Jamel Debbouze often spoke about France and racism. In an interview given to West-France in 2013 on the occasion of the film The Walk, Mélissa Theuriau’s husband then said: “There is racism in France, it’s really obvious, but France is not racist. In semantics, there is still progress to be made, that’s for sure, but it’s because of the crisis , it’s not because of the people. When you’re going through a crisis as we’re going through right now, with unemployment, you find all sorts of excuses and often the excuse is the neighbor (…) it’s Abroad, that’s the difference, we’re taking it easy”.
During his portrait broadcast in seven to eight, Jamel Debbouze had the opportunity to mention the criticisms around the first names of his children but also on the second round of the presidential elections.
As in 2013, Jamel Debbouze proclaimed it loud and clear: France is not racist according to him. “I have the impression that we are progressing. It’s very, very slow, very subtle, but we are progressing. Afterwards, I have the impression that we are trading in everything that is not progressing and everything that which does not progress. And opposing us sells. The last presidential elections we had the impression that one in two French people was racist because they voted for Le Pen. But I am sure that France is not racist. It was more a poverty vote, a complaint against Macron. I don’t want to believe that France is racist. It’s impossible for me to think that. I’ve been around France 25 times and I’ve played everywhere, I know my country” he asserted.
Only here, the words of the comedian unfortunately earned him rather unfair criticism when his words were meant to be positive. Thus, we could read messages on Twitter such as: “Jamel Debbouze speaks about the 2022 presidential election and says that if more and more French people are voting for the far right, it’s because they are fed up with the poor distribution of wealth and that it is not a problem of racism or discrimination… good”, “Jamel Debbouze “I am convinced that France is not racist” MDRRR what a sellout” or “He really pities Jamel Debbouze”.
GZ
See also: Thomas Sotto reframes Jamel Debbouze