France Imports America’s Idiocies

The French establishment may be impervious to good ideas from the U.S., like freeing the economy and deposing sadistic tyrants, but a story in today’s Wall Street Journal [link probably for on-line subscribers only] shows that it doesn’t reject everything from America out of hand: Some of the leading French universities are setting up affirmative action programs, justified with made-in-America bologna.

In France, where the minority population is mainly of North and West African descent, the state officially doesn’t recognize minorities, insisting that immigrants shed their cultures of origin when they come to France and join what the French Constitution calls “the Indivisible Republic.” “La discrimination positive,” the French expression for affirmative action, has long been taboo here.

But with some minority groups becoming increasingly marginalized, a chorus of influential Frenchmen has questioned the country’s color-blind philosophy. Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who is tipped as France’s next president, has spoken in favor of affirmative action. Claude Bébéar, founder and chairman of insurer AXA SA, has partnered with a human-rights association, SOS Racisme, to facilitate the recruitment of minorities at France’s big companies. . . .

The “marginalization” of “some minority groups” is, as polite European opinion refuses to say openly, fostered by leftist hatred of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and enforced by Islamic extremists who isolate Moslem children from Western culture and values. Now the rejection of individual freedom, religious tolerance, social mobility, economic liberalism and scientific progress is to be rewarded by preferential access to higher education.

The French educational system prides itself on being a meritocracy based on grueling concours, or exams, that are blind to race or ethnicity. However, the reality is that white students from privileged upbringings often fare the best on these exams. As a result, the increasingly diverse makeup of France’s population isn’t reflected in its elite universities.

Until recently, Sciences Po [an elite university] was a bastion of white, affluent France. Even today, 17% of its students come from the top 2% of French households in terms of income.

Given the high correlation between intelligence and income, and between the intellectual attainments of parents and children, why should that statistic shock anybody? And how will punishing successful parents, by raising barriers to their children’s pursuit of education, help France emerge from its economic and social doldrums?

“Our sense of Republican equality has terrible results, which is that, year after year, inequality in France is progressing,” says Sciences Po Chancellor Richard Descoings. . . .

The newest batch of 57 ZEP students admitted to Sciences Po this year is the largest group yet. Despite worries voiced by some non-ZEP students that the influx of affirmative-action applicants will devalue the school’s diploma, proponents like Mr. Descoings have no plans to slow down recruitment. . . .

The first group of Sciences Po ZEP students will graduate and enter the job market in May. “You can’t judge the [program’s] success on” the first class, Mr. Descoings warns. “It will take years to evaluate the quality of recruits and the kinds of careers they’ll have.”

Based on worldwide experience (vide Thomas Sowell’s Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study), it’s easy to foresee “the kinds of careers they’ll have”: Either les bébés de la discrimination positive will be shepherded into remunerative positions above their level of competence, or they will fail in the job market. Either outcome will encourage further alienation of unassimilated Moslems.

A discouraging footnote is M. Sarkozy’s role in this folly. Cis-Atlantic conservatives tend to view him as a preferable alternative to the odious duo of Chirac and de Villepin. It would be more realistic to recognize that the current generation of French political leaders is intellectually corrupt tout court and that we can expect little good to come out of Paris until these withered branches fall from the tree or are lopped away.

Comments

[Jim Veal]

Affirmitively speaking, the hordes of the starving there might say (in native tongues), "It ain't working"

[Rajan R]

To be fair to the French, affirmitive action was neither first thought of in America nor the first implemented there - though the term was indeed invented by the Americans. India, for example, had a wide-ranging affirmative action program, though caste, not race, based.

In Malaysia, for another example, had race-based affirmative action since its constitution was adopted in 1948 - though university affirmative action only began in the 70's.