Bibliography (R) like…Romy-Masliah, from Radio Canada to Rushdie

Cosmo

October 3, 2020

273 minutes

Links to my bibliography from A to Z:

A B C D E F G H I J K L

M N O P Q R (this page) S T U V W/X/Y/Z

Last update: October 3d, 2020 Reminder: Part A is the full list while Part B contains my notes and quotations.

PART A-List

Radzivill, Catherine. 1921. ‘Testimony against the Protocole des Sages de Sion’, American Hebrew, 15.
Ramadan, Tariq. “Ramadan, T. (2009). Keynote address. Interdependence Day: Art, Religion, and the City in the Developing World of Interdependence, Istanbul.”
———. 2012. ‘Waiting for an Arab Spring of Ideas’, International Herald Tribune, October 1st, 2012.
Ramonet, Ignacio. 1996. ‘Québec et Mondialisation’, Le Monde Diplomatique: 32.
———. 1997. ‘L’empire américain’, Le Monde Diplomatique: 1.
———. 1999. ‘La cause des femmes’, Manière de voir (Le Monde Diplomatique), FEMMES, LE MAUVAIS GENRE ?
———. 1999. ‘L’An 2000’, Le Monde Diplomatique.
Raspberry, William. 1997. ‘Innovating Isn’t Educating’, The Washington Post, Jan. 31, 1997.
Ravid, Barak, Saeb Erekat, and Tzipi Livni. 2014. “‘The diplomatic angle: How can we get closer to peace?’.” In Israel Conference on Peace,. David Intercontinental, Tel Aviv.
Rawick, George P. (ed.)^(eds.). 1977. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography (Greenwood Press: Westport, CT).
Rawls, John 1971. A theory of justice (Oxford University Press: London).
Raynaud, Philippe. 1995. ‘Le spectre du multiculturalisme américain: l’anticipation américaine’, Esprit: 88-89.
Raz, Joseph. 1994. ‘Multiculturalism: a liberal perspective’, Dissent: 67-79.
Raz, Mossi 2016. “Le Meretz et le conflit proche-oriental.” In Israel entre chaos régional et défis intérieurs. Théâtre Adyar.
Raz, Mossi and Finkel, Lior. 2014. “address.” In ‘NGO Meeting. Meretz, Tel Aviv: in JCall EU.
Reclus, Elisée. 1885. Les Primitifs. Etudes d’ethnologie comparée (Paris).
———. 1894. Le Primitif d’Australie ou les Non-Non et les Oui-Oui. Etude d’ethnologie comparée (E. Dentu: Paris).
———. 2010. L’Aborigène se meurt (Librairie La Brêche: Paris).
Redonnet, Jean-Claude. 1994. L’Australie (Presses Universitaires de France: Paris).
Reese, Renford. 1997. ‘Ebonics can provide a lift to students’, Daily Bulletin, March 9, 1997.
Reese, Renfortd. 1998. “From the Fringe: the Hip Hop Culture and Ethnic Relations.” In Far West and Popular Culture Conference.
———. 1999. ‘The socio-political context of the integration of sport in America’, Journal of African American Men, 4.
Reese, Renford. 2000. “Ebonics: some illustrations.” In. Pomona, Cal.
———. 2005. “Noble principle, Ignoble practices: Race and the US Criminal Justice System.” In 37th International Institute of Sociology Conference: Ethnic Minorities and the Criminal Justice System, edited by Renford Reese. Stockholm, Norra Latin, room 459: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, US.
———. 2010. Hong Kong Nights (Atlanta: Darby Printing).
———. 2010. ‘Obama’s Masterful Chess Game ‘, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/San Bernardino County Sun section Opinion, pp. A15.
———. 2010. ‘Politics of Hate Undermine Our Democracy’, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/San Bernardino Sun, July 23.
———. 2011. ‘The Deficit, Taxes, and Politic ‘, The San Bernardino Sun, August 18.
———. 2011. ‘Obama and The Republican Identity Crisis’, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin May 27.
———. 2012. ‘ GOP Extremism Killed Romney’s Chances’, Los Angeles Daily News.
———. 2012. ‘How the London Olympics will help Obama get Re-elected’, Inland Valley Bulletin/San Bernardino Sun, April 2012.
———. 2012. ‘Les manifestations linguistiques de l’oppression: l’expérience des Afro-Américains.’ in Geneviève Koubi and Daphné Romy-Masliah (eds.), S’entendre sur la langue (Droit et Cultures).
———. 2012. ‘What if Obama had Romney’s Profile?’, San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Bulletin, September 18.
