Nadine Morano, impeccably fair in hair colour, skin and clothing with just a hint of black visible. From the official European Parliament site
To civilised eyes and ears, the French politician Nadine Morano's pained declaration that France is a country of the race blanche was as nauseating as it was false. I have taken pops at her in two columns published in recent days. But ever the fair trader, I extend a sincere invitation to Mme Moran to explain how she has been misunderstood or how the rest of us, save for some grim usual suspects, have got it all wrong. She may do it in French or English as she chooses ...
First I wrote about it in my regular column for The Connexion, the monthly newspaper published in Monaco for English speakers in France.
It went like this:
Can it be possible that a university-educated woman, who sits in the European parliament and has held responsible posts in the French government, still fails to realise the world has changed?
Unfortunately, as Nadine Morano has shown in that crass manner politicians raise to an art form, it is.
Having called France a “Judeo-Christian country of white race that welcomes foreigners”., the sensible option might have been to apologise for an unwise or clumsy choice of words. Instead, she stands by them, insists she is quoting Charles de Gaulle and proclaims pride in not being from a “nation of cowards”.
But what Morano overlooks, when citing France’s towering 20th century figure and expecting everything to be all right, is that de Gaulle’s remark was in a conversation from a quite different age. Fifty-six years ago, as others have pointed out, race was a word with more innocent connotations than in the context of today’s debates on immigration, integration and security.
Estimates vary but let us assume France has between five and seven million Muslims, that is – for the most part – people more likely to have black, brown or olive skins than white. Many were born in France, even to parents born in France. Numerous people among Morano’s white French, my own nephew included, have married or set up home with Muslims. Must their children, and all the afore-mentioned Muslims, be told they are not really French, merely welcome in a white man’s land?
Churchill was no less great a man because he, too, voiced thoughts that would not seem appropriate now. As a young woman visiting her parents in her native provincial France, my wife-to-be received a sharp slap to the face for mocking their attitudes by announcing that the man she wanted to marry was not only English but black (only the English part was correct). My own mother spoke rather too loudly on an outing in the 1980s that there seemed to be “lots of darkies”. If we have not moved on, we ought to have done.
It is not a one-way street. If denying alternatives to pork in school canteens reeks of indefensible discrimination, so is the notion of discouraging people from eating pork at work to avoid offending others.
Those is a world of difference between rejecting a cravenly tip-toeing and uneven approach and approving outbursts from a mainstream former minister that seem calculated to insult a sizeable minority of fellow-citizens. I shall never tire of arguing that if we expect Muslims to respect Europe’s democratic, pluralistic traditions, as we should, we must also resolutely pursue a fairer society from which no one feels excluded on account of colour or faith.
It is no wonder that among those springing to Morano’s support was Jean-Marie Le Pen, considered too extreme even for the Front National, the party he created.
Le Pen’s successor, his daughter and tormentor Marine, also endorsed Morano’s comment while stressing she still did not want her in her party.
But as Nicolas Sarkozy and other key figures in Les Républicains distanced themselves from Morano, dropping her as a candidate for regional elections, it was difficult to escape one compelling thought.
As well as hankering for a country of the white,
Morano has praised Marine Le Pen for her “talent” and urged Muslim youth of the banlieues to "love France when they live here, find work and not speak in slang”, adding for good measure – all reported out of context, she wants us to know – that “they shouldn't put their caps on back to front". Surely Morano and the Front National were made for each other.
Not content with that, and looking for a subject for my column about words for The National, Abu Dhabi, I found another way of making similar points ...
France is proud of its long relationship with philosophy.
La Philo is always the first subject French pupils sit in their Baccalauréat examinations. In the 18th century, French intellectuals were at the heart of the Age of Enlightenment.
From the medieval scholar Peter Abélard to Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Jean-Paul Sartre and even such contemporary figures as Bernard-Henri Levy, there has never been a shortage of philosophers.
But those who embraced the enlightenment movement for its belief in virtue, reason, tolerance and progress must be spinning in their graves at the ugliness of a debate that has lately pre-occupied France.
Nadine Morano is a former government minister from the centre-right Les Républicans, led by the ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy, and a European MP with French presidential ambitions. Late in September she stirred fierce, unedifying controversy by stating on television: “France is a Judeo-Christian country, of white race.”
The Oxford English Dictionary’s online version offers one definition of philosophy as “a theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour”. Some depressing conclusions may be drawn about Mrs Morano’s guiding principles.
Her words were a cruel affront to millions of people with black, brown, olive and yellow skins who were born in France or hold French nationality.
It matters not that she seeks cover behind the shield of national respect for the country’s most revered political leader of the past century, Gen Charles de Gaulle. It is true he once said roughly the same thing.
But not all thoughts expressed in an entirely different age and context – the remark dates from 1959 – are acceptable or applicable now.
In 2015, there is an overwhelming need for people of different ethnic and cultural origins, but inhabiting the same land, to get along. Mrs Morano has a track record of claiming to be quoted out of context, as after her questionable message urging poor young French Muslims to "love France when they live here, find work and not speak in slang … [and not to wear] their caps back to front".
In or out of context, such views now define her. They are not so worrying on the lips of leaders of the far-right, anti-immigration Front National (FN) of Marine Le Pen. Mercifully, though this may change, the FN has yet to experience power beyond a few town halls. Uttered by a well-known mainstream politician, they threaten social harmony.
The veteran actor Alain Delon speeds to Mrs Morano’s defence, praising her for declaring, in effect: “Blow the lot of you. I say what I think and will go on doing so.”
But then Delon counts among his pals Miss Le Pen’s father, Jean Marie, whose outlook is so extreme that even his daughter had him turfed out of the party he created.
Like many countries, France has strict laws limiting free expression. It is not permissible to incite racial hatred, for example, or deny that Nazi war crimes happened.
Mrs Morano’s own party was sufficiently appalled at her comment to drop her from its list of candidates for regional elections. Not even Marine Le Pen – whom she credited with “a lot of talent” in one unguarded moment – offers a haven, initially defending her but, ever keen to reinvent her party as reasonable, later deploring the possible offence to French citizens in overseas territories.
But the most dignified and incisive response has come from Mr Sarkozy’s wife, the Italian-born singer and former model Carla Bruni.
She sent a text message telling Mrs Morano: “My niece [the adopted Senegalese daughter of Bruni’s sister] is black. She is my charming niece and she is French.”
And now over to Nadine Morano, the Nancy-born daughter of a HGV driver and switchboard operator, to exercise her right of reply ...
* Both articles are reproduced at Salut! with the consent of the editors.
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