[by XLS]

They tell you – but will you listen, you damn donkeys? – that “race” is a “social construct”. And nothing else, move along, there’s nothing to see here. If you don’t agree, then you’re the racist. Come on! Come on! “White” is a construct; like “black”. It just means “norm” and “marginal”. There you go, it’s nothing. Ok Boomer? If you don’t understand that, get lost, you don’t understand anything.

So let's see: 

Pap Ndiaye and Constance Rivière have just filed a Report on diversity at the Paris National OperaThe report is divided into three parts – a highly respectable Cartesian method, the jury congratulates its colleagues for their servile obedience to the academic canon. 

The first part is entitled “History and tradition: opera, ballet and the representation of Other experience » (pp. 7 to 25, 18 pages). The second, « Diversity, the great absentee of the Opera » (pages 25 to 39, 14 pages) and the third « A human resources policy at the service of openness and diversity » (pp. 42 to 49, 7 pages). The entire report is therefore wrapped up in 43 pages of 2000 characters on average – which corresponds to the low average of typographic standards since the average allowed for a thesis is 2500 characters per page equivalent to a full page, Times New Roman 12, line spacing 1,5. The presentation in two columns is entertaining, but a little out of place in view of the administrative motivation of the object which is more like a tract than a report. But that is another problem. In addition, a few grey boxes contain “proposals” for the Opera (19 in total) which are reproduced at the end of the book (p. 54) in a concise form. A “Manifesto” is added on p. 61, signed by 11 people: Guillaume DIOP – Letizia GALLONI – Jack GASZTOWTT – Binkady-Emmanuel HIÉ – Awa JOANNAIS – Saki KUWABARA – Chun Wing LAM – Isaac LOPES GOMES – Florent MBIA – Christian Rodrigue MOUNGOUNGOU – Hannah O'NEILL.

The report highlights the quote from Michel Pastoureau:

"For me, the problems of color are first and foremost social problems" 

Michel Pastoureau, Noir

The question is therefore answered: color, "it is social". It is therefore obviously not a question of classifying people according to their "color" - that would be a contradiction.

Ouch. One point catches our attention: in the entire report, there are 66 occurrences of the word "black" and 81 occurrences of the word "white". Let us take advantage of the opportunity given to us to denounce this under-representation of the word "black" in the text compared to its lexical antonym, which suggests that before decolonizing the Opera, we should first decolonize the report that wants to decolonize the Opera. This is undoubtedly a detail, but we have known since Beatriz Preciado that the devil is in the detail, that the detail is colonialism and that colonialism is evil. So this report is evil. However, let us reassure ourselves since this report reveals an interesting and creative lexical specificity since it shows 17 occurrences of the compound word "non-whites", legitimately reversing the polarity of the lexical universes of the text (with an annoying hesitation in the text between the spelling "with hyphen" and "without hyphen").

But let us continue our examination and examine some occurrences of these two notions which designate, at least we naively thought, a sociological reality:

• "European opera was the sublime view of the dominants on the world: that of European men whites, in power or close to him." (p. 8)
• "to shed light on the history of the institution, to promote little-known, even forgotten, figures of artists non-whites » (p. 11)
• "Finally, the Paris National Opera has not yet programmed a director, libretto or composition written by a person non-white. (p. 15)
• "The "reservation" of role according to color also seems problematic to us whether it is a question of embodying a character Black or a character White… Just as a black actor should be able to play every role, a white actor should be able to play every role.” (p. 23)
• "David Bobée told us during our interview: "True universalism, It's when we recognize ourselves in another skin color. » (p. 24)
• "Stop whitewash skins in ballet” (p. 24)
• "It is indeed clear that employees non-whites are a very small minority at the Paris National Opera” (p. 25)
• "men non-white are generally more numerous than women non-white. (p. 28)
• "Within the School, as elsewhere in the dance conservatories which are its antechamber, there are only people white in classical” (p. 29)
• "Selection practices further reduce children's chances non-white to access the School." (p. 30) 

Which of these occurrences, in your opinion, leaves the slightest doubt about the racializing definition of the word "white" or "black"? And at what point, moreover, do we find an effort to clarify the use of these terms: what is a White ? What is a Black ? What is a non-white ?

The big international stages mainly welcome dancers who spend "the brown paper bag test »

Michaela DePrince, Taking Film: from war orphan to star ballerina, NY, Peguin Random House, 2014, p. 123

A slight unease actually arises when reading the text: while the notions of "whiteness" and "non-whiteness" are never defined, it is clear from reading the text that they refer in the most classically racist way to notions of skin color. "White" are humans who have light skin, and "non-white" are the others. It is therefore a profoundly biological and racialist notion that is posed in this report without precaution or warning, referring to "Black Lives Matter" from page 4 and linking the question of "diversity" to a distribution of roles by skin color.

This positioning is extremely worrying, especially since the report seemed to be particularly able to take the necessary precautions to avoid this bias. It thus evokes the history (p. 19) of the practices of the blackface in particular by criticizing the deeply racist phenotypic caricatures of the 18th century^e and XIX^e centuries. P. 28, the report even mentions Michaela DePrince's article (Taking Film: from war orphan to star ballerina, NY, Peguin Random House, 2014, p. 123) which tells how the big international stages mainly welcome dancers who spend "the brown paper bag test ». 

But then, what is it really about? 

Is it a question for the authors of criticizing an odious practice that would implicitly consist of classifying people into whites and non-whites around the axis of the "brown paper bag"? Or is it implicitly a question of fully accepting this logic in order to give substance to the opposition that is made throughout the report between "white" and "non-whites"? Nothing is less certain. It is even to be feared that the terminological vagueness of the report will unfortunately lean towards the second solution. 

But that is a problem.

Indeed, let us recall this obvious fact: racism does not exist negative, that is to say a racism which would be put at the service of white supremacy; and a racism positive and full of good intentions who would use racist criteria for good reasons !

There is simply racism, which does not support any adjective.

The report by Pap Ndiaye and Constance Rivière leaves no room for ambiguity: it is a text that proposes the distribution of dancers according to the criterion of skin color, without bothering with sociological or anthropological definitions. As such, and as laudable as the authors' intentions may be (but don't they say that "hell is paved with bad intentions?"), it must be classified as a racist text and as such, must be refuted.

If the report had considered social diversity rather than racial diversity: everyone would have laughed. Yes: Opera is a bourgeois sport. Did you doubt it?