Prevention of Right-Wing Extremism, Xenophobia and Racism in ...

not want to meet. For example, I’ll organise meetings between policemen and youth, or
between parents of north-African or African origin and teachers or policemen. So my way
of preventing racism is to let groups with whom I work to express their racist feelings. If
we let people express themselves without condemning them right away or without patron-
ising them, they will begin to think a little bit more, and if they get to meet other people, it
will change their way of seeing things.
Let me supply you with an example: I work in a city where there are a lot of problems with
violence. In this city, there is someone working for the city, a gardener. And he begins to
speak. Well, actually, at fi rst, he didn’t want to speak, and says nothing. So I say: “Why
don’t you want to speak”? He says: “I don’t want to speak because if I do, people will say
that I’m racist”. So I said: “Of course not, go ahead!” and everyone chimes in: “Go ahead,
say what you want to say!” “Well, I have problems because when I work, some African or
Arab children throw stones at me and keep me from doing my work.” So we tell him: “Go
ahead, explain, tell!” And he begins to tell us about his his life. He tells us about his his diffi cul-
ties, and, after a moment, says: “I think these children are like that because they haven’t
been properly raised by their parents. Their parents, those Arab or African parents, don’t
take care of their children. They don’t raise them well. I’d like to meet those African or Arab
parents to talk to them and to know why they don’t take care of their children.” So we or-
ganise a meeting between those people and the African or north-African parents. And we
discuss. And the gardener says what he has to say. And I help him defend his idea. I don’t
say: “You, that’s good, you that’s not good”. I help him, I help them all, to defend their
idea. And then he discovers that north-African parents really want their children to behave
properly, but they just don’t manage to do it, because of modern-day life and such. So
afterwards, the gardener thinks: “Ah but my children are also diffi cult. They also do pull
pranks and I can’t always manage, etc.” So he speaks about all that and it changes his
way of seeing things. He even thinks further and says: “but you know, in this neighbour-
hood, the city wants us to plant fl owers for everything to look nice but those plants with
those children and those large families who can’t take care of them, they just break eve-
rything, so it would be better not to put in such plants but rather a resilient kind of grass,
and then some hills like that so that the children can play and so.” And he adds: “But I’m
not the one making decisions. They just call in an architect, and he doesn’t have a clue,
and he’s the one who decided that we would put in plants and so.” So we fi nd out that this
man has many ideas but he is powerless; powerless; nobody listens to him, so we work to give him
some power, so fi rst of all comes the meeting and then to rid him of his powerlessness. As
far as I am concerned, violent people are powerless people. Violence is for them a counter-
measure for powerlessness, so if we want them to stop being violent, we have to fi nd a
way to lose this powerlessness.
S: You have already mentioned prevention work. Are there any programs organised by the
state to fi ght, reduce or prevent racism?
R: We now have programs against discrimination. Say if you send your résumé under an
Arab name, for example, the company might refuse you because of the bad reputation of
116 “Multi-Cultural France is becoming a Multi-Racist Society”