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Clubland's true colours

Lundi, 20 Décembre, 1999
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An interesting case came up before a Le Mans court the other day. Ten soberly-dressed young men appeared in front of a judge to give evidence against the owner and the bouncer of an upmarket town-centre nightclub called Le Portland.

Henley-on-Seine

Clubland's true colours

John Henley in Paris on: Bigoted bouncers | French letters | canine capers

Monday December 20, 1999
The Guardian

An interesting case came up before a Le Mans court the other day. Ten soberly-dressed young men appeared in front of a judge to give evidence against the owner and the bouncer of an upmarket town-centre nightclub called Le Portland.

All the young men were black, and had been refused admission to the Portland on various occasions because, the bouncer told them, "our quota's full". He and his boss were up on charges of racial discrimination, which carries a maximum two years in prison and a fine of £20,000.

Cases like this are common in France, although you'd never know it because they hardly ever get reported. Many of them are brought with the support of the anti-racist group SOS Racisme, which carries out tests in bars and clubs it suspects of operating a discriminatory door policy.

Samuel Thomas, SOS's vice-president, reckons that the group has organised 40 such showdowns around the country in the past year. "People tell us when they're being turned away because of the colour of their skin," he says. "We go back with them, with journalists, police, a local MP, anyone to serve as witness. With a bit of luck, a court case results."

Unfortunately, the victims seldom win. Bar and club owners are wising up. Where before they would say non simply because potential customers were black, these days they swear - as did the Portland's owner - that the youths concerned were turned away because they were "not suitably dressed" or "unruly through alcohol".

The Le Mans case added a couple of twists. The club's DJ told police his establishment was "not racist, we even have black friends. But coloured kids aren't worth it. They don't drink much. They prefer to dance". Which, if I understand it right, could allow a club to have it both ways: it turns black clients away because they've already drunk too much, and because they won't drink enough.

The real clincher, though, was that the doorman was himself of North African origin. "Smart, eh?" says Mamadi Sangare, the black social worker who brought the case. "You hire a black person or an Arab at the door, and no one can possibly accuse you of racism when you turn away blacks and Arabs."

Case, inevitably, dismissed.

Not suitably dressed, unruly through alcohol: revealing terms from the refined and coded vocabulary of French racism. Discrimination on grounds of colour is rarely of the savage, jackbooted variety here. Instead, it emerges in a host of opaque little messages. It is genteel, accepted, winked at. And it's widespread.

In a staggering recent survey, 20% of French people confessed to racist and xenophobic views of one kind or another - roughly twice the rate in comparable polls in Britain and Germany. The respondents came from every social class and age group, and from across the political spectrum.

The National Front, when it was alive and kicking, made no bones about its bigotry. But elsewhere, the signals are harder to pick up. When, for example, a paper refers to a quartier chaud you can be quite sure it's talking about an area with a high immigrant population.

Emeutes dans les cités, similarly, stands for immigrant teenagers - banlieusards , which strictly means suburbanites - lobbing missiles at police in one of those desperate high-rise, low-income estates on the edge of town.

This is insidious racism because it needs translating. But it's not really surprising: you could, for instance, count the number of black waiters in central Paris cafes on the finger of one well-manicured hand. Nor is there a black or North African newsreader to be seen on French television.

Racism in the world of broadcasting is so endemic that a small group of ethnic minority employees recently launched a pressure group demanding positive discrimination. And despite the more than 2.5m people d'origine maghrébienne with voting rights in France, try finding a North African MP in the National Assembly.

As Mamadi Sangare says: "Racism here isn't front-page news. It's a silent and unseen cancer."

Testing time

French drivers, we know by now, are not the most reliable of road users. Now it seems would-be French drivers should carry an even more explicit health warning.

The transport minister, Jean-Claude Gayssot, has announced a six-month trial during which all candidates who present themselves for the French driving test will be given their results by letter, rather than in person by the examiner.

This follows no fewer than 63 verbal and physical assaults on examiners by unsuccessful examinees - including punches, kicks and in one instance a particularly savage head-butt - over the past 12 months.

"It's understandable," admits Jean-Pierre Fougèere, head of the ministry's tests department. "The test costs £400, and only 55% pass it. But it's not exactly a very good omen for safety on our roads."

Model mutt

Forget the opening of that controversial new footbridge over the Seine. The only event worth being seen at in all Paris last week, darling, was the official launch of the world's first canine supermodel's website, www.mutleydog.com. Here is a hound - a fox-terrier, actually - who has danced down the catwalk with Ivanka Trump, escorted a Chanel model in Harpers & Queen, starred in an international ad campaign for Emanuel Ungaro and taken tea with the likes of Naomi Campbell, Charlotte Rampling and Cate Blanchett. It helps, of course, that his masters are a promising young Australian designer and a far from publicity-shy fashion hack. But Mutley carried off his virtual debut in style, parading in an array of fetchingly tailored outfits before the massed ranks of TV cameras and sitting most politely when told.

Which was more, frankly, than anyone did on the first day of the brand new pedestrian-only bridge from the Tuileries gardens to the Musée d'Orsay.

It rained, the mayor of Paris refused to show up because the bridge was too slippery to be safe, and the ecologists complained loudly that it was made of environment-unfriendly Brazilian hardwood. In short, Mutley took the biscuit.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001

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