The Bonjour Effect

by Barlow, Julie

  But as we discovered, conversations about integration and racial tensions in France can be tense even when you are talking with friends. That’s because the topics are at the nexus of many other touchy issues, namely French national identity (feelings about which are not expressed easily in France, as we saw in the previous chapter), postcolonial prejudices, France’s guilty postcolonial conscience, and just ordinary xenophobia. These topics, already heated ones, enter into discussions about race quickly and blur the lines of conversation to the point that it’s hard to follow what people are actually talking about.

  Discussions of race, of course, are touchy in any society, but the topic is even harder to tackle in France because of an interesting blindspot. First, the French can’t discuss race relations with anything more than unfounded opinion, because they don’t have any facts to back them up. The French constitution forbids questioning anyone on the basis of skin color or religion and forbids the state from keeping information on this matter. The motivation for this ban was noble: during World War II, the French used information collected in the country’s national census to identify Jews. But seventy years later, France is struggling with the unintended consequence of a generous principle combined with a generous immigration policy (forty years ago, there were very few obstacles to gaining citizenship in France). Officials are forbidden from asking questions about race and religion, so it’s impossible for anyone to factually assess any situation related to race and religion in any objective manner. More important, it’s impossible for anyone to disprove the inflammatory rhetoric of the National Front Party with numbers. There are none. The National Front can—and does—say whatever it wants about immigration, and no one can prove the party wrong. What’s more, the National Front knows, because of the taboo about race and immigration, that no one will ever contradict it openly anyway.

  Jean-Benoît interviewed a statistician at France’s Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) about the challenges specialists face researching the question of race in France. One way they circumvent the limitation is by asking people their country of origin or that of their parents. By doing so, French demographers have established that there are roughly 5 million immigrés (foreign born) in France and 6.7 million children of immigrants (half from Spain, Portugal, and Italy). That’s almost 20 percent of France’s population. However, researchers can only infer religion and ethnicity from a respondent’s country of origin. This has obvious limitations.

  French specialists have been debating the need for reliable statistics on the matter for twenty years now. The debate resurfaced in March 2015 when Prime Minister Manuel Valls openly declared that France’s integration problems would not go away if the French continued to ignore them. He pointed out that the problem of sexism in France was being addressed successfully because there were statistics available that leaders could use to create policies.6

  We were in France for a book launch in 2005 when a massive wave of riots erupted in the suburbs of Paris. To grasp what happened, it is necessary to understand that the “geography of poverty” in France is the opposite of what it is in North America. When you hear about riots in French suburbs, these are not what Americans think of as suburbs. In France, it’s the cities and downtowns that are affluent and middle class. The suburbs are where the poor and disenfranchised populations live because they are cheaper. The French reaction to the 2005 riots was not to investigate the matter in depth (because they are singularly ill-equipped to do so for lack of statistical information). Instead, they invested nearly 20 billion euros in new buildings and infrastructure and in affirmative action programs for the people who lived in the suburbs, regardless of their ethnicity.7

  Despite the taboo about race, and the lack of statistics it has engendered, the French have found ways to fight racism and facilitate integration of immigrants. Freedom of expression may be a cherished value in France, but when it is used to foment discrimination or racism, the French have shown they are willing to curb it. Six months before the events at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo in early January 2015, when terrorists broke in and murdered twelve people, French authorities forbade a stand-up comic, Dieudonné—a brilliant black actor whose humor stooped to anti-Semitic slander—from performing. Three days after the massacres, he was arrested again for apologie du terrorisme (praising terrorism). In 2014, the former National Front candidate Anne-Sophie Leclère, who had compared Minister of Justice Christiane Taubira to a monkey, was sentenced to nine months in jail and a $30,000 (22,500-euro) fine.8 (The French state has no clear policy of affirmative action on race, but French leaders in the last decades have been deliberately promoting members of France’s minorities in their own governments. The first government of Nicolas Sarkozy had a number of high-profile ministers from minorities, particularly minority women. France’s socialist prime minister Manuel Valls, himself of Catalan origin, appointed six ministers from visible minorities: two Moroccan, three Caribbean, and one Korean.)9

  When it comes to religions, foreigners and French often end up in a dialogue of the deaf because, once again, the terms of the discussion are so different. Like “communities,” the French consider religion to be potentially divisive.10 To understand what the French are saying when they talk about religion, you need to grasp the sense of a curious concept, almost untranslatable to North Americans: laïcité (pronounced lah-hee-see-tay). The word translates as “secularism” but laïcité means much more: it is a government policy that excludes religion from anything related to the state and institutions. You will never hear a French minister say, “God bless France,” or “In God we trust,” or see one pray in public. The concept of laïcité was formulated in the nineteenth century with the principal objective of fighting Catholic extremists in France who were opposed to democratic institutions. Julie interviewed a French expert on religion, the sociologist and philosopher Raphaël Liogier, about the origins of the concept of laïcité. As Liogier explained, the original idea was not to guarantee freedom of religion, but freedom from religion. Religion has frequently posed a threat to democracy in France. Catholic radicals continued to reject the basic principles of democracy well into the twentieth century. In 1940, they used the pretext of the lost battle against Germany to impose a fascist regime on France, the Vichy government (named after the spa town where the new capital was established).

