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The killing in Nanterre, near Paris, of 17-year-old Nahel M. by a policeman and the resulting protests have reopened a debate in France that has never been resolved on the so-called “ethnic statistics” or on the prohibition, established in principle by a law of the seventies, to collect data on the basis of ethnicity. The public and political discussion that has developed in France has focused on the question of the banlieues and on the problems of the people who live there, who have higher poverty rates, are more likely to be unemployed, and to be stopped by the police and to suffer of abuse.
The analysis of these problems also has to do with ethnic statistics to some extent, but there has long been a heated debate on whether or not this kind of data should be collected. For some scholars, academics or politicians, the ethnic statistics that exist in some form in France are more than enough. For others not even the existing ones should be collected and for still others they should instead be more, and better done.
The legislation on ethnic statistics it is regulated in France by a 1978 law called “Informatique et Libertés” which, in principle, prohibits them. Article 6 states: «It is forbidden to process personal data revealing the alleged racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership of a natural person or to process genetic data, biometric data intended to identify uniquely a natural person, data relating to the health or sex life or sexual orientation of a natural person”.
In France, therefore, the processing of personal data revealing directly or indirectly the “racial or ethnic” origin of individuals and the other variables mentioned in the law is prohibited, as is the introduction of such variables in administrative files. However, various statistics, surveys or researches in France have to do with these issues because that same law of 1978 contains exceptions to the ban. The National Council for Statistical Information (Cnis) and the National Commission for Information Technology and Freedoms (Cnil, which deals with the application of the 1978 law) can in fact, from time to time, grant derogations: precise conditions and considering the objectives of the data collection, the consent of the people involved and other parameters.
Therefore, to say that in France there are no statistics on the ethnic diversity of the population or research that does not give indications on inequalities or discriminations is not correct.
The French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) it’s been a long time of searches revealing the country of birth or nationality of the people interviewed and their parents or family members. They are mainly based on objective data. Some other surveys instead use subjective data, ie which refer to the “feeling of belonging” of the people interviewed and which may include references to “skin colour” as one of the possible reasons for the perception of injustice or discrimination. These researches serve to understand to what extent geographical, national or social origins can influence the possibility of accessing education, work, public services and social benefits and so on.
Despite the presence of these surveys, it is true that there are far fewer and far less detailed ones than in other countries, such as the United States for example.
For some scholars, academics or politicians, not even the statistics that are there should exist. Such research, they say, risks questioning republican universalism, the idea that the identity of citizens transcends everything else and that primacy should be assigned to the political community as composed of neutral and equal individuals regardless of differences. This adherence to a single national identity is abstractly defined by the motto “liberté, égalité, fraternité”. Everyone is equal before the law because the law, like society, pays no attention to differences.
For the defenders of universalism, ethnic statistics threaten this principle with their very existence: they enclose people in identitarian and essentialist categories (reducing their identity to a certain characteristic: being black, for example), they continually refer them to their origins or lead to racializing social issues (for example by identifying black people with a certain economic status).
Come he claims among others the demographer Hervé Le Bras, the refusal to identify people by ethnicity is based on the idea that instead of «fighting discrimination» ethnic statistics reinforce them leading to a «lockdown» or an identification «with one’s own group ethnic or racial”. Furthermore, for Le Bras, naming ethnic groups or races would inevitably lead to naming “whites” as well, establishing a norm and what deviates from that norm. This would contribute to the formation of supremacist groups and encourage arguments or fears based on racist assumptions. Naming ethnic groups would then be very complicated, it would constitute a constant source of conflict and would pose the question, not easily resolved, of the dozens of possible combinations between ethnic groups.
For Le Bras, relying on the “sense of belonging”, in a nutshell on the ethnic group with which people identify, would not solve the problem. Because it would still be necessary to group these perceptions into certain categories and because it would be difficult to decide on legal obligations, intended for example for the fight against discrimination, “solely on a feeling that we know is, in many contexts, far from the facts”.
For other scholars, on the other hand, the little information provided by French ethnic statistics is not sufficient and indeed more and better should be done. This type of research, they say, is above all a knowledge tool and is essential for measuring the extent of discrimination.
