On May 25th, like most of you, I was shocked by this image of a man kept on the ground by 3 American police officers, prevented from breathing by the pressure of the knee of one of them. This shock was probably amplified by the lockdown, but these “I can’t breathe!”, this robot look of the killer cop, the absence of reaction of this other cop who was standing trying to control the crowd while people were shouting “you are killing him”, echoed in my head for many days.
It happened many times, too many… we got used to it! US cops are cowboys: they shoot before they think! They shoot men, women, disabled, everybody who disobey. They don’t shoot to stop, to protect. They shoot to kill! Usual … sadly! And if you are black, you are the “lucky” one… sadly!

Among too many, Breonna Taylor was a 26-year-old decorated Emergency Medical Technician who was shot at least 8 times by police officers in her flat on March 13^th, for no reason but a mistake, or I should write : for no reason but she was black!
Nobody really reacted then: lockdown was not on yet, and people were living their life as usual!
But 3 weeks ago, George Floyd had all our attention and his murder was the drop that made the vase overflow!

RACISM is defined as:
– the inability or refusal to recognize the rights, needs, dignity, or value of people of particular races or geographical origins. (Oxford Dictionary)
– the belief that people’s qualities are influenced by their race and that the members of other races are not as good as the members of your own, or the resulting unfair treatment of members of other races (Cambridge Dictionary)

How can this happen in 2020 in the leading world power? In the “free” world, the United States of America?
For non-Americans such as me, the United States stay as the new world, the world where everything can happen, where everybody can live the American Dream we watched so many films about, even if these last years, this famous dream has faded away a little… a lot.
How can this still happen 150 years after the American Civil War? Over 50 years after the civil rights movement, some people still believe that colour makes the difference, that we are not all equal.
This is soooo sad, and it really pisses me off, if you know what I mean!
Why are physical or cultural differences still seen as a danger or a blemish today?
Why does a “modern” country still feel “normal” (I mean, with no real reactions!) when a black or a white are treated differently ?
Why do I ask this question when the World had to wait for this last decade “Me-Too Movement” to realise half of the human population was discriminated and that sexual harassment had to be stopped ?

Indeed, this planet seems to evolve very quickly technically but very slowly humanly speaking!

Finally George Floyd’s death provoked a tsunami of reactions all over the world, and that was good to realise Humanity still exists and rises to say to stop killing people for nothing, and fight discrimination because Blake, Yellow, Red, White, all Lives Matter!
A second American Revolution thus started, and spread to the World!
In the USA, France, United Kingdom, and so on, demonstrations, ignoring social distancing and full of masks, were held against racism and police violence.
But emotion was quickly replaced with revenge and violence.

And then happens my 2^nd shock: Winston Churchill statue was defaced this week: graffiti brands him “racist”! Some “educated” people even said he fought Hitler to protect colonialism.
That, adding to the way some want to make every policeman a violent racist, made me think this was about as wrong as discrimination. Indeed its seems the protesters forgot about shades of grey.
Let me be clear: Winston Churchill is a Hero for the entire world as he is the first political leader who stood against Adolf Hitler and his plan to spread his idea of a “pure” race world, destroying all the others. Without him, all the métis, jews, gypsies, disabled and so on would have been destroyed, and we all would speak and walk German today.
This second wave of demonstrations is not against Racism but for Revisionism, Anarchism and Ignorance.

If I can understand the first anger, I can’t approve what is happening today.
People went in the streets to say Racism has to end, and they were right.
But they are now in these same streets to destroy everything they think reminds Racism to them.
So, they destroy statues of people who were important for many reasons, bad and good, a long time ago, who built the world we are living in today, creating the positive as well as the negative.
Indeed, slavery was/is an awful idea that was used by many leaders as well as common people to build part of our world. Many bad things happened in here and there with Colonialism, but many good too. All is not black or white! This is so naïve to think so!
Without all these statue people, our London, Bristol, Paris, Versailles, Madrid, Barcelona and so many towns would be very different: people issued from ex-colonies would not be or have been among us, I would not have met the love of my life and my precious daughter would not have been born. The World would be very different, very dull with less diversity.
History cannot and must not be changed because it happened and reminds us of all the mistakes we should not repeat, and also about all the good things that occurred.
The bad Yesterday created the good Today!

