While Nadine Morano and Fadela Amara visited the residents of the Minguettes neighborhood in Lyon last Friday, the former looked at a child of color in a crib and enthusiastically exclaimed in front of the camera: “Little Obama!”
Since the election of the new President of the United States, a wind of America has been blowing strongly over French society, already under the influence of a real “Obamania” during the electoral campaign. However, our country gives the strange impression of seeking more to seize the symbol rather than to understand the Barack Obama phenomenon—a rapture instead of genuine reflection—as a way to compensate for its own failures or even to exorcise its fears. An essayist, Régis Debray, magnificently revealed all its inequalities and eccentricities in a book with a prophetic title: “Long Live the Republic!” during the highly sanctified commemoration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Twenty years and a certain American election later, the initiative taken this weekend of a manifesto “For Real Equality, Yes We Can” cosigned by political leaders from both the right and left and supported by the President of the Republic’s wife is certainly welcome. Unfortunately, it cannot dismiss skeptical thoughts and disillusioned reflections. “There is a need to help the elites change,” explains the First Lady of France in a lengthy interview with the Journal du Dimanche, arguing a likely adequate psychological explanation on the fear of others to shed light, in the background, on all the blockages.
Indeed, there is a lot to be done. It is still necessary not to mistake the target, much less the method. If it represents a tentative immediate remedy with a strong political dimension, the imposition of purely mechanistic solutions—from affirmative action to the implementation of quotas and other legal parity regulations—generally struggles to profoundly change the mindsets, which only the educational system can overcome. The American Administration abandoned this path a long time ago.
Resistances do not only emerge against the “visible minorities,” as rightly named by the Secretary of State for the City, but mostly against society itself. Strangely enough, France is overflowing with these dichotomies, which it seems to jealously guard the eternal secret of fabrication. Oppositions, coupled with a philosophy already lamented by Chateaubriand at the beginning of the 19th century, aim to prevent others from succeeding. Paris versus province, left bank against right bank, trade union against employers, department against region—we could easily go down to the individual level—the endless list of examples, sometimes worthy of Clochemerle, indicates that the national model appears to have been built more on emphasizing the power struggle than seeking cooperation. Along with that, if one dares to say, an “State” sometimes lacking the affective or emotional attributes of a “Nation.” A far cry, in any case, from the unifying, conquering, and entrepreneurial spirit characteristic of the other side of the Atlantic. To put it more directly, Barack Obama is today President of the United States because he felt and wanted to be American. To the point of wanting to change America itself. Beyond the symbols, sometimes without real substance and that end up becoming mere artifacts, how can we conceive in France this vast movement of attraction, identification, and recognition to France? A significant challenge for future generations, wherever they come from and wherever they go.
