A Comedian’s Take on Racism in France

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: So, let me ask you because you’ve got a lot of these specials which are creating hits and causing — you know, really popular around the world. In “Fary Is the New Black,” as one of them is called, you say there are words that French people are scared of. You give an example of white people being scared to say the word noir, which is black in French, obviously. They say black in English instead.

FARY, FRENCH COMEDIAN: Yes, yes.

AMANPOUR: And as we know, in 2018, your national assembly removed the word race from the first article of its constitution. Can you explain to an audience why the system is so wary, so reluctant to talk about black, brown, white, you know, Asian? Everybody’s meant to be just French in France.

FARY: That’s a French culture. It’s because they think we should act and be the same way, and also, I think they’re afraid about saying those words because behind those words, there’s issues and subjects about it. If we say black like the French word, that’s a big word to them because it was, back then, an insult. When you say someone is black, it was something insulting. And so, they have to rethink and — they have to tell the story again because we — the story they told us, that’s not the story we should listen to when we are a child. And I think that’s a big issue for them. Because black, it’s — when they say they exist, they’re a community, that’s a threat for us, for everyone in France because we want to see French as just one people. And there’s two ways of thinking, that they think it’s opposite, but it’s not. We can have community and we can have people who act like just one people. So, they think if we have a community, it’s something dangerous, which I think it’s wrong.