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

tions carried out in one day. For example if he carries out fi fty, or one hundred, he gets a
bonus. It’s like that in all of France. But in that neighbourhood, there are fewer operations
because each operation with foreign people takes much more time. So the employees
working in these more diffi cult neighbourhoods get less money than employees in easy
neighbourhoods. We worked on all of that and it got changed in all of France. There was
another institutional change which we initiated, and that was as we realised that the
inhabitants just didn’t understand the postal service. So we organised informative session
in all African associations with one post offi ce employee and one member of the African
group. Together they discussed why two pieces of identifi cation cation are necessary, it was
explained how it works and after that there were a lot less problems. And after that, there
was less racism.
Racism is a consequence of institutional processes having an effect on the individual
psyche. So that’s what social therapy is for. Not therapy. The people don’t just get sick;
they are made sick by the manner of functioning of society. So we have to change society’s
method of functioning, with the people, people, in order to have an effect on individual function-
ing. And that’s where we see the example from the post offi ce. Racism originates in mutual
aggression between inhabitants and employees.
S: In general: Where do you see the need for developing and improving things?
R: A generalisation. That means that people be better trained, policemen, social workers,
teachers. That they should receive the necessary training to help them understand better
where we stand by getting to know themselves, understanding their fears, their feelings,
and then being able to work with less fortunate foreign populations, and then setting up
more actually democratic processes which would provide for people to speak more, to
meet up with each other, and to solve problems together. So this means two directions:
training on one side and applied democratic principles on the other.
S: And which role does a systematic evaluation play in your eyes? For your work, for the apap- plication of social therapy, in order to determine the exact facts and results?
R: It’s important but it is true that we don’t carry out much evaluation in France. I have alalready had some done, through researchers, and I think that it’s very important that evalua-
tions take place. They are not easy to carry out but it is important that they are done. In
my opinion, evaluation takes place in acts, which means that I don’t necessarily try to
evaluate what people people say but but what people do, how they behave after this work, that is, are
they really able to work with others after this work and to share their experiences in order
to make projects together. That is the real evaluations for me.
S: Is there anything else which has not been addressed, which you would like to add?
R: I think that there are two forms of anti-racism. The one, which can be very dangerous, lies
in viewing a foreigner only as a victim of racism, whereas racism to me is a complex, glo-
bal and systemic systemic phenomenon. That means that racism is a consequence, as I mentioned
earlier, and there is a form of anti-racism which is dangerous because it is Manichean: it
accuses only the person expressing those feelings, without regard for the globality of the
“Multi-Cultural France is becoming a Multi-Racist Society”
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