Word: ethnicities
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...Linking the ethnic make-up of a multiracial nation to genocide may sound like hyperbole elsewhere, but the French know that tinkering with the founding principles and universal values of the nation was central to some of the ugliest episodes in the country's history. The French constitution proudly declares the country "an indivisible, secular, democratic and social Republic [that] assures equality before the law for all its citizens, without distinction of origin, of race, or religion". That gender- and color-blindness, national ideology holds, protects minority populations by ignoring the differences that divide them into often mutually hostile groups...
...good place to start might be figuring out the exact size and location of France's ethnic groups. Except that every time someone proposes including ethnic data within national statistics all hell breaks lose. The accepted wisdom in France, it seems, is that acknowledging difference, and naming it, is bigotry itself. (See pictures of Paris expanding...
...Ethnic statistics, affirmative action [and] quotas are caricatures," fumed Fadela Amara, France's Secretary of State for Urban Affairs, who before entering government led a civil rights movement advancing minority and feminist causes. The daughter of Algerian immigrants, Amara sees official ethnic statistics as dangerous, not helpful. "Our republic must not become a mosaic of communities," she says, rejecting calls to add race to the gender, age and occupational categories contained in official data researchers use to study French society. "No one should again have to wear a yellow star...
...That means re-examining some of France's founding principles. President Nicolas Sarkozy, for one, has broken ancient taboos by suggesting France study American-style equal opportunity, quotas and the use of ethnic data within official statistics to get a more accurate picture of the nation's face. "There are two Frances," Arab-French businessman Yazid Sabeg told the daily Libération. "One wants to look things in the face - meaning the way demographics in this country have changed. The other is conservative France, which is prone to immobility in the name of largely artificial equality." (See pictures...
...speaking up to support Sarkozy's and Sabeg's ideas. The number of minority characters on television, film and in the media generally has noticeably increased over the past few years. People in other industries have begun pointing out the practical problems created by the legal ban on including ethnic data in official statistics. "From a sociological point of view, I'm for it, just as I'd be inclined to include any qualitative statistic as revelatory and essential to social, political and economic evolution as race is," says Dominique Reynié, president of the Foundation for Political Innovation...