Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo on Sunday condemned a vivid example of reverse racism, when she called for a black feminist festival in the French capital to be banned, saying it was “prohibited to white people.” The first edition of the Nyansapo Festival, due to run from July 28 to 30 at a cultural center in Paris, bills itself as “an event rooted in blackfeminism, activism, and on (a) European scale.”
According to AFP, four-fifths of the festival area will be set aside as a “non-mixed” space “for black women,” according to its website in French. Another space will be a “non-mixed” area “for black people” regardless of gender, while a final space would be “open to all” although as the French media explains, the English version of the site does uses the word “reserved” instead of “non-mixed.”
The announcement prompted an angry response from Hidalgo, a socialist, who said on Twitter that she “firmly condemned” the organisation “of this event, ‘prohibited to white people‘.”
“I am asking for this festival to be banned,” Hidalgo said, adding she also reserved the right “to prosecute the organisers for discrimination.”
She wasn’t the only one: French antiracist and antisemitism organisations strongly condemned the festival. SOS Racisme described the event as “a mistake, even an abomination, because it wallows in ethnic separation, whereas anti-racism is a movement which seeks to go beyond race.” LICRA, the International League against Racism and Antisemitism, said “Rosa Parks would be turning in her grave,” a reference to the American civil rights icon.
Attention to the festival was first brought up by Wallerand de Saint-Just, the regional head of Marine Le Pen’s National Front party, who challenged Hidalgo on Friday to explain how the city was putting on an event “promoting a concept that is blatantly racist and anti-republican.”
As for the response by the organizers of the clearly racist event, it was just as one would expect: instead of taking responsibility they blamed “fake news” and the “far right”:
The cultural centre La Generale, where the event was to be hosted, and the collective Mwasi, which organised the event, said Sunday they were the “target of a disinformation campaign and of ‘fake news’ orchestrated by the foulest far right.”
“We are saddened to see certain antiracist associations letting themselves be manipulated like this,” according to a statement posted on the Generale website.
Because when all else fails, and one has no arguments, what does one do? Blame “fake news” and/or the “alt-right”, which at least in this case means those who point out the facts.
The Nuansapo is not the first prominent French reverse-racist event: a “decolonisation summer camp” in the northeastern French city of Reims elicited similar outrage last year, as it billed itself as a “training seminar on antiracism” reserved for victims of “institutional racism” or “racialised” minorities — excluding by default white people.
AFP adds that police prefect Michel Delpuech said in a statement that police had not been advised about the event by Sunday evening. But, Delpuech added, the police “would ensure the rigorous compliance of the laws, values, and principles of the republic”.
In a subsequent update reported by Bloomberg, Hidalgo said her “firm”
discussion with organizers had yielded a satisfactory clarification: the
parts of the festival held on property would be open to everyone and
“non-mixed workshops will be held elsewhere, in a strictly private
setting.” Although even this prompted confusion: MWASI, the Afro-feminist collective sponsoring the three-day
event, responded to the mayor’s latest comments by saying it hadn’t
changed the festival program “an inch.“
Meanwhile, last week several women attempting to stage a “burkini party” were detained in Cannes after a ban against the full-body beachwear favored by some Muslim women was upheld in a fresh decree.
via http://ift.tt/2rdRnFm Tyler Durden