VIDEO. When Tania de Montaigne dismantles racist clichés among young people

“I always ask, ‘Excuse me, who’s a racist in the room?’ Obviously, no one is raising their hand. Except me. “

Author, actress and journalist Tania de Montaigne has gone several times to meet high school and college students as well as primary school students. Its goal: to deconstruct racist clichés by interacting with them.

For the journalist, this work of reflection does not happen in a snap. It requires dialogue and listening to others. Tania de Montaigne takes for example the stereotype according to which blacks all run fast or the concept of “black music” as music directly associated with blacks. “Would you mind telling me that you like white music for example?“, she notes.

Faced with these preconceived ideas, the author therefore considers it necessary to question their origin. “This is in fact the work that you have to do, it is always to say to yourself: “When I think of something, where it comes to me, how it was organized and you will realize that do this job, it will open the story for you“, she explains.

To raise awareness of racism, Tania de Montaigne offers a more exhaustive teaching of history and a more anticipatory approach to law. “Each country has its history and therefore it must be told, taught, it must be stitched up because there are holes in our history“, she believes. But above all, the author insists on the importance of talking to each other:”As long as we don’t talk to each other, there aren’t very interesting things happening because we are in the fantasy of the other, which is the principle of racism: we don’t know, we imagine. “