Barely announced, and already strongly criticized. The surprise appointment of Pap Ndiaye, director of the National Museum of Immigration, as head of the Ministry of National Education has caused a stir. Since Friday, the academic has been the target of attacks from the right and the far right, who attack him for alleged positions in favor of “wokism” and accuse him of being an “indigenist”. “The appointment of Pap Ndiaye, an assumed indigenist, to National Education is the last stone in the deconstruction of our country, its values and its future”, said notably tweeted Marine Le Pen. Same story at the boss of Reconquest, Eric Zemmour: “With Mr. Ndiaye, the work of undermining the indigenists and the Islamo-leftists is completely assumed and will worsen”.
But if the new minister seems to go against the media positions of his predecessor, Jean-Michel Blanquer, who had made the fight against “Islamo-leftism” one of his battles, his speech seems good more nuanced on the subject.A new “at the same time” to National Education, far from the caricatures proposed by the extreme right.
“Wokism” and “Islamo-leftism”
On the two notions with vague outlines which marked the five years of Jean-Michel Blanquer rue de Grenelle, the two men could hardly have made more different statements. Asked at the microphone of Europe 1 in October 2020, the first had declared that “Islamo-leftism wreaks havoc at the university when the Unef gives in to it”. Four months later, on France Inter, Pap Ndiaye had challenged the notion, considering that the term “does not designate any reality at the university”, but was a “way of stigmatizing currents of research, (…) of work on intersectionality, a way of crossing anti-racist and anti-sexist approaches”. “What strikes me above all is the degree of ignorance of the political world of the research that is carried out at the university in the social sciences and the humanities”, he had regretted.
A few months later, in October 2021, Jean-Michel Blanquer included the fight against “wokism” in his fights. In a forum signed with the Quebec Minister of Education, he described at the time as a “new obscurantism” and vilifies on Europe 1 ideologies which “fragment societies”. “You have to know how to look at what comes to undermine democracy and undermine the Republic. Wokism is clearly that,” he says. A few months earlier, Pap Ndiaye insisted on sharing “the cause of woke activists, the fight for the protection of the environment, feminism or anti-racism” in a interview given in June 2021 to M The Magazine of the World. “But I do not approve of the moralizing or sectarian speeches of some of them, I feel more ‘cool than woke'”, he specifies.
Universalism à la Aimé Césaire
In this same interview, Pap Ndiaye insists on the need to “preserve universalism”. Then just appointed head of the Immigration Museum, the academic claims a notion that must be “valid for everyone”. Because if he claims universalism, he is no less critical of it. After the George Floyd case, named after this African-American killed following his arrest by several police officers in 2020 in the United States, the academic specializing in American history, had the opportunity to develop his point of sight. He is then regularly questioned on the possible common points between Paris and Washington, on the theme of racism, or police violence.
In a long maintenance for the site of She, the specialist develops his view of universalism, and claims to be the thinker of negritude Aimé Césaire. “We must not oppose universalism in the singular, he explains then. The two need each other. And, in France, we are largely on the side of abstract universalism. Basically , what is at stake today is a universalism that takes differences into consideration”. There, in passing, the “French speech of self-satisfaction” which “leads to say that everything is fine in our country because the question of color does not exist” and compares it to a “form of denial”. A line to which Ndiaye is attached, and which he repeats at the same time on France Inter indicating that France can no longer reject “the reality, however obvious, of a part of French youth: facies checks, difficulties with the police, sometimes violence”.
No “state racism” in France
However, it is out of the question for Ndiaye to speak of “State racism” in France, as we have been able to attribute to him since Friday. The controversial notion, pushed in recent years by certain unions or personalities from the academic world, is rejected by the new Minister of Education. He even refuted it many times. Nearby Worldfor example, in December 2017, Ndiaye declared: “State racism supposes that the institutions of the State are at the service of a racist policy, which is obviously not the case in France”.
In June 2021, during an interview granted to the TV5 Monde channel, he also returns to the subject, preferring to speak of “systemic racism” or “institutional racism” which makes it possible to “think about the question of racism in a more global way than simply the drift of a person”. On the occasion of this interview, the academic also rejects the concept of “white privilege”, popularized by militants of political anti-racism like Rokhaya Diallo. “You have to think about the notion of systemic racism. On the other hand, I am more critical of white privilege which reverses things”, he explains, refuting a term which “dismisses friends and allies”.
A nuanced position on intersectionality
The man seems to be wary of associative and union outbursts, he who defines himself as a “committed intellectual, but not an activist”. In a long review published on the independent blog of the https://agon.org/aujourlejour/race-sorcellerie-racisme-2, the historian Gérard Noiriel notes that “even if he does not use the word”, Ndiaye outlines “the problem of intersectionality” in his works, writing that if “Race” should not replace social class or gender (…) if we want to advance social science research, we must combine these variables”.
The academic does not judge this movement free of criticism, claiming that we differentiate “research from the student world”. He thus happened to denounce “the intolerance and sectarianism” of certain organizations, in particular those claiming in particular “decolonial struggles”. “The UNEF and SUD-Etudiants, for example, supported the “students in struggle” of Sciences Po, in the spring of 2018, denouncing the ‘neoliberal and racist’ ideology of the teachings. Asked about this, they were unable to justify this outrageous charge”, he criticizes nearby World in 2019. Never stingy with nuances, he noted during this interview “the usefulness” of “intersectional struggles”, “provided you do not entrench yourself in an inter-self without prospects”. “I fear that sectarianism is prevailing in the student decolonial movements”, he regretted.
Far from the Natives of the Republic
Pap Ndiaye does not stop at denouncing student movements. Today accused of being “indigenous” by the far right, the academic has nevertheless criticized the organization from which this term comes, the “Indigenous people of the Republic”. Appeared in 2005 in France, the movement is now a political party that describes itself as anti-racist and “decolonial”. The academic does not show closeness to him. Quite the contrary. In an interview with the Swiss newspaper The weatherhe qualifies his positions, in the same way as those of “The universal league for the defense of the black race” of “separatists” and accuses them of “advocating hatred by speaking for example of ‘slavery and totalitarian France'”.
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It’s hard to imagine the closeness of a man to a movement that he criticizes, but which also criticizes him. In a text dating from January 2010, Sadri Khiari, founding member of the Indigènes de la République, curries in a long criticism his essay “The Black Condition”, considering that “in the face of a French opinion, media and intellectual (…) Pap Ndiaye draws blanks”. The activist criticizes him in particular for not questioning the “republican mythology” enough and for not making the link between “the current period and slavery / colonization”.
The vagueness of single-sex meetings
A man of nuance, the new Minister of Education is not, however, free from ambiguity. His position on the controversial single-sex meetings – an activist practice of organizing gatherings between people belonging to social groups considered to be discriminated against – is difficult to define. Always near the World, in December 2017, he assured that “specific” associations were useful “in the public debate”. He added, however, that it was “vital” for the latter “to welcome with open arms all people of good will”.
A year later, the academic had participated in the think tank “in non-mixed” “Non-white lyrics“. On this occasion, he spoke at a meeting on the theme “Being black.e in France”, alongside political scientist and decolonial activist Françoise Vergès and Maboula Soumahoro, lecturer in committed American civilization in Afro-feminist causes. To maintain balance and nuance?