Re: [Marxism] French elections: position of the left on racism and national oppression

["Sayan Bhattacharyya" <ok.president+marxmail@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 4/20/07, Greg Dunkel <gdunkel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> None of the candidates make it clear in their statements that the people protesting at the Gare du Nord in their vast majority were members of the nationally oppressed communities in France.  This lack of connection to the banlieues explains, in my opinion, why the youth there are so cynical and mistrustful of politics and all political parties, even though Bové has put his campaign headquarters in a banlieue.

I think this is an example, rather, of the tradition of universalism,
which is quite pronounced in France and especially on the French left.
Since everyone is a "citizen", special markers of difference, such as
race, skin color, etc, which distinguish one citizen from another,
become unmentionable. This is also why Segolene Royal got a lot of
flak from the left  for appealing to women voters to vote for her  --
gender too is a special marker and so not mentionable or appealable-to
in political discourse. The discomfort with the hijab in public space,
too, is (for the left, that is) largely attributable to this
discomfort with the signaling of difference in public.

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Marx's _On the Jewish Question_ seems to me to be an important text
here, in order to think about questions like this.

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