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Can France Resist the Woke invasion?

AbsolutSurgen
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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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France resists US challenge to its values

WWW.BBC.COM
The government is fighting back at what it sees as imported cultural ideas from the UK and US.
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Six months ago, if asked what they understood by "woke", most French people would have assumed it had something to do with Chinese cooking. And yet today in Paris, the notion of "le wokisme" is suddenly all the rage.

The government warns of a new cultural totalitarianism creeping in from the "Anglosphere". The education minister has set up a Laboratory of the Republic, dubbed an "anti-woke think tank", to co-ordinate the fightback.

And everywhere the precursors of what might be to come are being reported in the media: a new gender-neutral pronoun, a threatened statue of a dead statesman or a meeting on campus only for black students.

For the French, these signifiers of what critics in the UK and US have termed "woke" are all very new and unfamiliar.

....

"Will France end up going woke? The jury is still out," says Justin EH Smith, an American philosophy professor at Paris University.

"Personally I find it liberating to teach here. I don't have to mind my every word, like I did with American students. Here, there is still a presumption that universities are a place to learn, and the staff is not there to cushion the subject matter."

But Prof Smith says signs of "wokeism" are nonetheless appearing on campus.

....

However, the new American ideas face a big difficulty in France, he believes, "because one of the cornerstones of French Republicanism is a principle that has become anathema in the context of US-style wokeism - and that is colour-blindness".

France's answer to protecting minorities is "universalism" - the notion that everyone is the same and should be treated the same.

But so-called "woke" thinkers have a different set of values. They say race, colour, gender do matter, because people have different lived experiences depending on those factors, and so public policies need to differentiate between different groups - which is anathema to the French.

....

That is indeed precisely what the anti-woke movement in France believes: that via universities, pressure groups and social media, the US is exporting a cultural virus into France that poses an existential threat to French society.

For the writer Brice Couturier, a member of the Laboratory for the Republic think tank, "wokeism puts people into tribes in order to control them. It says you belong in my tribe, and the leaders of my tribe will tell you how to behave. This is foreign to French mentality".

"France has fought many civil wars in the past, and I fear we could come close to civil war again if this goes too far. Just as [former US President] Trump was a reaction to wokeism in the US, here we have crazies like [far-right presidential candidate] Eric Zemmour. People are taking sides."

Another anti-woke campaigner, Quebec-born commentator Mathieu Bock-Cote, believes such ideas run counter to many of the formative elements of French identity.

"We are in a country where the freedom to talk about anything and everything is taken for granted. When you have minorities who say such and such a subject is off-limits, people instinctively say that's censorship, and we can't accept it," he says.

For him, France has the chance to be a beacon of inspiration against such ideas: "In the US, opposition to wokeism was monopolised by the conservatives under Trump. To say the least, that is not an attractive example," he says.

France is different, he argues: "Here opposition comes from across the political spectrum, and there are cultural antibodies to the virus of wokeism. France can lead the fight."

 

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b_m_b_m_b_m

b_m_b_m_b_m

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11 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

They say race, colour, gender do matter, because people have different lived experiences depending on those factors, and so public policies need to differentiate between different groups - which is anathema to the French

"They say" this because of 400 years of lived experience in this country, including the racist and sexist shit which is still commonplace today even in mainstream politics

 

Just another dumb French professor thinking the French have it all figured out when they simply don't. What a fucking joke

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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...because one of the cornerstones of French Republicanism is a principle that has become anathema in the context of US-style wokeism - and that is colour-blindness".

 

France's answer to protecting minorities is "universalism" - the notion that everyone is the same and should be treated the same.

 

 

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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43 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

So called wokeism is just another conservative boogie man blown way out of proportion by people who are terminally online

The BBC has always clearly been the bastion of conservatism.

4 minutes ago, b_m_b_m_b_m said:

nothing gets my blood boiling like the self righteous aggrandizement of a frenchman

The author of the article is Welsh.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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11 minutes ago, Air_Delivery said:

What is it exactly?

I don't think you are actually asking me that question.  However, I will answer as if you had a legitimate question.  According to Wikipedia.

