Hassan Ammar/AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.The legendary African-American novelist James Baldwin once noted on his trip to France, in 1949, the extent of violence “Paris policemen could do to Arab peanut vendors.” The crime of an Arab, it seems, was to be visible, and therefore it was safer for Arabs to be invisible, with the help of the French authorities – be it through the prison cell or the ironing out of their cultural distinctions in the public sphere.
Yet I have always found it quite peculiar, this French manner of discriminating against the visible in order to make them invisible – often the people France needs the most.
My encounter with French racism and hypocrisy came about when I stayed at a bed and breakfast in northern Paris in the autumn of 2009. I was hosted by a middle class lady who, during one chilly October morning over breakfast, told me about her work in art/decor and went on to disclose her politics as “left and progressive.”