  The French consider the enforcement of laïcité as a perpetual struggle, and ongoing project, something like teaching French. While the principle of laïcité applies to all state institutions—including hospitals and even cemeteries—France’s schools have always been the most sensitive arena for the struggle to enforce it. The role of schools is crucial: they have been the main battleground in favor of secularism since the French government took over education from the clergy in 1880. As Liogier explained, in the French perception, “Schools are where you create the civic values, the citizens, the political parties of tomorrow, and this had to be done completely independently of Catholicism.” The view of schools as the battleground of laïcité explains some of the sensitivity the French have about the presence of the Islamic veil in public schools.11 Indeed, in September 2013, the government required all secondary schools to post a new charte de la laïcité (statement of secularism), which, among other things, states that students are forbidden from wearing ostentatious symbols of religious affiliation, like Islamic veils.12

  Parents at any school in France are almost certain to witness some type of squabble about the application of laïcité there. In our case, the squabble spiraled into outright conflict. The story began at one of the parent-teacher meetings at the beginning of the school year. When Jean-Benoît walked into the class of Monsieur Laouni a few minutes after the meeting had started, the teacher, who was born in Morocco, had already locked horns with a parent. The mother was arguing that the principle of laïcité should be applied to the letter. Monsieur Laouni told her that her version of laïcit
é was strictly Christian. He had a point. Among the thirteen official holidays in France, only four are not religious (Workers’ Day on May 1, Victory Day on May 8, the Fourteenth of July, and the Armistice of November 11). And that’s not counting the fact that the school cafeteria didn’t serve meat on Fridays, in line with Catholic custom. (To the credit of the system, the cafeteria in our school was discreetly accommodating to other religions. Whenever there was pork on the menu, the school cafeteria offered halal and kosher alternatives without advertising them as such.)

  Things got off to a bad start for Monsieur Laouni, who we suspect had alienated parents by inelegantly flaunting his culture générale (which really was vastly superior to the norm, even at our school). Whatever the initial motivation, one group of parents decided he had to go. Throughout the fall, they hovered like hawks waiting for him to make a wrong move so they could denounce him. Julie—who, after the elections, continued to attend occasional meetings of the right-wing parents’ political party—heard all the complaints as they unfolded. One morning, the parents were particularly agitated: Monsieur Laouni had crossed the line. While discussing world religion with his students, he had asked if there was a Jewish student in the class who could fill him in on some Jewish customs. “Ça ne se fait pas!” the parents at the café shrieked. They immediately filed a complaint about him to the “Inspectrice,” the education inspector who manages teachers.

  With all this lofty rhetoric about laïcité shooting around, we were a bit taken aback when, in late November, a Christmas tree popped up inside the front door of our school. We wondered how laïc (secular) this five-foot-tall blinking symbol of the ultimate Christian holiday could really be? “Ah, that’s different,” the café parents reported. “It’s cultural.” Monsieur Laouni didn’t buy the culture argument and decided to rub parents’ noses in their own laïcité: he told his students not to bring him Christmas gifts, and he didn’t so much as acknowledge the holiday in the weeks leading up to it. His message was clear enough to us: this is what laïcité looks like to a non-Catholic. (But it just stiffened the café parents’ resolve. After months of accusations and counteraccusations, Monsieur Laouni finally gave in and went on sick leave, leaving the school before the end of the year.)

  There are several reasons the French embrace laïcité so wholeheartedly, or even, as we saw, blindly. First, it doesn’t really hurt the Catholic majority, or Christians at all for that matter. That’s because laïcité was, at its origins, a gigantic political barter: the state, which is officially neutral, got the clergy out of schools but left the Christian holidays more or less intact, including pretty obscure ones like la Toussaint (All Saints’ Day, November 1), The Feast of Ascension (forty days after Easter), Pentecost (fifty days after Easter), and the Assumption of Mary (August 15), all statutory holidays in France. In addition to the two weeks of holiday for Christmas and New Year’s Day, kids get two weeks of holidays at Easter and All Saints’ Day.

  We had never heard the French talk as much about laïcité as they did the year we were there. That’s certainly because in the twelve years between our first and second stays in France, discussions about race relations went from being mainly about skin color and ethnic origins to being about mores and religion. As Raphaël Liogier explained to Julie, and as we could see for ourselves, Catholicism is no longer the sole target of laïcité; Islam is, too.13

  Broadly speaking, the global phenomenon of mounting Islamist extremism is colliding with a set of homegrown factors in France that intensify reactions to it. An estimated 7.5 percent of France’s population is believed to be Muslim (though the numbers cannot be confirmed, since no one declares his or her religious affiliation in official documents). To the French, this large population raises the specter of communautarisme, not just because the French see communites as a threat in themselves, but because they fear Islamic groups or associations could potentially be radicalized and/or used by Islamic extremists. The result has been the growth of islamophobie (Islamophobia), a word that appeared in France about fifteen years ago but is now a daily topic of discussion in the French media.

