French plan to lift ban on ethnic data causes uproar

‘In not being able to measure and look at the reality as it is, we are allowing delusions to flourish’

A PROPOSAL to lift France’s longstanding ban on collecting official data on the racial origin of its population provoked a furious political row yesterday.

Sibeth Ndiaye, the Senegalese-born government spokeswoman, broke a French political taboo by suggesting that race should be included in the national database to help pinpoint inequalities and combat discrimination.

A 1978 law prohibiting the French state from keeping track of citizens’ ethnic origin was intended to ensure equal treatment for all, but Ms Ndiaye said its effect was to stifle open public debate about racism.

“In not being able to measure and look at reality as it is, we are allowing delusions to flourish,” she wrote in an article in Le Monde newspaper.

Race is a sensitive issue in France, and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has triggered protests in Paris and other French cities.

Civil rights groups accuse French police of systematic brutality towards minorities in France and institutional racism. Protesters compared the Floyd case to the death in French police custody of Adama Traore, a young black man.

France has large minority communities with roots in its former colonies in Africa and Asia, and Ms Ndiaye argued that it was time to take an honest look at the “representativity of people of colour in the public, political, economic and cultural life of our country”.

But her proposal was immediately rejected by the national Human Rights Commission and government ministers, being seen as an affront to the republican principle of equality that risked “stereotyping” people.

Emmanuel Macron, the president, has acknowledged racism in France, and on Sunday promised tough action against racist police officers. But his aides said yesterday that he opposed lifting the ban on racial statistics.