The United Nations has established March 21 as the International Day for the Elimination of
racial discrimination.
Press release from the Dijon and Côte-d’Or MRAP of March 19, 2021:
This date, which recalls the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, during a demonstration against apartheid, was established by the UN as the international day for the elimination of racial discrimination.
But even after the unanimous vote by the French Parliament, on July 1, 1972, of a law establishing racism as an offense, the fight against these poisons, which are racism in all its forms and xenophobia, is still relevant today.
France, like Europe, is riddled with contradictions between commitments to human rights and nostalgia for domination or nationalism, and refugees from wars or crises are the first victims, their asylum requests most often being rejected.
The far-right parties, in their aims of totalitarian power, seek to trivialize their racist theories by combining legitimate fears (terrorism) and xenophobic prejudices, activating new racisms: geographical origins, religion, skin color … (against the Roma, Muslims, Blacks, Asians, etc …) which add to the ever-present anti-Semitism.
The fight against racist discrimination and violence therefore calls for permanent citizen vigilance. In France, if we can see some progress at the level of the State (belated memorial recognition!), Much remains to be done against all these forms of racism which persist and worsen. Recent cases bear witness to this.
Racism thrives on prejudices, xenophobia, resentments and inequalities, it is therefore on these different factors that we must act: if education and culture can have an impact in reducing fantasies (to condition, however, of sufficient means) invoking the republican principles to apply coercive or discriminatory injunctions is likely to discredit these principles, for lack of realization, even though the inequalities worsen and widen between the citizens unjust but persistent separations which hamper the development of people assigned to a fixed identity as much as that of a society impoverished by the reduction of talents.
It is this unequal and discriminating treatment that must be rolled back if we want a society where democracy can ensure and guarantee truly accessible rights for all.
This is why in this March 21, the MRAP calls to fight every day of the year against all the folds, all the intolerances, all the discriminations, for a true equality of rights, equality beneficial to all and all.
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