Monday, July 27, 2020

Have the French finally started talking about the racism in their country?

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Inshiya Nalawala

Article Title

Have the French finally started talking about the racism in their country?

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

July 27, 2020

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BLM Protest in France

BLM Protest in France | Source: Thomas de LUZE via Unsplash

France, which boasts about being a color-blind nation, isn’t truly what it asserts. For a non-white citizen living in France, being subjected to bias and ethnic profiling at the hands of some insensitive police officers is a real possibility.

Structural and institutional racism is evident in France, where children as young as 10 years old have to routinely endure police stops, even without being suspicious of any illegal activity. These unlawful stops often involve humiliating body pat-downs and searches of personal belongings are   usually left unrecorded by any agency.  

A speaker at the French media coverage of the Middle East at the Alliance Française in Beverly Hills, Slimane Zeghidour, in an interview with the ‘French Morning’ agency said that, “there is a very strong prejudice of class that is translated to a stigmatization of people”, adding that these targeted people are mainly immigrants from Maghreb or Africa.

The brutal killing of George Floyd in the US kicked off huge protests against the institutionalized racism in France as well. Hundreds of people protested at the Presidential Palace in Paris while 2500 people attended a rally in Lille, 1800 in Marseille, and 1200 in Lyon displaying  placards similar to those in the US – ‘Black lives matter’ and ‘I can’t breathe’.

Alongwith protesting the death of George Floyd, people in France also drew the attention to the murder of a 24-year old black man Adama Traoré in police custody in July 2016 in their own country. The police officers involved in this incident were exonerated which triggered mass protests at that time in France.

Such blatant racism and ethnic prejudice is the result of a sense of supremacy ingrained in the collective psyche of white citizens who constitute the overwhelming majority in France. Instead of acknowledging their racial bias, a large section of whites have started blaming the minorities as the cause of their economic and cultural problems.

When a black national icon of France, Lilian Thuram, the most capped player in the history of the French national team, spoke about the racism incident in a football match in Italy, it caused a massive storm in France.

Thuram said, it is not the world of football that is racist, but "Italian, French, European and, more generally, white culture" is racist. He further stated that "Whites have decided they are superior to blacks and that they can do anything with them," and “It is something that has been going on for centuries unfortunately and to change a culture is not easy."

Thurham was highly criticized and branded ‘anti-white racists’ by the far-right extremists and their sympathetic journalists. This criticism later expanded in the mainstream media as well.

Not only the far-right extremists, even the government flatly denies the existence of extreme violence and institutional discrimination in France.

“I don’t believe we can say that France is a racist country,” says Sibeth Ndiaye, a French Government spokesperson to the journalists after a cabinet meeting, when people took to streets in June 2020, all the while justifying that France cannot be compared with the USA.

Well, with fueling protests and awareness, things are slowly changing and the taboo around race and white supremacy is losing its grip. People have gradually started to acknowledge their identity as ‘white’ or ‘black’ and the mainstream media is now talking about race.

As Mr. Fassin, a sociology professor at the University of Paris says, “My hope is we'll realize that talking about race isn't against democracy but rather about democracy”, he reflects optimism for a better tomorrow.

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February 4, 2021 5:05 PM

Art as a tool of Palestinian Resistance

The Israel-Palestine conflict is one that has been fraught with violence and displacement, more so for the Palestinians. This is a complicated history of war and disagreement over the possible solutions. However in recent years, the actions of Israel’s right-wing coalition government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are making the path to peace even more difficult.

Many artists, especially those of Palestinian origin, across the creative mediums, have turned to art as a medium of expression against the Israeli government’s repressive policies and to show the suffering of the Palestinian people.

Graffiti of  Marouane Barghouti, imprisoned Palestinian activist | Source: thierry ehrmann via Flickr

The heroes of Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation are a popular subject of resistance art by Palestinian artists. It is mainly expressed in the form of murals, graffities, and posters.

Another important theme in Palestinian art surrounds the Nakba, which refers to the exodus of a large number of Palestinians after the formation of the state of Israel.

Palestinian refugees leaving the Galilee in October–November 1948 | Source:  Fred Csasznik via Wikimedia

A popular street artist Banksy has left his unique mark in support of Palestinian resistance, and not just in the form of street art which lines the Israeli West Bank barrier and other areas of the West Bank.

Street Art by Banksy | Source: Dan Meyers via Unsplash

Banksy also opened the Walled Off Hotel in 2014 where all the rooms overlook the barrier or apartheid wall, as it is known in Palestine, and each contains various artworks depicting life under occupation.

The most recent contribution from Banksy in this regard has been a small art piece that was displayed inside the hotel last Christmas, called ‘The Scar of Bethlehem.’ It depicts a nativity scene (the birth of Jesus) set to the backdrop of the concrete barrier, with a bullet hole in it resembling a star and has garnered praise from many western news outlets as a symbol of solidarity with Palestinian suffering.

Posters, and innovative methods of distributing the same, are another form of artistic protest. These range from the posters by various artists published in a leftist French newspaper, meant to be cut out and pasted on walls by the public; to the Turkish graphic design professors using public walkways to exhibit posters in solidarity with Gaza.

A card marking the tenth anniversary of the launching of the Palestinian revolution in 1965 | Source: Nawal Abboud via The Palestinian Poster Archives

Posters have also sprung up in various places across the world, including Israel, calling for active demonstrations against Israel’s plans to annex the West Bank. All of the mentioned posters continue to be collected in the digital archives of the Palestine Poster Project.

Another popular collection dates back to 1970s Australia, circulated by Ali Kazak, a Palestinian ambassador, called “landscape posters” for their focus on Palestinian land. Many posters utilised symbols such as traditional Palestinian dresses, fruits such as olives and oranges, and keys, which refer to the refugees.

Some of the older art from around the 1970s focused on pre-war Palestinian life and culture, while the newer art takes a multi-media form through photographs, science fiction and films. Similarly, many murals can be found surrounding Land Day, which serves as a reminder of a massacre in 1976 in response to a protest.

Artistic symbolism also often uses the concept of Sumud, which means resilience in Arabic, and is used to refer to a “sense of rootedness” to Palestinian land.

Music also found its voice as a form of self-expression and resistance. In 2018, music platform Boiler Room hosted Boiler Room Palestine for the first time. The show featured a diversity of Palestinian artists from Palestinian and Israeli territories. The crew for the show had to enter Palestine through Israel, giving them a small taste of the limitation of movement for Palestinians.

Palestinian art continues to grow as a form of self-expression, as a form of resistance to Israeli policies, and as forms of cultural history in an endeavour to keep Palestinian spirits and identity alive as their lives get shrunk into smaller and smaller pieces of land.

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