海角大神

A tractor rumbles down the village street as chickens cluck in a nearby garden and a goat nibbles on a roadside tree. The only business here, a small caf茅, is shuttered for the day. This small town of 601 people in deepest rural France is hardly the place you would expect to find one of the country鈥檚 few black politicians.

Simon Worou, originally from Togo, is the first person from Africa to be elected mayor in the Aveyron region, in south central France. When he first came here 20 years ago to meet his future wife鈥檚 grandparents, they had never met a black man before. But since he settled down, he has felt nothing but full acceptance here.

鈥淚鈥檝e been in this town longer than a lot of people here,鈥� says Mr. Worou, opening the double doors to the town hall to prepare for an afternoon meeting. 鈥淣ow, when people see me, they see聽me聽鈥� Simon 鈥� not a black person.鈥�

Worou鈥檚 presence here illustrates how radically France has changed in recent decades from an ethnically homogenous society into one of Europe鈥檚 most diverse nations. His election by the villagers as their mayor is a pointer to greater acceptance of immigrants by traditional white, European French citizens.

But standard French values and principles are not shifting to make room for the varied cultural traditions of its six million strong immigrant-descended population. And recent debates about those values, the nature of French identity, and the integration of immigrant youths have done more to divide society than unite it.

鈥淭he reality of France has changed even if the image is still of a white man with a beret and a baguette,鈥� says Marie-H茅l猫ne Bacqu茅, a sociologist and urbanist at the University of Paris Ouest. 鈥淔rance is very multicultural with people coming from very diverse places. One of the challenges now is how to take this diversity into account.鈥�

'Where are you from?'

Lifelong Sainte-Juliette residents Serge Bodou and Herv茅 Mader, loading a dying 4x4 onto a car trailer, say they found nothing shocking about Worou鈥檚 election.

鈥淭here are people in town who hide in their yards when you walk by, but Simon always says hello, he鈥檚 everywhere and participates in everything,鈥� says Bodou. 鈥淲hy should we have a problem with him being mayor? He鈥檚 French.鈥�

鈥淏eing French,鈥� however, is fraught with emotion in France, where the intellectual and political establishment is united around secularism as a foundation stone of French identity. That means no concessions to cultural or religious traditions 鈥� no halal meat at school cafeterias, for example 鈥� a stand that many French Muslims regard as hostile and intolerant.

Professor Bacqu茅 says that the debate has been distorted because it takes identity as a fixed and stable concept. 鈥淚dentity is always moving and changing,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here鈥檚 not just one French identity. There have always been many,鈥� though they have rarely been acknowledged.

鈥淪ome people say that the people in the suburbs don鈥檛 feel French, but it鈥檚 that they don鈥檛 feel recognized,鈥� says Bacqu茅. 鈥淭he question is how to exist in this society with your identity and your culture.鈥�

Immigration is not new in France, though the nation鈥檚 struggle to integrate its recent Muslim immigrants has brought the issue to the fore. Millions of newcomers arrived after World War II and in the wake of Algeria鈥檚 independence in 1962, took French citizenship and started families.

Those families may have been in France, and French nationals, for three generations, but if they are not white they are often referred to as 鈥渋mmigrants,鈥� says Erik Bleich, a professor of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Professor Bleich spent a year in France researching the strong pressure on immigrant families to adopt French secularism, language, and political culture 鈥� unlike the US, where people can often hold onto their cultural customs. He found that a majority of French descendants of immigrants told researchers that they felt very French. This was true even for Muslims, although they were subject to more than 400 Islamophobic threats or actions in 2015, according to government figures.

鈥淗owever, the problem came when these people encountered [certain French people] who didn鈥檛 see them as French, asking them, 鈥榳here are you really from?鈥欌�� he says. 鈥淎ll it takes is one person to treat you differently for you to feel not fully French and it can really stick with you.鈥�

Worou, who has become a naturalized French citizen and mastered the local Aveyron accent, says he regularly faces the 鈥渨here are you from鈥� question.

鈥淭his question is often asked of people who come here from outside the region,鈥� he says, 鈥渂ut if you鈥檙e a person of color, you understand it differently.鈥�

Race and 茅驳补濒颈迟茅

While Worou remains the only person of color in Sainte-Juliette, ethnic diversity is spreading across France. In nearby Rodez, a mid-sized city of around 24,000 people, immigrants represent 7.5 percent of the population, slightly below the national average of 8.8 percent, according to the most recent data from national French statistics bureau INSEE.

But INSEE cannot tell the ethnic origins of these immigrants. Identifying citizens by their race is illegal in France 鈥� a reaction to the use that the authorities made of such data during World War II to identify and deport Jews. Distinguishing among citizens on the basis of their ethnic origins is also seen as an assault on the founding republican principle of 茅驳补濒颈迟茅, and thus outlawed.

This has made discussions about race difficult, says Bleich.

鈥淭he upside of not having race statistics is that you don鈥檛 have people that are overly aware of their racial identity and dealing with these small negotiations as they go through life as we do in the US,鈥� says Bleich. 鈥淏ut the negative is, you鈥檙e not able to express to the public at large about the life chances of people across religious and racial lines.鈥�

Those social trends may have been invisible to statisticians, but they exploded into the public consciousness in January 2015 when three French-born second-generation immigrants killed 15 people in separate attacks on a satirical magazine and a kosher delicatessen. The terrorist attacks sparked an anguished debate over the failures of French social and economic integration policies.

The government cannot legally measure the problem, but it knows it exists: it is harder to find a job or a house if you are black or brown than if you are white. The authorities recently launched an advertising campaign against job discrimination and set up a hotline to report racial discrimination.

Back in Sainte-Juliette-sur-Viaur, the issue of race is almost all but forgotten 鈥� except when Mayor Worou has to go to a regional meeting of mayors in the Aveyron. 鈥淚鈥檓 always the only non-white mayor out of the 300 in the Aveyron,鈥� he smiles. 鈥淪ometimes people in neighboring towns still tell me they鈥檙e shocked I was elected.鈥�

But it鈥檚 not a shock for most people in Sainte-Juliette, who laugh when asked whether it was a surprise for a black man to be named mayor.

鈥淚t鈥檚 the person that counts, not the race,鈥� says local resident Dominique Coufinhal, as she lays a concrete slab for a garden shed. 鈥淲hy should it matter if he鈥檚 black? He can do the job and he does it well.鈥�

This was part 8 of Who is 'Europe'?, a weekly series on how European natives and residents are responding to pressures from terrorism, migration, nationalism, and the 'European project.' See all of the stories on the series homepage.