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How Speech Rights Went Wrong in France

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

For some Americans, France can seem like a trip back in time, not always in a good way.

"In terms of racial progress," writes Joel Dreyfuss in The Root, "France looks more like the U.S. in the 1950s -- minus enforced segregation -- than America today."

Dreyfuss, a former managing editor of that black-oriented website, now lives in Paris as he works on a book about his family's 300-year involvement with Haiti.

He was reacting to a recent speech given by French President Francois Hollande about diversity after Islamic terrorists killed 17 people at the offices of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo and at a kosher grocery store.

Unlike the United States, French leaders seldom talk about how much their fellow French increasingly come in many colors. Their official census doesn't even count race, religion or ethnicity.

But pretending that diversity doesn't exist has only hobbled the country's efforts to integrate the country's heavily Muslim immigrants from North and West Africa into the French mainstream. This divide is particularly wide in regard to two rights that enable diverse groups to express themselves: free speech and free press.

 

As violent demonstrations by Muslims erupted in Africa and the Middle East over controversial caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in Charlie Hebdo, Hollande vowed that any acts directed at Jews or Muslims would be "severely punished" without damage to the country's democratic traditions.

"There are tensions abroad where people don't understand our attachment to the freedom of speech," Hollande said during a visit to the southern city of Tulle, according to Reuters. "We've seen the protests, and I would say that in France all beliefs are respected."

Yet, that "attachment to the freedom of speech" didn't sound very tight after a week in which French police arrested and charged more than 50 people, including four juveniles, with hate speech and other alleged expressions of support for terrorism.

I say "alleged" because expressions of support for terrorists or terrorism, like any other offensive speech is often in the ear of the beholder.

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(c) 2015 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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