When being French is not baguette-and-Brie enough
The storm that erupted after France recently won the World Cup with a team dominated by African immigrants needs to be revisited for historical context.
Les Bleus had stars such as the Gallic CameroonianAlgerian, Kylian Mbappé; the Guinean-Frenchman, Paul Pogba; the Malian-French citizen, N’Golo Kanté; the Gallic Angolan-Congolese, Blaise Matuidi; and the CameroonianFrenchman, Samuel Umtiti.
All grew up in the ghettos of Paris where African and Arab youths face discrimination in employment and education, as well as police harassment.
The issue of racism, identity and the French World Cup victory was triggered by a spat between comedian Trevor Noah and the French ambassador to Washington, Gérard Araud.
Noah joked that, with 14 of France’s 23 players being African immigrants, this represented an “African victory”. Araud’s angry riposte to Noah was that “nothing could be less true”; he praised “French diversity” which, he observed, unlike American diversity, had “no hyphenated identity roots”, and claimed Noah was denying the players their “Frenchness”.
In response, Noah argued that the players could surely be both French and African, noting that when African immigrants in France commit crimes, their Africanness is stressed, but when they win the World Cup, they can only be French! The arrogance of the Gallic ambassador speaking on behalf of African-descended players was simply breathtaking.
Four incidents illustrate Araud’s lack of historical perspective. In 1998, Algeriandescended Zinedine Zidane led a multicultural French team of players of largely African and Arab ancestry to win the World Cup for the first time on home soil. This victory, however, only temporarily papered over the widespread racism that was often stoked by Gallic officialdom. In a 2000 poll a third of French respondents complained that there were too many players of foreign origin in the national team.
In the first major incident of football and racism in 2005, populist French interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy notoriously dismissed alienated, rioting Maghrebi and black African youth as “scum”. The thoughtful antiracism activist, 1998 World Cup winner Lilian Thuram, noted, in response, that “If they are scum, then so am I.”
The second incident occurred during the 2010 World Cup in SA, after mostly immigrant French players went on a 10-day strike and refused to train due to insulting treatment from their prejudiced coach, Raymond Domenech. The tiresome trope of unpatriotic “fifth columnists” again reared its ugly head, as the “Frenchness” of these players was widely questioned.
In 2011 a third scandal erupted when French football coach Laurent Blanc contrasted the strength and speed of African players with the technique and intelligence he felt were “more compatible with our culture”. He then controversially suggested imposing a quota on African and Arab youth players with dual nationality entering the French football academy. Blanc argued that respect for French culture and history could become a criterion for admittance. Such patronising, assimilationist drivel was little different from the colonial mission civilisatrice that had tried to create black and Arab Frenchmen, rootless “Mimic Men” devoid of their own cultural identities.
The final incident of Gallic racism came when prolific Algerian-French striker Karim Benzema was dropped from the French team in 2016 due to a legal case in which he had been involved in a bizarre blackmailing incident. Benzema had previously proudly described his country as Algeria, and refused to sing the French national anthem. His response to being dropped was that this had been due to “a racist part of France”.
The lily-white striker, Olivier Giroud — who led the line during France’s World Cup victory without scoring a single goal – clearly better fit the image of a “real” Gaul for many. But to any literate football analyst, it was obvious that Giroud was mediocre compared to Benzema.
That the country still went on to win the competition was a tribute to the rest of this talented team, including the peerless Antoine Griezmann.
WHEN AFRICAN IMMIGRANTS IN FRANCE COMMIT CRIMES, THEY’RE AFRICAN, BUT WHEN THEY WIN THE WORLD CUP, THEY CAN ONLY BE FRENCH BENZEMA HAD PREVIOUSLY PROUDLY DESCRIBED HIS COUNTRY AS ALGERIA, AND REFUSED TO SING THE FRENCH NATIONAL ANTHEM