“This level of tolerance is completely new and goes against all received ideas.“ estimated Monday, July 18 on franceinfo Magali Lafourcade, secretary general of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH). Even if some groups remain “stigmatized”, thehe French say they are more and more tolerant towards religions or minorities: this is one of the conclusions of the Commission’s report. The general secretary of the committee highlights in particular “training and awareness campaigns“to fight against the prejudices that tend to”spread down” over there “unmarked speech at the top“.
franceinfo: What do you think stands out in the report?
Magali Lafourcade: The first thing that struck me and which seems to me to be extremely promising, was this level of tolerance which is totally unprecedented and which runs counter to all received ideas and the themes that have been invited into the public debate during these political campaigns that we have just been through. We can clearly see that the French are more and more open.
“The French are not as worried as what one can perceive by watching certain media which use a magnifying effect.”
Magali Lafourcadeat franceinfo
They are very open and tolerance has clearly increased since 2013. We can all the more affirm it that we have a depth of field, since we evaluate the tolerance based on extremely robust tools and we do it over more than thirty years. So we can say which factors increase this tolerance and which, on the contrary, increase racism.
What are these factors?
The factors that increase prejudice are all those linked to a political or media framework that would be favorable to the spread of prejudice. There is an enormous responsibility on the part of politicians and the media when presenting situations. We saw it in particular in 2005 with the riots in the suburbs framed as an ethno-racial identity subject, when it was not that at all. Now that we have some hindsight, we know that what was at stake at that time was the death of two individuals who found themselves having to escape police control. We can clearly see that the way in which events are related from the angle of delinquency, from the angle of identity, from the angle of police violence or fear of police violence, is quite important in order to be able to have an effect in the expanding society. Prejudices spread.
The trivialized speech above also allows prejudices to spread below. While conversely, the more you have a renewal of generations with a construction of the imagination at the time of childhood and adolescence which allows you to think against yourself, to deconstruct prejudices, to analyze situations with a critical mind, the more open people you have. So we can see that this generational effect, the rise in the level of qualifications in France, the training and awareness campaigns and also this idea that the more tolerant we are towards other types of minorities than ethnic minorities , allows an open mind.
Can this tolerance, this acceptance, be learned?
Absolutely. There is in each of us the fear of the other. And ethnocentrism, which is the scholarly name of racism, is something deeply rooted in all populations, at all historical periods. On the other hand, this focus on ethnic aspects is quite recent in the history of the world. So, we can also imagine a distinct society compared to the time when barbarians were designated as scapegoats. The barbarians were those who did not speak Greek. We were in another dimension than skin color or religion. We can imagine a world where we could be rid of our prejudices. You have to have that ambition. We see that the standard is gradually being integrated and that today there are only 5.6% of French people who think that there are races superior to others, whereas there are 70 or 80 years old, we were 50% French.