Special Flights

Browsing through François Desouche, I found a shortened article about the now-retired French soccer star Lilian Thuram, born Ruddy Lilian Thuram-Ulien in Guadeloupe in 1972. The article centers on Thuram's remarks eight years ago in which he accused Air France of racist hiring practices.

The whole article is from the current issue of Causeur, a paper publication. The page on Thuram was scanned and posted by François Desouche. I was able to translate the page by enlarging it. The author, François Marchand, begins by complaining about having to listen to the rants of retired soccer players. Specifically, some recent complaints by Lilian Thuram regarding utterances made by managers of French soccer teams, and his insistence that the managers be punished. This reminded Marchand of an incident eight years ago:

While traveling by air with the French team, Thuram had elegantly informed the journalists present that there were too many whites in the crew flying the Air France plane (and pointing to them, of course: we are dealing with nobility). He should choose once and for all his position. You cannot be simultaneously a republican and a proponent of the racial superiority of blacks. Or hostile to any ethnic consideration and still in favor of hiring based on skin color.

Someone might object that it is not exactly the same thing, since blacks are subjected to a racist ideology more than whites. But this argument is no longer valid when racism is no longer the dominant ideology, but rather antiracism, which loses all meaning when it is used as a one-way street - "too many blacks" is racist, "too many whites" is antiracist.

The reaction of Jean-Cyril Spinetta to the in-flight outburst of Thuram was, from this point of view, very significant. Whether they are heads of private industry or government leaders, the ruling elite is not republican, royalist, racist, antiracist, communist, fascist, left-wing, or right-wing: they are in step with the times. Concerned about their careers, day and night (which explains why they get so little sleep), they modulate their slightest reactions in terms of what will benefit them or not.

Note: Spinetta, of Corsican and Armenian descent, is CEO of Air France.

What was Spinetta's response to the racist remarks of the former defender of the Juventus Turin soccer team? Very simple: he took action and implemented an ethnic file containing, in violation of the law, a veritable racial topology based on the following notations: "African", "Antillian", "Asian", "Eurasian", "Mediterranean", "Western", for "special flights" (for example the French soccer team). This madness was fortunately rejected by the CFDT labor union that took the case to SOS Racism. The documents have disappeared but in reality, for those "special flights", Air France still selects its crews in accordance with these criteria - let's hope that the company is never be solicited for a convention of rappers or skinheads. You must understand management: what a calamity if Monsieur Thuram's apple juice were served to him by a white!

My conclusion is that if France were to one day be torn apart by ethnic riots, the extreme right will not be the only ones responsible. What historians interested in the devastation of this country will not fail to be amused by is that the riots will have been prepared by personalities as diverse as a former defender of the Barcelona Soccer Team and a big boss of the airline industry. But rest assured, the two of them will continue to give moral lessons from the safe spot on planet Earth to which they will have fled: in first class.