François Héran, sociologist, anthropologist and demographer at the College de France, answer the fact of opposing republican principles to ethnic statistics: «What’s the point of brandishing our universalist ideals if we refuse to measure the gap that separates them from reality? Far from undermining the principle of equal treatment, ethnic statistics takes it literally. It is by looking at reality that we will be able to promote the ideals of the nation in a different way than with words alone”.
Universalism, essentially say the proponents of ethnic statistics, is a concept that can be reduced to a declaration of equality that remains only formal if it does not take into account the differences. This criticism is quite understandable if one thinks of what the feminist movements were saying when they highlighted the paradox of a suffrage which claimed, at least in definition, to be universal, but which excluded women. Collecting data based on the ethnicity of French citizens can therefore not only help to measure substantial equality and to know the entity of discrimination phenomena, but it can also serve to outline possible contrasting policies that are effective.
In 2020, after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis while being violently arrested by the police, the then Macron government spokesman Sibeth Ndiaye, of Senegalese origin, wrote a lengthy editorial per The worldstill much cited today in the debate on ethnic statistics.
She explained how even then it was urgent for her to go back to talking about “the question of the representativeness of black people in public, political, economic and cultural life”, thus reopening the discussion on ethnic statistics “in a serene and constructive way”. Sibeth Ndiaye explained how in recent years the issue of racism had “disappeared from the political field” and had been supplanted by Islamophobia and an exclusively identity-based debate: “The rejection of foreigners is no longer the result of the color of their skin, but of his religion”. This vision had gradually allowed the far right to establish a syllogism in which the racist question was not canceled but remained implicit: «Blacks and Arabs are often Muslims, Islam is not compatible with the Republic therefore blacks and Arabs would not be compatible with the Republic”. At the same time, the anti-racism of the French left was diluted in the fight against social inequalities due to what many considered a serious forgetfulness: that racial discrimination and social discrimination should not be confused.
While not denying the positive sides of universalism, Sibeth Ndiaye argued that unconditional universalism thus allowed both ends of the political spectrum to simultaneously claim that racism was everywhere or nowhere, without anyone being able to refute their claims. Her conclusion was therefore that it was necessary to give up measuring and look at reality for what it is: «We must not hesitate to name things, to say that skin color is not neutral, or that a name or a surname can stigmatize» .
His words were not well received. The then Economy Minister, Bruno Le Maire, who still holds that office today, le these: «A Frenchman is a Frenchman, and I do not take into account his race, origin or religion, and I do not wish to take them into account».
Sibeth Ndiaye’s words were taken up by the French-American journalist Charlotte Kilpatrick who wrote a item very critical of French-style universalism and the rejection of more extensive ethnic statistics. This refusal is for her the symbol of France’s rejection of recognizing racism within its borders.
This universalism, explains Charlotte Kilpatric, manifests itself in different forms: in school curricula that do not address and barely touch on colonialism, in proposals to ban the veil on Muslim women in public, but also in issues that have to do with health . It means for example, explains the journalist, that in the absence of statistics “officials have no way of knowing how health crises affect different communities” and gives the example of how during the Covid pandemic, Reuters had collected a series of data showing that French Muslim people had died from the virus more than the rest of the population. Universalism, continues Kilpatric, means that there is no up-to-date or meaningful research on discrimination in employment, housing, access to public funds or means that the government has no way of knowing whether the children of migrants have higher school difficulties.
Charlotte Kilpatrick concludes her article by saying that it shouldn’t be controversial to say that France is a racist country or that its wealth has also been built on its colonial past. Nor, she says, should it be controversial to say that everyone experiences their nationality in different ways: «Being French does not only mean buying a ham baguette for lunch at the local bakery and accompanying it with a good glass of Bordeaux. It can also mean spending Friday afternoon at the mosque or Sunday eating Senegalese fish and rice. The way Nahel M. lived her nationality in the banlieue is no less valid an experience than that of the children of French presidents who attend high school in Neuilly-sur-Seine. The difference is that those children will have numerous opportunities that Nahel M. could never have dreamed of. Recognizing this lack of “égalité” would be a sign of national strength, not weakness.”