Chronic. While the trial of the murderer of George Floyd opens in the United States, identity conflicts escalate in Europe and France. Instead of fighting against discrimination, the government has embarked on a chase with the far right and the hunt for social science researchers. This is all the more regrettable as it is urgent to put in place a genuine French and European model for combating discrimination. A model which assumes the reality of racism and gives itself the means to measure and correct it, while placing the fight against discrimination in the more general framework of a social policy with a universalist aim.
Let’s start with the question of measuring racism. Multiple researches have demonstrated the reality of this, but we lack a real Observatory on discrimination objectifying the facts and ensuring annual monitoring. The Defender of Rights, who replaced the High Authority for Combating Discrimination and for Equality (Halde) in 2011, recalls in his reports the extent of discrimination against employment or housing, but still does not have means for systematic monitoring.
“Like anti-Semitism or homophobia, Islamophobia is not inevitable and can be defeated”
For example, in a 2014 study conducted under the aegis of the Institut Montaigne, researchers sent fake CVs to employers in response to some 6,231 job postings and observed response rates in the form of a proposition. job interview. As soon as the name sounds Muslim, the response rate is divided by four. Jewish-sounding names are also discriminated against, albeit less heavily. The problem is that this study has not been repeated, so no one knows whether the situation has improved or deteriorated since 2014.
There is an urgent need to have an official Observatory responsible for saying how these indicators change annually. This requires large-scale test campaigns allowing reliable comparisons to be made over time and between regions and sectors of activity. It is also essential to measure the extent to which discrimination is concentrated within a fraction of employers. Like anti-Semitism or homophobia, Islamophobia is not inevitable and can be overcome. The debate on the term must also take place: some prefer to speak of anti-Muslimism or anti-Muslim discrimination. Why not, but on condition that this does not prevent advancing on the merits.
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