Racist Violence and Antiracist Reactions: A View of France

Abstract

‘Racist violence’ in France is closely linked to socio-economic factors and to patterns of institutionalised racial violence which developed in different ways through the collaborationist Vichy regime of the Second World War and the Algerian war. Today, these institutional patterns of racism affect the legal system and the police, but also influence behaviour in civil society. However, there is growing understanding of the existence of a ‘climate’ for racial violence; a tense atmosphere of anxiety about law and order and ‘security’. These understandings have taken a considerable time to develop, partly because of powerful tendencies towards amnesia which surround the legacy both of Vichy and of the Algerian war. In France this has powerfully shaped the organisational responses to racial violence, including the room for manoeuvre of anti-racists. Racial violence has been a powerful factor in the mobilisation of anti-racist youth movements which, as we shall see, have themselves been coopted.

I want to thank MRAP, especially Michelle Ganem, for their assistance in accomplishing this study.