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

seat, calmed, quiet. This from a racist policeman. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve succeeded,
because that’s how you can create human, fraternal relations between people.
S: And which results have you acquired while doing your work?
R: Personal results with people who have participated, that of course, but what is interestinterest- ing is when people go into action and make changes in institutions. I think the institutions
and the way they function are responsible for the fact that people become unhappy, fear-
ful, that there is hate and racism. So I’m particularly interested in changing institutions,
not only political but to change the way school works, the way the police works, the way
social work is carried out. out.
S: Have you been able to observe this transformation after having worked with people in
those regions and in those neighbourhoods?
R: Yes, of course. I was asked asked to work in a post offi ce in a neighbourhood on the outskirts
of Paris. It was in a city where where they have a lot of problems at the post offi ce. Employees
would get insulted, aggressed, threatened to death by the users who were mainly of
African origin. And the users said the post offi ce employees were racist. The post offi ce
employees said the inhabitants were violent. They would call in the police, for example
because some inhabitants didn’t want to leave at closing time. They said they’d break
everything. So we worked with the post offi ce employees, the African associations, the
inhabitants in that neighbourhood and the police. We had to work a lot to talk about what
was going on at the post offi ce. We found out about a lot of things which didn’t work.
An example: the post offi ce required two pieces of identifi cation cation in order to release cash.
The inhabitants thought it was because they were black and had no trust in them. The
reality was that there was a lot of theft of money orders from people who presented false
identifi cation. So in order to protect the inhabitants, two pieces of identifi cation were
requested so that the money orders didn’t get stolen from the inhabitants. But there was
no explanation. Another thing: poste restante (general delivery). An African gentleman
comes and says: “I would like this letter, poste restante, for my wife”. “Yes sir. If you want
that, you need a written authorisation from your wife because we’re only allowed to give it
to your wife. That’s the rule.” But that African gentleman is from Africa, and that’s not how
his culture is set up. He says: “But my wife or myself, that just boils down to the same. My
wife just doesn’t have to get a letter if I can’t pick it up for her.” And: “No sir, I’m sorry.”
And the post offi ce lady gets worked up: “No sir, no, you’re not allowed.” “How am I not
allowed!” And so forth. “Bitch!” So we talked about all that. There were other problems.
There was a very long queue, and the person who wanted his or her poste restante was
told that he/she couldn’t get it after already standing in line for two hours. The entire
group talked about this and we made decisions. We decided that there were young people
at the post offi ce, they could go to the queues and ask right from the start what people
were coming for and to explain them everything. So people were less worked up because
if they didn’t have their papers, they would just go and get them, and so on. We also found
out that a post offi ce employee receives a premium according to the number of opera- opera-
122 “Multi-Cultural France is becoming a Multi-Racist Society”