———. 2012 ‘King Would Be Disappointed in U.S. ‘, San Bernardino Sun January 13, section Opinion, , pp. A15.
———. 2020. “Chaos and Ubris.” In, edited by Daphné Romy-Masliah.
Regents, of the University of California v. Bakke. ,. “Regents of the State of California v. Bakke.” In Oyez.
Reich, Tova. 2008. My Holocaust (HarperCollins: New York:).
Reid, Mark A. 1993. Redefining Black Film (University of California: Berkeley).
Reitz, Jeffrey , and Raymond Breton. 1994. The illusion of difference: realities of ethnicity in Canada and the United States ( C.D. Howe Institute: Ottawa).
release. 2000. “Emigrés Go Home.” In Trend Newsletter, 3.
———. 2000. “Globe-Hopping Workers.” In Trend Newsletter, 8.
Remaury, Bruno. 2019. Le Monde Horizontal (Corti ).
Renan, Ernest. 1878. “langue et nation.”
Renault, Emmanuel. 2004. ‘L’enjeu politique de l’identité.’ in, L’identité (Editions La Decouverte: Paris).
Renaut, Alain. 1999. Libéralisme politique et pluralisme culturel (Pleins Feux: Paris).
Reporter. 1982. ‘Judge rejects suit for translation’, New York Times, 24 oct., pp. 49.
———. 1986. ‘Prop. 63 Deserves Approval’, San Francisco Examiner, 26 octobre.
———. 1988. ‘Vote No on Bigotry’, Tempe Daily News Tribune, October 22.
———. 1989. “Say it In English.” In Newsweek, 22.
———. 1995. “One Nation, One Language” “Would making English the nation’s official language unite the country or divide it”.” In US News and World Report, 38-48.
Research, Bureau of Immigration and Population. 1990. “Australian Immigration: A Survey of the Issues.” In. Canberra: Bureau of Immigration and Population Research.
Resnick, P. 1994. Thinking English Canada (Stodart: Toronto).
Resnick, Philip. 1994. ‘Toward a Multinational Federalism: Asymmetrical and Confederal Alternatives.’ in F.L. Seidle (ed.), A la Recherche d’un nouveau Contrat politique pour le Canada: Options asymétriques et options confédérales (Institute for Research on Public Policy: Québec).
Rhines, Jesse Algeron. 1996. Black Film/White Money (Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick).
Ribó, Rafael. 2013. “Catalan Ombudsman.” In International Conference on Language Rights: Sharing best practice,. Dublin Hilton.
Rich, Roland. 1988. ‘The Right to Development: A Right of Peoples.’ in James Crawford (ed.), The Rights of Peoples (Clarendon Press: Oxford).
Rickard, J. 1988. Australia, A Cultural History (Longman: London/New York).
Rickford, John R. 1998. ‘The Creole Origins of African-American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence.’ in Slikoko S. Mufwene, John R. Rickford, Guy Bailey and Baugh John (eds.), African-American English: Structure, History and Use (Rootledge: London).
———. 1998. ‘The Ebonics controversy in my backyard: A sociolinguist’s experiences and reflections’, Language in Society.
Rickford, John R., and John McWhorter. 1997. ‘Language Contact and Language Generation: Pidgins and Creoles.’ in Florian Coulmas (ed.), The Handbook of Sociolinguistics (Blackwell: Oxford).
Rickford, John R., and A. Rickford. 1995. ‘Dialect Readers Revisited’, Linguistics in Education: 107-28.
Rinawie-Zoabi, Ghaida 2013. “The new Political Palestinian Israeli leadership.” In JCall trip to Israel and Palestinian Territories, edited by David Chemla. Tel Aviv: JCall.
Rishika. 2009. “Youth summit of IDDay.” In Art, Religion, and the City in the Developing World of Interdependence. Istanbul.
Ritchie, Harry 2013. English for the Natives: Discover the Grammar You Don’t Know You Know (John Murray: London).
———. 2013. ‘It’s time to challenge the notion that there is only one way to speak English: Why do we persist in thinking that standard English is right, when it is spoken by only 15% of the British population? Linguistics-loving Harry Ritchie blames
Noam Chomsky’, The Guardian, December 31st, 2013.