“A nation that forgets its past has no future”

Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

The other day I was watching the new Netflix series “Hollywood”. I liked it because the beginning of the film industry is exiting. But I was horrified as some people torn apart History to satisfy their fantasy and naively changed the past: lying on what Rock Hudson was, and allowing black actors to succeed at a time they were hardly existing in the film industry.
I may shock some but for me this is counterproductive and racist too. Segregation cannot be erased such as the Holocaust cannot be forgotten. It happened!
Today we still can make the difference between Reality and Fantasy but what about the future generations if we changed History through films or books, if we make the bad guys disappear?
Today we are letting anarchists or ideologists destroy the past, erase history to punish dead people.
Yesterday they destroy statues.
Today films such as legendary Gone with the Wind, TV programmes such as Little Britain, Fawlty Towers, for instance, are taken off-air, dragged into race row. Do you imagine? We are destroying burlesque! We can’t even mock f***cking Nazis!
What would be tomorrow? We will burn books because a lot of the writers are considered racists today, beginning with Enid Blyton or Roald Dahl? What about Disney and Mickey Mouse?
This is crazy and dangerous, and it is not even fair for all those who suffered of evil ideologies. They did suffer, it did exist and we shall not forget!

“Where they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.”

Heinrich Heine (1820-1821)

Furthermore, who are we to judge entire generations who built the world as it stands today, the modern wealthy society we are taking advantages of, whether we like it or not?
Most of them were “racists” in the way we see it today! Mentality was different then!
I don’t like all of them but I admire some. For instance, General de Gaulle saved the honour and freedom of French people. People are judging him, but where were their ancestors during WW2? Today most French people you talk with will say their grandparents were in the Resistance, the Communists’, or De Gaulle’s. But be realistic, most of the French people stay silent by fear, by commercial interest or because they agreed with the Nazi ideology. I do know where mine were and I am proud for what they did. What about the protesters? What did they do when Germans arrived and settled?
But I also know my grandparents may not have approved my mixed marriage, and I do not judge them for that because I know they were good people in spite of it, they always respected people of colour ; they just didn’t want to mix with non-Bretons.
What did yours think about black people, about people of colour, of different religions? What did they think about mixed marriage? Probably not much, whether white or black! Does it make them bad people? I don’t think so.
They were not all white supremacists, some were conservative, socialist, communist, anarchist, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, white, black, yellow, red, … They were taught like this, differently from us. It was another time.
Don’t forget, the first generation to really live together is just about 50 years old !
Imagine! Men and women have been living together for about 2,4 million of years, and men are just learning to respect women on the same level of equality, …not even! And that is a fact for every woman, whatever colour!

“For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.”

Matthew

So the judgment is easy, but what do you think your children or grandchildren will think about you, the right-thinking people, when they will know you complained about 19th century slavery but used modern slavery for your own comfort, shutting your eyes on all these third-world children who are dying collecting the minerals to build the batteries of your mobiles and tablets, who are losing their childhood so you can have 20 cheap T-shirts, all those poor women who are renting their bellies to give children to those who can’t…
We as a people have always been the slave of someone. Slavery existed under Greek civilisation. The Celts were enslaved by the Romans who tried to destroy their culture by forcing them to convert. Are we going to erase Ancient culture, destroy Roman statues?
And what about feeling superior?  What are foreigners thinking about you when they hear you claiming you are the best, during your holidays, but not only? I travelled a lot when I was younger, I was lucky to see how it was abroad. I often went to England. I love England. I feel at home there. I am not very Latin despite being French. I am more Celtic, such as a Welsh, an Irish, a Scottish or even an English; well, I am a Breton after all.
When I say that, youngers and elders are mocking me because English food is awful for them, even if they never tasted it, and the weather is so bad … When I went to the States, they said the same: horrible food, lots of fat people, uneducated Americans, primitive people, cowboys … When I went to Spain, they said: lovely country but lazy people, and so on!!!
Because it is well known that French food, French medical system or French schools are the best all over the world, aren’t they?
Isn’t this Racism in fine? It isn’t even true : I enjoy traditional English food and it is not much more humid than French Riviera, Americans are not more uneducated or primitive than anyone and they don’t eat burgers all the time, Spanish people are not lazy at all and their medical/educational systems are as good as ours, maybe even better.
Don’t misunderstand what I mean! All French are not racist, but they are chauvinistic, as much as the English, the Scottish, the Irish, the American, … most of the people, especially those who dominated the world in the past or present.
We all want to be the Best! It is a primitive behaviour!

“When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.”

Judging whatever is an act of fear, of weakness! It is based on prejudices, lack of knowledge, jealousy, envy.
Racism does still exist in many forms. It needs to be neutralised, but you could never erase it totally because some people will keep on thinking they are superior to others for cultural and/or physical reasons, whatever nationality they have, and you cannot force them thinking like you.
The only thing we can do is to punish it when it happens now, not centuries ago.
And above all, we have to educate people to respect differences and stop judging, we can educate them to learn about other cultures and religions, and we can teach them that not everything is black or white, shades are important too.
That would be much more useful and productive that to erase the past, to deface or destroy statues, complain about Kellogg’s cereals mascot !

if not, mind! You may be judged too by future generations as hypocrites, and your statue may be the next one to be thrown into the Severn!

It is time to learn about History, about each other, as well as to forgive to previous generations, in order to face together our Future as free people.

“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.”

Albert Camus (1913-1960)