A French politician who serves in the mayor of Paris’ administration and is running for regional elections said recently that white people should “keep quiet” if allowed to attend meetings on discrimination.
A student group called the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France, or UNEF, encountered controversy earlier this month after they admitted that white people were not allowed to attend the meetings they held about racism. UNEF President Melanie Luce said that the meetings were intended "to enable people affected by racism to talk about what they have experienced,” and compared them to women-only meetings on sexual discrimination.
Audrey Pulvar, who is Black and identifies as a socialist, told the channel BFMTV, according to France24, that she was "not shocked" to find out "people who suffer discrimination for the same reasons and in the same way feel the need to meet among themselves to discuss it."
The former television anchor added, that white people who wish to attend should be allowed to, adding, "They can, however, be asked to keep quiet and be silent spectators."
Valerie Pecresse, the center-right president of the greater Paris region whom Pulvar hopes to beat, tweeted: "No-one in my region should be discriminated against because of their skin color."
"There is no such thing as acceptable racism," Pecresse added.
Former Prime Minister Manuel Valls said, "This rhetoric, always justifying the victim, leads to disaster," adding, “Do you have to be Jewish to talk about anti-Semitism?”
Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the democratic socialist France Unbowed party, issued a statement backing Pulvar, saying she had "merely understood what a discussion group is" and that the criticism had a distinct "sexist, discriminatory slant.”
“There’s a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,’’ French President Emmanuel Macron’s education minister said last year.
Pulvar has encountered controversy before, having said previously that “the management of the city hall has, all of a sudden, become far too feminist,” and saying it “will be an honor to pay the fine,” she received for the comment.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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