Rivlin, Ruben. 2013. “Contribution of the Likoud MP.” In JCall trip to Israel and Palestinian Territories, edited by David Chemla. Tel Aviv: JCall.
Robert, Arnaud. 2002. ‘Des Griots, des Marabouts et une histoire millénaire’, Un seul Monde (Le magazine de la DDC sur le développement et la coopération: 16.
Robespierre (de), Claire. 1996. ‘La renaissance du Mythe d’ANZAC dans l’Australie Contemporaine’, Sorbonne.
Robillard (de), Didier, and Michel Beniamino (ed.)^(eds.). 1993. Le Français dans l’Espace Francophone: Description linguistique et sociolinguistique de la francophonie. (Honoré Champion: Paris).
Rodby, Judith. 1992. ‘A Polyphony of Voices: The Dialectics of Linguistic Diversity and Unity in the Tewntieth-Century United States.’ in T.W. Machan and Scott Ch.T. (eds.), English in its Social Contexts: Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press: Oxford).
Rollin, Roger (ed.)^(eds.). 1989. The Americanization of the Global Village: Essays in Comparative popular Culture (Bowling Green State University Popular Press: Bowling Green).
——— (ed.)^(eds.). 1989. The Americanization of the Global Village: Essays in Comparative popular Culture (Bowling Green State University Popular Press: Bowling Green).
Romaine, Suzanne. 1991. Language in Australia (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge).
———. 1994. Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press: Oxford).
Romy, Daphné, and Larissa Aronin (ed.)^(eds.). 2007. L’anglais et les cultures: carrefour ou frontière? (L’Harmattan: Paris).
Romy-Masliah, Daphné. 1986. “Majorités et Minorités Officielles: Politique Linguistique au Canada.” In Colloque international de l’Association Française d’Etudes Canadiennes (A.F.E.C.), edited by Jean-Claude Lacroix. Bordeaux: Revue Interdisciplinaire des Etudes Canadiennes en France.
———. 1994. ‘Plurilinguisme et Multiculturalisme en Europe: La Belgique, l’Espagne et la France (Etude comparative)’, Mémoire de maitrise, Université de Genève.
———. 1995. ‘La Mobilité des Enseignants’, Le Nouveau Quotidien, 15 juin 1995, pp. 32.
———. 1998. ‘L’Anglais et les Cultures: Analyse Sociolinguistique des Situations Plurilingues et Multiculturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis’, Doctorat, Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV).
———. 1998. “Plurilinguisme et multiculturalisme: les points de vue australiens et canadiens à travers ceux de leurs Premiers Ministres.” In Colloque international de l’Association Française d’Etudes Canadiennes (A.F.E.C.), edited by Patrice Brasseur. Avignon: Revue Interdisciplinaire des Etudes Canadiennes en France.
———. 1998. ‘Summary of Ph.D. Dissertation’, Crossings, 3.
———. 1999. “Ebonics: a language, a sub-cultural dialect or a culture.” In AILA99 Conference. Tokyo.
Romy-Masliah, Daphne. 1999. “From socialisation to communication times: a client’s side of the story.” In ICCA Workshop. Vancouver.
Romy-Masliah, Daphné. 1999. “Multiculturalism and the Media: some diverging perspectives.” In ISS International Conference, 1999.
———. 1999. “Multiculturalism in Melbourne.” In Conférence sur L’Asie Pacifique, edited by Maryvonne Nedejkowics. Le Havre.
———. 1999. ‘Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Australia: the case of Melbourne.’ in Kjell Herberts and Joseph G. Turi (eds.), Multilingual Cities and Language Policies (Abo Akademi University, Social Science Research Unit: Vaasa).
———. 1999. ‘Politiques linguistiques et Culturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis: entre législation et jurisprudence.’ in Hervé Guillorel and Geneviève Kouby (eds.), Langues et Droit: Langues du droit, droit des langues (Bruylant: Bruxelles).
———. 2000. L’Anglais et les Cultures: Analyse Sociolinguistique des Situations Plurilingues et Multiculturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis (Presses Universitaires du Septentrion: Lille).
———. 2002. ‘The Ebonics Controversy: an unsolved dilemma and a challenge for multicultural america.’ in (Libreria-Editorial-Ateneo Puertorriqueno: San Juan, Puerto Rico).
