I am Sarah Issaad, woman of African descent, an elementary school teacher, raised In a Western European country in an upper-middle-class family. I am Anne-Lise Coste, a woman by law, white, an artist, born In France to a lower-middle-class family.

What we want to say is that French thinking is racist, sexist, imperialist, pro-capitalist, and still colonialist. We approach French thinking through the same lens as Lilian Thuram when describing "white thinking" in his eponymous 2020 essay[1]. In this work he presents the diachronic trajectory of the racist imperialist system that has produced present-day inequalities. The essayist also theorizes that thought travels outside a body, without being circumscribed to a territory. We can “think white” as a racialized person and not “think white” as one too. To “think white” means to subscribe to an intellectual and ideological framework that endorses the idea of a hierarchy between peoples. Similarly, there is no need to be French or live in French or Francophone territories to think French, which is a closely related ideology to “white thinking”.

Since it is located both in consciousness and in ways of not thinking, this social construction only needs to be upheld by a minority cultural and economic elite to continue prospering and being disseminated throughout society.

“Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” is not so much a motto as a sly and strict order that imposes competitiveness, inequity, and insular relationships that are white, patriarchal, Christian anti-feminist, anti-Muslim, antisemitic, and anti-LGBT+. It assigns to all bodies the requirement to correspond to a ruling standard of weight and size, as well as sensory, cognitive, motor, and psychological capacities (for all those who are categorized under the labels of "pathological" and "handicapped").

This dominance starts with language acquisition. There is a single French language: Parisian French, which is white, bourgeois and academic. The French Academy’s normative power creates a reduced and reductive world that renders groups and social realities invisible.

A telling example is provided by the orthographic rule that stipulates the prevalence of the masculine over the feminine in the French language. Since its creation, this norm has affirmed the power relationship between men and women in every sentence – to the detriment of women. Today, this same Academy refuses to acknowledge the systemic crime[2] perpetrated on women by its objection to the inclusion of the word féminicide (femicide) in the dictionary, despite its current usage by the media and politicians[3]. As to the French State, it plainly forbids the use of inclusive language in the National Education system[4]. Its usage has also been banned in French government departments since 2017[5].

In France in 2022, accusations of rape and harassment do not prevent you from having served as Minister of the Interior since 2020 or from being recently appointed Minister of Solidarity, Autonomy and Disabled Persons[6].

In France in 2022, the presidential elections are making citizens choose, for the third time, between a militaristic and pro-prison extreme right-wing party – which is openly xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, and negationist – and a somewhat toned-down version of it.

What we want to say is that the capitalist system, which has ruled over the majority of planet Earth up to now, is founded upon all these inequalities and perpetuates them. By relying on a constant dynamic of hierarchization, its rule over our collective decision-making is systematically regulated by relationships of dominance: men over women, white men and women over all other skin colors, the rich over the poor, and humans over animals, plants, the sky, rivers, mountains, seas, oceans, minerals, and all other non-human elements that are still part of the living world.

What we want to say is that a connection to any kind of living being is at the heart of action ­– whether it instills a vital or a lethal impulse, openness or closure, love or fear.

Poem Police.

[1] Lilian Thuram, La Pensée blanche (Québec: Memoire d’Encrier, 2020).

[2] https://arretonslesviolences.gouv.fr/je-suis-professionnel/chiffres-de-reference-violences-faites-aux-femmes This government website attempts to provide a rigorous description of the nature and extent of violence perpetrated against women. This national watchdog for violence against women recognizes murders and domestic violence as “gender-based and sexual violence”.

[3] https://www.franceculture.fr/societe/le-terme-feminicide-interroge-le-droit. Laura Dulieu, Margot Delpierre, and Eric Chaverou’s article points out that the term "feminicide” is not considered French according to the French Academy.

[4] https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2021/05/07/jean-michel-blanquer-interdit-l-ecriture-inclusive-a-l-ecole_6079436_3224.html

[5]https://kiosque.bercy.gouv.fr/alyas/msite/view/vigie/11263#:~:text=L'%C3%A9criture%20inclusive%20est%20une,f%C3%A9minisation%20des%20noms%20de%20m%C3%A9tier

[6] https://www.mediapart.fr/journal/france/dossier/laffaire-gerald-darmanin