France's Struggles with Diversity

Interview (FR) with the head of the Representative Council of Black Organizations, who discusses the need for a law to actively promote diversity in French society. At the end of the report, the interviewee, Patrick Lozès, talks about how much progress America has made in the last 40 years -- developments that we would directly attribute to Title VI (prohibiting Federal discrimination in government employment and services) and Title VII (prohibiting discrimination in the hiring of workers) of the 1964 Civil Rights Act; France would certainly benefit from having its own versions of these.  Of course, that act was preceded by large-scale marches and protests; a similar movement has yet to emerge in France. Difficult to say why this is so. Perhaps it is because the discrimination that Blacks in France face is more subtle and less uniform than something like a "whites-only" drinking fountain. More broadly, we seem to be living in an age of leader-less mass movements (no one was really at the head of the Iran protests). So in a situation that would seem to call for a King-like figure, it is not that surprising that none has emerged.