Quote

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/ WOHK) is an adjective meaning 'alert to racial prejudice and discrimination' that originated in African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexism, and has also been used as shorthand for left-wing ideas involving identity politics and social justice, such as the notion of white privilege and slavery reparations for African Americans.

The phrase stay woke had emerged in AAVE by the 1930s, referring to an awareness of the social and political issues affecting African Americans. The phrase was uttered in a recording by Lead Belly and later by Erykah Badu. Following the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the phrase was popularised by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists seeking to raise awareness about police shootings of African Americans. After seeing use on Black Twitter, the term woke became an Internet meme and was increasingly used by white people, often to signal their support for BLM, which some commentators have criticised as cultural appropriation. Mainly associated with the millennial generation, the term spread internationally and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary in 2017.

The terms woke capitalism and woke-washing were coined to describe companies who signalled support for progressive causes as a substitute for genuine reform. By 2020, parts of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various leftist movements and ideologies perceived as over-zealous, performative, or insincere. In turn, some commentators came to consider it an offensive term with negative associations to those who promote political ideas involving identity and race.[1][2]

 

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Air_Delivery

Air_Delivery

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" By 2020, parts of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various leftist movements and ideologies perceived as over-zealous, performative, or insincere. In turn, some commentators came to consider it an offensive term with negative associations to those who promote political ideas involving identity and race."

This is how the article (and your title) is using it correct? 

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Kal-El814

Kal-El814

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On 12/13/2021 at 9:33 AM, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The French -- just like EVERY other European nation, and ESPECIALLY goddamned France -- have absolutely NO BUSINESS WHATSOVER when it comes to lecturing Americans on these types of issues.  

 

NONE!

 

Europe loved color blindness SO MUCH that they spread it across the whole earth, good sir.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

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27 minutes ago, Air_Delivery said:

 

" By 2020, parts of the political center and right wing in several Western countries were using the term woke, often in an ironic way, as an insult for various leftist movements and ideologies perceived as over-zealous, performative, or insincere. In turn, some commentators came to consider it an offensive term with negative associations to those who promote political ideas involving identity and race."

This is how the article (and your title) is using it correct? 

My title follows the D1P tradition of putting in inflammatory, ridiculous titles on almost every thread in this sub-forum.

 

27 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Right...so in reality (which is what matters), being "woke" simply means being alert and on the watch for racism/sexism, etc. That's not a negative thing at all.

If that was all it was, no one would talk about it.

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Commissar SFLUFAN

Commissar SFLUFAN

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4 minutes ago, CayceG said:

Isn't France's 'colour-blindness' just a way to describe assimilation to a French Republican ideal that generally involves being "Socially French" which is rooted in typical white western European culture?

 

For all intents and purposes, that's the implication of French Republican assimilation.

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b_m_b_m_b_m

b_m_b_m_b_m

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9 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

CRT is a real thing.  School boards, however, AFAIK are not teaching CRT in elementary schools.

they aren't. it's a thing in that it exists but the scope of the so called problem by the right is blown far out of proportion and is intentionally used in a poorly defined matter it can mean anything from core critical race theory concepts to teaching about the horrors of slavery at appropriate ages and contexts

 

this is because, again, the US conservative project as it exists for at least the past 60 years is based upon stirring up anti-Black racial animus but cannot simply shout the phrase which I won't repeat from Lee Atwater. it relies upon a marginal level of abstraction and dog whistling and is reaching an even more fevered pitch because of the fear of an impending minority status of the "traditional" white dominant social order

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Kal-El814

Kal-El814

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30 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

CRT is a real thing.  School boards, however, AFAIK are not teaching CRT in elementary schools.

 

CRT is absolutely a real thing, CRT as it exists in the zeitgeist of right wing panic about “wokeness” is a deliberately nebulous concept. Like reefer madness, or trans panic, or concerns about acceptance of gay people, etc., it’s a smokescreen to engage in hate speech aloud and in polite company.

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mclumber1

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42 minutes ago, CayceG said:

Isn't France's 'colour-blindness' just a way to describe assimilation to a French Republican ideal that generally involves being "Socially French" which is rooted in typical white western European culture?

 

 

If so, maybe they could use some CRT. 

 

Is there anything inherently wrong with insisting that immigrants assimilate to the prevailing culture of the country they moved to?  

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