investigation into “sneaky” and “uninhibited” racism

FRANCE 5 – SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4 AT 9:05 P.M. – DOCUMENTARY

Known to viewers for having officiated on several channels – she currently appears on France 5 in “C à vous” and on FranceTVinfo – Emilie Tran Nguyen, 38, is French, with an Algerian mother and a Vietnamese father. Her paternal grandparents fled Saigon under the bombs and arrived in France with their children in 1956. She was raised in Clermont-Ferrand, where her father ran a restaurant, Le Pousse-Pousse.

At school, she suffered teasing in the playground – «rice bowl», « chinetoque », « make de citron ». Words, she says in her documentary where she speaks in the first person, that she still hears sometimes today, and which pushed her to carry out an investigation into “this form of ambient, tolerated racism”which affects those whose physical appearance recalls the Asian origin of their ancestors.

The journalist interviewed members of her own family – touching sequences with her grandmother, who prefers to talk about cooking when she asks her about a past that we imagine to be painful – well-known personalities, such as the actor Frédéric Chau or the drag -queen Kitty, people from all professions testifying to the vexations suffered on a daily basis, and activists committed against the violence suffered by members of the community. Particularly since the appearance of Covid-19: “We went from model minority to guilty minority”summarizes Isabelle Le, communications director. Unlike previous generations, who suffered mistreatment and mockery in silence, the 30-40 year old generation is now speaking out: “We can no longer be silent”says Emilie Tran Nguyen.

Media clichés and prejudices

The journalist conducts her investigation by following a thread that turns out to be relevant: how the media contributed to this “ambient racism”, by conveying clichés and prejudices about this community described as “docile”, “submissive”, “hardworking”. Comments that are not always negative, but which stigmatize a population in a global way, denying individualities. “People don’t necessarily realize that it can be hurtful”reacts Cathy Nguyen, midwife.

Archive images are slipped between the testimonies: a stunning report filmed in 2002 at the town hall of Levallois-Perret (Hauts-de-Seine), where we see Isabelle Balkany, deputy mayor, questioning a municipal employee whom she nicknames it “Grain of rice” because, she says, “his name is too difficult to pronounce and it’s funnier” ; Michel Leeb wearing an oriental hat crudely mimicking a Japanese facing a hilarious Michel Drucker; Jacques Martin laughing, in “The School of Fans”, faced with a child with Asian features who tells him to eat fries and not rice with chopsticks…

The written press is not left out, as illustrated by the front page of the newspaper The free Charente crossed out with this title: “Chinese behind our tobacco shops”. Or this investigation of Point from August 2012 titled “The intriguing success of the Chinese in France”, full of insulting terms, which earned the weekly a conviction for defamation in 2014. When questioned, the director of the publication at the time, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, said excuse : “Let’s be frank, we would never have written that about Jews, Arabs or black people. » Illustration of a “sneaky racism”as Frédéric Chau describes it, “a racism where we can allow ourselves to be uninhibited”.