(Français - English)

By electing Nicolas Sarkozy, the French people have sent a message to the world. A migrant father, a Jewish grand father, a weird name and a (first) divorce: many ruptures, many lessons of tolerance ?

The French President, like all his predecessors, and like the huge majority of the French elites, is a white heterosexual Catholic male. It summarizes a French Republic that glorifies itself of its fake diversity and so-called tolerance to hide the actual discriminations and silence any contestation of its "integration model".

From the Netherlands, where he lives for ten years, Laurent Chambon observed the action of Sarkozy in the government, his electoral campaign and his first year of presidency. Beyond promisses, discourses and impostures, one constatation: there is still a long way to go to open the political world and the media (for real, and not only symbolically) to minorities, whether they are women, Moslims, Blacks, migrants or gays. Today's France is a Big Mix, and its diversity is its wealth. But seen from abroad, France seems out of order, incapable of going beyond old prejudices.

Child of the "banlieue", Frenchman abroad, gay in a Protestant society, elected politician in a very diverse borrough of Amsterdam, Laurent Chambon delivers here a sharp anlysis of the French model, mixing sociological gaze, personal stories and bitter-sweet irony.

This travel from Detroit to Soweto, from the French suburbs to the hip places of Amsterdam, from the music world to the universe of television, passing through the back-kitchen of politics, illustrates how poisonous it can be to focus only on a stable and homogeneous "national identity". For refusing the Big Mix is the best way to dissolve a society.

Translation of the French title: "The Big Mix - Minorities, Sham and Tolerance in the France of Nicolas Sarkozy".
   

Laurent Chambon, 35 ans, holds a PhD in political sciences. He lives in Amsterdam, where he is elected for the Labour Party (PvdA). He is regularly asked to comment French news by the Dutch media. Laurent Chambon is also musician; the last abum of Laurent & Lewis, 'Überlove', has just been released on Cherry Juice Recordings.