Is France Ready for Affirmative Action?

Unlike the United States, where affirmative action has been debated for decades, the argument over it has only just begun in France.

It is currently illegal for institutions to collect data regarding a person's ethnic origins. The law dates back to the end of World War II and was inspired by the persecution of the Jews, explains Dejane Ereau, deputy chief editor of Respect, a quarterly magazine dedicated to acceptance and diversity.

But in France, with its roots and pride in Gallic culture, a name betrays a person's origins far quicker than any survey.

"It is against the law to ask one's nationality or to count ethnicities in the census," Ereau says. "So they have now begun to discuss using anonymous resumes with no name or age, to avoid discriminating against any applicant who doesn't have a French name."

The French government itself employs only one minister with a North African name, though it is estimated that North Africans make up nearly 10 percent of the population (no official statistics exist).

While the government has been behind on this issue wracking nearly every sector, French business has taken a leap ahead. A syndicate of advocacy groups developed a charter in 2004, "La Charte de la Diversité."

There are currently 175 signatories to the charter, including some French business and industry giants, as well as SNCF, the powerful national French rail association.

The charter is not legally binding but is simply a call for awareness to avoid discriminatory hiring and promotion practices at the expense of ethnic minorities. It doesn't call for quotas, either.

"Ethnic origins will never be the criteria for employment. Our action seeks to fight discrimination, not to add new forms of discrimination," the charter states.

Despite these tentative steps, the sting of discrimination is felt in no uncertain terms in the ethnically diverse low-income suburbs of nearly all of France's cities.

On a recent night in the southern city of Toulouse, one of the cities most damaged by the recent rioting, nearly a dozen police officers descend on a small group of young men whose skin color and street corner betray them as children of North African parentage. They've been asked by visiting reporters to come down from their apartments in a monolith that resembles so many of the tenements that house minorities. A community leader steps in to explain to the police that the youths are only talking with the journalists.

"You see, we have no right to gather on the street even to talk," explains Riad Zeghab, an organizer in the low-income neighborhood where he resolves disputes between neighbors. There are more than five buildings each, housing more than 200 families.

He has spent his whole life in this community and says the recent bout of violence was not the first. He's certain it will not be the last in the minorities' fight for equal treatment in France.

Zeghab recalls an incident when police killed a young man and, trying to keep the peace, he stood between 50 police on one side and 50 angry youths on the other.

Munir, a 20-year-old of Algerian descent who would only give his first name, tells the reporters that it's not just the joblessness that affects him and his friends, but "it's the way that people look at you in the train. Look how I'm dressed," he says, pointing at his wool jacket with buttons up the front. "Do I look like someone who is going to attack you?"

Munir attests to what has been shown by a well-publicized investigative research project that used false names to respond to hundreds of job announcements. The survey found that names of North African origin resulted in 60 percent less interview prospects than those of French origin. "If my name is Jacques or Pierre, I can get a job, but if my name is Mohammed or Karim, it's a lost cause," says Munir.