yet.

Kessous writes of how he has had to put up with racism and insults from an early age.

"We were one of the few families of North African origin where we lived (in the centre of Lyon)," he says.

"In order to 'succeed' I requested to be sent to a catholic school, and there I went through hell being told to 'Go back to your country' from fellow pupils and teachers alike."

It was a racism that followed him through the education system to the time when he was taking a higher course at journalism school in 2007 and was faced by questions during his oral examination such as, "Are you Moslem" and "If you're a journalist at Le Monde, is it because they need to have an Arab on staff?"

Clearly those working in the field of education are just as prone to racism as the country's police force.

Who can forget the case of Abdeljalel El Haddioui, a 40-year-old police officer who in 2007 made it through to the final stages of a selection process for a higher grade and had to face questions from the board such as "Does your wife wear a headscarf?" and "Do you practise Ramadan?" or "Don't you find it strange that there are Arab ministers in the government?"

And apropos the police, Kessous ends his piece with an incident that occurred recently as he parked his scooter outside the building housing Le Monde and how he was approached by officers asking him what he was doing there and for proof that he was a journalist.

"I could recount any number of events like that," he writes.

"I'm described as being of foreign origin, a beur, rabble or riff-raff (racaille), an Islamist, a delinquent, a 'beurgeois' a child of immigrants...but never a Frenchman. In short, French."

*You can read the full article (in French) here.

A clear case of racism within the French police

The following story first began well over a year ago, and although it has only now been partially resolved, it shows perhaps that racial discrimination within the French police is still very much alive and a force with which to be reckoned.

The least that can be said is that this country's highest administrative court and the one that provides the government with legal advice, the Conseil D'Etat, has taken an exceptional step in an effort to stamp out racism.

In 2007 Abdeljalel El Haddioui, an officer in the French police, applied to enter an examination which would allow him to move up a grade.

He was one of 700 original candidates nationally for just 27 posts and after completing six of the seven required stages with an average which put him in the top 20, he was one of 50 remaining candidates to be called before a jury for the final oral phase.

And that's when his problems began and racial discrimination appeared to rear its ugly little head.

The 40-year-old, who had been in the police since 1998, was the only remaining candidate with a name that marked him out as being obviously Moslem.

And here's a taste of just some of the questions he claimed the jury chose to put just to him during that oral session.

"Does your wife wear a headscarf?"
"Do you practise Ramadan?"
"Don't you find it strange that there are Arab ministers in the government?"
"What's your view on corruption within the Moroccan police force?"

As he pointed out afterwards the other candidates were apparently not asked whether they celebrated Christmas.

El Haddioui's score for the oral was just 4/20, which meant that he had failed.

When he made an initial complaint, the president of the jury at the hearing, Jean-Michel Fromion, refused to comment.

But El Haddioui didn't let the matter lie there and instead found himself a lawyer and took his case to the French Equal Opportunities and Anti-Discrimination Commission (Halde) saying that, "The jury had based its questions on his ethnic origins and his religion in order to eliminate him as a candidate."

With Halde's backing the case finally reached the Conseil d'Etat, which has now taken the unprecedented measure of recommending that the results for all the candidates be annulled.

The final decision as to the fate of the "class of 2007" and the future of El Haddioui lies with the interior minister, Michèle Alliot-Marie.

She has yet to make an official statement on the matter.