  Once again, France’s National Front is the only political party willing to openly address the issue, so the floor is open to it to say pretty much whatever it wants, and the National Front does say terrible things. One of Marine Le Pen’s most skillful political moves has been to target Islamism and Islam in France by invoking the values of the French Republic, specifically laïcité. As she did with Europe, and other sacred cows of France’s political culture, Le Pen legitimizes prejudice by going where no other party will go, broaching political taboos they won’t touch. This political exploitation of principles by a far-right party, in turn, makes it that much harder for the rest of the French to neutrally discuss either racial tensions or the integration of immigrants in France. If they bring it up, they have to talk about the National Front, too. (To steal some of Marine Le Pen’s thunder, former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who has returned to politics, renamed his party Les Républicains, though by presenting his party as the unique defender of the values of the French Republic, he of course infuriated French socialists as well.)

  Given all these factors, will mounting Islamophobia turn out to be insurmountable in France? Curiously, shortly after the Charlie Hebdo massacre of January 2015, two French sociologists, Céline Goffette and Jean-François Mignot, set out to examine just how anti-Islam the satirical magazine actually was. They reviewed 523 cover images of Charlie Hebdo from 2005 to 2015 and discovered that the vast majority, 336, were devoted to politics and politicians (mostly to Nicolas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen); another 85 covers were about economics or social issues; and 42 were about sports and entertainment (the other 22 were multitargeted). Only 38 Charlie Hebdo covers (6 percent) actually made fun of religion, and of those, only 7 took issue with Islam. The other 21 were about Catholicism.14

  Could the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the November 13 attacks somehow shake the French out of the current stalemate caused by the taboos around racial tensions and integration? Much in the way that the French invented laïcité to get themselves out of a nineteenth-century conundrum, we’re certain there’s a French thinker out there who is already hammering out some new words and expressions for new concepts that will help the French state overcome its present challenges.

  You can always count on the French to talk their way out of things.

  Epilogue

  Our original idea for this book was a kind of learners’ guide called “How to Speak to the French in Twelve Easy Chapters.” We wanted to explain how to communicate with the French in a progressive step-by-step approach, starting with “beginner” topics like bonjour, moving to intermediate subjects like language, and concluding with advanced themes, like politics. We decided against that when we sat down to write. We simply hadn’t predicted how eye-opening it would be to spend a year watching our daughters as French school literally configured them for conversation. We were awestruck hearing the results at the end of every school day and understood how important this “formatting” is in the way the French communicate. We ended up devoting an entire chapter to it, but it informs the whole book. (There was another reason we steered away from the faux guidebook approach: we met fascinating people, had surprising experiences, and ended up with a lot of stories to tell.)

  In the end, we divided the chapters of this book into two sections that cover roughly how the French are formatted to speak (“Form”) and what they like and don’t like to talk about (“Content”). At the same time, we didn’t entirely dispense with our original idea. The chapters in each section still roughly progress in difficulty, from simple lessons to complex subjects.

  Nor did we forget our original goal, which was to provide readers with guiding principles they could use right away to improve communications with the French. So we decided to conclude the book with a list of tips we divided into five categories: Twelve Guiding Principles of French Conversation, Dos, Don’ts, Topics You Can
Discuss Anywhere in France, and Topics You Should Broach with Care.

  Although we researched this book in Paris’s Latin Quarter, in some ways a microcosm of French society that runs on its own rules, we have, to date, lived in France for four years and traveled widely throughout the country. So we are confident these rules apply pretty much everywhere in France.

  Twelve Guiding Principles of French Conversation

  1. The French don’t communicate. They converse.

  2. The French correct others all the time. It’s normal public behavior.

  3. The French say no even when they mean yes.

  4. The French hate saying, “I don’t know.” They will do anything to avoid it.

  5. The French are terrified of making mistakes—des fautes—and avoid looking like they’ve made them at all costs.

  6. The French think being negative is good. It makes you sound smart.

  7. If a French person talks to you, it’s a sign he or she wants some kind of relationship. So talk back.

  8. When the French don’t want to talk to you, they don’t open their mouths. So take the hint.

  9. The point of talking in France is to show you are interesting, not merely to convey information.

  10. The French don’t look for consensus in conversation.

  11. Disagreement among couples is acceptable public behavior. It’s considered a sign that a relationship is strong.

  12. The French are comfortable making jokes about sex, even in professional situations, even when children are listening.

  Dos

  • Say bonjour like you mean it and say it a lot. If it feels like you’re saying it too much, that’s just enough.

  • Be provocative. It’s better to say something outrageous than agree politely.

  • Never take non for an answer. Keep talking until you get a oui.