Sud Education activists met on March 17 at 9 a.m. a few meters from the Bobigny judicial court (Seine-Saint-Denis) to support their comrades in the 93 section. Red and black banners in the colors of the Union Syndicale Solidaires are gradually being raised. The thirty demonstrators present brandished a few rare signs: “We will not let go! We will not dissolve”, “Be anti-racist and shut up”, “Solidarity with Palestine Will win”. A sign castigating Jean-Michel Blanquer will remain on the ground. This time, it is not the Minister of National Education who is at the origin of the summons served against Sud Education 93 by five parliamentarians Les Républicains: Julien Aubert, Thibault Bazin, Bernard Fournier, Bérengère Poletti and Patrice Verchère . In July 2019, the latter had seized the court and demanded the dissolution of the union section after the organization of a training course “in racial non-mixing”. The “racialized” (i.e. non-white) staff had been invited to meet among themselves to discuss their “different professional life” from that of their colleagues. On the other hand, it was proposed to the “white.he.s” teachers to question “their representations and their dominant postures”.
The controversy is old. Jean-Michel Blanquer had already seized the public prosecutor in April 2018, accusing Sud Education 93 of “discrimination”. But, for lack of sufficient elements, the complaint had been closed without further action. Just like the one that the host of the rue de Grenelle had filed in November 2017 for “defamation” due to the use of the term “state racism”. A few minutes from the Bobigny audience, Manel Ben Boubaker, a history-geography professor who presents himself as one of the organizers of this famous “non-racial mixed” course, takes the microphone: “This course it is the culmination of a very long struggle and it is the promotion of our fights, we who are in political anti-racism. It is the promotion of the struggles in our neighborhoods against police violence, against Islamophobia “. Deputy LR Julien Aubert, retained that day in his constituency of Vaucluse, said he was “shocked” by the fact that we could “organize workshops excluded from whites”. “By doing so, a union does not respect republican values based on universalism,” he explains.
No parliamentarian is attending the hearing on March 17. It is therefore in the presence of an audience essentially composed of a handful of activists from the South that, for more than an hour, the lawyers of the two parties will present their already well-rehearsed arguments. Like all the defenders of this type of workshop, Raphaël Kempf, the lawyer for Sud Education 93, recalls that of the ten workshops organized during this famous course, only two were “separate”. The lawyer also insists on the notion of “volunteering”. “There is no sorting Mr. President! Everyone can participate if they want to”, he says before recalling that historically this tool was already used in the context of feminist struggles and that in the United States, black people had also used it to defend their civil rights. “To think that in a universal and republican country like France, which refuses ethnic statistics, we can thus sort people is not acceptable”, confided Julien Aubert the day before. Kévin Poujol, the representative of parliamentarians, for his part insists on the term “indirect discrimination”, evoking “a practice that is apparently neutral but is likely to create a disadvantage for one person over another”.
Two irreconcilable positions
Contrary to previous hearings, a new point of procedure is raised: is a parliamentarian in his role when he asks for the dissolution of a union? “Absolutely not!, replies Raphaël Kempf, the defender of Sud Education 93. These deputies have no connection with the educational world. It is not because one is a parliamentarian that one can interfere in debates and ask anything and everything. Their function is to pass the law, no more and no less. There is a lack of right to act.” And Kévin Poujol, his colleague from the opposing party, retorted: “On the contrary. Who apart, a deputy, as a representative of the Nation, can have a greater interest in defending the values of the French Republic?”
Raphaël Kempf persists and signs. For him “the political instrumentalization of this file is obvious”. And the lawyer to recall that Sud Education 93 has 600 members in Seine-Saint-Denis. “These teachers are confronted daily in the field with the problems of racism and discrimination”, he insists, taking as an example the fact that Roma children cannot enroll in schools in the department without stable accommodation. “The highlighting of republican values, all this circus, aims to silence us, confided this professor inserted at Sud before entering the courtroom. All these white men over 50 have only one goal, that of defending their privileges”.
Kévin Poujol returns the ball to the other camp, accusing in turn Sud Education 93 of ideological aims. “In reality, in these training courses, we have courses in political Islam, we learn concepts of “whiteness”, “racialized” teachers. We learn that National Education is systematically racist and that we must so fight against that,” he said. Referring in passing to the links of certain members of Sud 93 with the Party of the natives of the Republic (PIR) and the former Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) dissolved in 2020 because of its controversial activities. Marwan Muhammad, former spokesperson for the CCIF, had, in fact, been invited to reflect on the “question of Islamophobia in National Education” during the famous trade union course of Sud Education 93 organized in December 2017 and entitled “Au crossroads of oppressions – Where are we in the struggle at school?
“Substitute the class struggle for the race struggle”
And Kévin Poujol to launch: “We regret that Sud Education 93 wanted to substitute the class struggle for the struggle of races!” Comments deemed “defamatory” by Raphaël Kempf. “To say that my clients and clients advocate political Islam is perfectly inadmissible,” he replies, certifying that “secularism is one of the values of this union”.
Shortly before the hearing, Manel Ben Boubaker, asked why the Seine-Saint-Denis section was the only one in Sud Education to set up workshops “in racial non-mixing”, replied with a smile: “Without doubt because we are ahead!” Others, like the five parliamentarians at the origin of this assignment, and many others, see it on the contrary as a terrible regression undermining the universalist principles which govern French society, and therefore the school. Whose side will the court decision lean on? Response on May 19.