Citation:

Abstract:

In contrast to the view that republicanism helps mitigate against racism, interviews and national surveys suggest that republicanism has had a contradictory impact on white workers in France. On the one hand, by delegitimizng race it has helped them view Antillais is France, as well as black African immigrants, relatively tolerantly. On the other hand, because many workers regard the Republic in cultural terms as a French way of life rooted in Christian values, republicanism has also confirmed white workers in their antipathy toward North Africans, whom they regard as too different in religion and social mores to assimilate into French society. This prejudicial application of republicanism has been more appealing to white workers in the context of chronic unemployment and a political landscape affected by the electoral breakthroughs of the National Front. [Adapted from Introduction, Race in France: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Politics of Difference, edited by Herrick Chapman and Laura L. Frader (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2004), pp. 10-11.]