Our friend Vincent Tournier spent a few days in Bordeaux… He shares some anecdotes with us. It's usually in the details of daily life that a society's ideological obsessions are revealed. A poster plastered on the tram, a comment from the City Council in its magazine online.
Wokism on a tram ride
Boarding the tram, the distracted passenger has his attention caught by a poster: "As a reminder, racism is punishable by law."
Spontaneously, no one pays attention to these kinds of injunctions because they are such a natural part of the framework of our modern cities.
Let's think about it, though: what's such a message doing here? Why a poster about racism, and why not about another subject, for example, welfare fraud or drug trafficking? Imagine for a moment: "As a reminder, welfare fraud is punishable by law." Or: "As a reminder, vandalism after a football match is prohibited." That would make sense, wouldn't it?
And then we think: well, why not, after all? It's true that racism is wrong. So, a little reminder of the law is never a bad thing.
But the perplexity increases when one reads the proposed definition of said racism.
« Racism: words, behavior or violence towards a person because of their origin or religion (real or perceived) ».
Oh really? What does religion have to do with this? What is the link with racism?
The rest of the text further transforms the perplexity into unease:
« Zero tolerance for the following behaviors: ageist, biphobic, fatphobic, homophobic, racist, sexist, transphobic, ableist. ... "
At this point, our unfortunate traveler feels completely lost! Questions are swirling in his head. Could he have been living in a parallel world for decades to be so disconnected from the society he lives in?
Because, well, racist or homophobic, fine: we more or less know what we're talking about. Sexist too, although a simple smile can now be considered an attack. Transphobic, maybe. But "biphobic," what's that? And "ageist," we presume it relates to age, but what does that have to do with racism? Is it racism against young people or against old people? Is giving up your seat to an elderly person "ageist," therefore racist? And is it racist to reprimand a young person who struggles to understand that their feet should be on the floor rather than on the seats?
The confusion reaches a new level when the traveler discovers that the text contains ellipses. Good heavens, the list doesn't end there? What are all these unnamed forms of racism?
The urge to call the phone number on the poster is strong. But as he goes to dial, the traveler's blood runs cold. In a flash, he realizes a problem: in this long list, where is antisemitism? Why wasn't this variant of racism mentioned, which, according to statistics collected during the last world war, caused significantly more deaths than ageism and fatphobia, unless, of course, one includes in the calculation mortality related to old age and that resulting from excessive fat and sugar consumption?
A terrible doubt then seized our naive traveler. Could it be that this oversight wasn't an oversight at all? Could it be that all these new forms of "racism" simply wanted to carve out a place for themselves, to take the caliph's place, which obviously meant dethroning that old, grumpy, outdated racism that is antisemitism? Out with it all, let's start fresh! Let's reset the suffering tally.
But now our traveler has reached the end of his journey. It is time to leave this tram that is not named desire, with more questions and worries than when he first boarded it.
Next time, he'll take the bus.
To the Municipal Council: back to Africa!
The Bordeaux city council, following a vote that was as unanimous as it was courageous, solemnly refused the donation of a widow whose will provided for bequeathing to the city about fifty African objects.
This woman surely thought she was doing the right thing: she was sorely mistaken! Never, ever, will the city of Bordeaux keep objects that have been torn from "their lands of origin".[1] ».
For these elected officials from the Gironde region, it doesn't matter that these objects were acquired legally. Nor does it matter that the couple who owned them brought these trinkets back after a 35-year expatriation spent working in African hospitals, providing tireless care—he as a surgeon, she as a midwife. And it doesn't matter that these objects primarily have symbolic value: at €30,000 for the lot, it's certainly a far cry from the sums involved in contemporary art.
Naturally, we will not have the audacity to think that, if the new mayor is stirring up the decolonial spirit of "restitution", it is to better establish his legitimacy in a city haunted by its past as a slave port, which was won over to the environmentalists until recently.
Cynics will still wonder if such a refusal isn't a form of contempt: could it be that these objects are not worthy of being displayed in a French museum? Even more cynical minds will wonder if African countries shouldn't do the same with objects acquired in France, even legally: after all, if every object must remain in its "land of origin," there might end up being quite a few cargo ships in the Mediterranean.
But as a result, the message appears ambiguous: under the guise of decolonial progressivism, isn't the city of Bordeaux saying that the world would be fairer if everyone returned to their country of origin with their belongings?
