Page - 224 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Round Table Discussion | Worst Case and Best Practice 224 Souley Hassane I want to say that the greatest problem in France is our relation between ethnic minorities and the mainstream media. As I see it, it’s a combination of an economic situation and a political situation in which the minorities don’t have a real place. If you consider the French Law against discrimination – a very good law. But the real problem of France is the implementation of this law. It is not a problem of language, because – immigrants for example – most of them are French, they speak French very well, and they respect the law. But the real problem is that they don’t have equal opportunities like other citizens. That’s why sometimes the suburbs of France and the people who live in the suburbs of France, they consider themselves as “under-citizens”. This ideology is very real; it’s in the culture of the mainstream media and the journalists who are making the media. For example, during the riots of 2005, the mainstream media hired people who live in the suburbs to report from there. We were not in war, but they hired people who live there. They could not go there to interview people. The journalists who are in Paris cannot go ten kilometers away from Paris to make a report! Why? We are not on a warfield. We are in France. The problem is the culture of journalism. When you take the majority of French journalists, they come from the same class, the same cultural and social class. Their function in writing the papers is a translation of their own social position. That’s why I say it’s necessary to inject, to push diversity into journalism. It may be colour, because the mainstream is very uncoloured. It’s necessary, it’s a symbolic revolution. Augie Fleras Just in relation to Rainer’s comment: I do appreciate your positive attitude towards Canada. It’s possible that we may have the most workable multicultural model. I use that term delibaretely, workable, that doesn’t mean that it’s best or perfect, but it’s workable. And part of its workability (if there is such a word) is that it doesn’t focus on diversity or ethnicity or “celebrate differences” and so on. Canada’s multicultural model is very clearly focused on integration, inclusion, removing the discrimatory barriers. The idea is to incorporate all the new Canadians into society by the way of making them feel comfortable about themselves in making that transition. I suppose the underlying logic to official multiculturalism in Cananda is the notion that we treat everyone the same in Canada, regardless of your difference, and we do this as a matter of course. But we will also treat you differently if