———. 2002. ‘Les terminologies du multiculturalisme’, Droit et Culture: 73-84.
———. 2004. “English and Cultures: Crossroad or frontier?” In Congrès de l’Institut International de Sociologie. Stockholm.
———. 2005. “English and Cultures: Crossroad or frontier?” In L3 Conference, edited by Brohy Claudine. Fribourg and Neuchâtel.
———. 2006. “Cosmopolitique: the blog.” In Cosmopolitique.
——— (ed.)^(eds.). 2007. L’Anglais et les Cultures: carrefour ou frontière? (L’Harmattan: Paris).
———. 2010. “Teaching English in Geneva and Sidi Bel Abbès, A baroque Assessment ” In Language, Law and the Multilingual State” 12th International Conference of the International Academy of Linguistic Law. Bloemfontein.
———. 2011. “Languages in the Maghreb and in the Arab World in the light of the 2011 Spring Revolution ” In Langues en contact: le français à travers le monde. Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg.
———. 2011, “Contemporary Minorities and Indigenous Languages issues : how do they differ and /or relate?’.” In World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education. Cusco, Peru,.
———. 2012. “Tamahaq, a Vulnerable Indigenous Language in the City.” In Languages in the City. Berlin.
Romy-Masliah, Daphné , and Samira Abid-Houcine. 2010. “Indigenous Languages: a revival or a survival?” In Language, Law and the Multilingual State: 12th International Conference of the International Academy of Linguistic Law. Bloemfontein.
Romy-Masliah, Daphné, and Teresa Ballester. 2014. “Materialized cultures: considerations on cultural minorities and indigenous populations around the world’s educational institutions.” In Sociolinguistics Symposium 20. Jyväskyl!a, Finland,.
Romy-Masliah, Daphné, and Michael Hornsby (ed.)^(eds.). 2016. Les langues autochtones dans la cité ( L’Harmattan: Paris).
Romy-Masliah, Daphné, and Geneviève Koubi. 2012. ‘Présentation du numéro.’ in Droit et Cultures (ed.), S’entendre sur la langue (L’Harmattan).
——— (ed.)^(eds.). 2012. S’entendre sur la langue (L’Harmattan).
Romy-Masliah, Daphné, and Charles Ricq. 1994. Manuel de Coopération Transfrontalière à l’Usage des Collectivités Locales et Régionales en Europe (Conseil de l’Europe: Strasbourg).
Romy-Masliah, Daphné L. 1998. “Médias Australiens et Multiculturalisme: l’ABC de la politique de la diversité culturelle Australienne.” In 14th World Congress of Sociology, edited by Yves Laberge, 327. Montreal: International Sociological Association.
———. 1999. “The Greek Diaspora of Montreal and Melbourne: An exploration into new immigration patterns.” In Fifth Conference of the EASA, edited by Xavier Pons. Toulouse: L’Harmattan.
———. 1999. “Multiculturalisme Contemporain: les diaspora grecques en Australie.” In Keynote Speech, edited by Lykion Ton Hellinidon. Geneva.
———. 1999. ‘Politiques linguistiques et culturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis.’ in Hervé Guillorel Geneviève Koubi (ed.), Langues et Droits (Bruylant: Bruxelles).
———. 2000. ‘Politiques linguistiques et culturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis.’ in Hervé Guillorel Geneviève Koubi (ed.), Langues et Droits (Bruylant: Bruxelles).
Roosevelt, Theodore. 1917. ‘The Chidren of the Crucible: One Flag, One Language’, Wartime appeal.
Rosane, Catherine. 2020. “Leonardo da Vinci, la Vierge, l’Enfant Jésus et Ste Anne.” In.
Rosen, Barbara. 1994. ‘Is English Really a Family of Languages?’, International Herald Tribune, 15 octobre.
Roseneau, James. 1997. Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier, Exploring Governance in a Troubled World (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge).
Rosove, John. 2012. “Plenary Session on the Future of Pro-Israel: Address.” In JStreet Conference. Washington D.C.
Rothstein, R. 1993. ‘The Myth of Public School Failure’, The American Prospect, 13.
Rouart, Jean-Marie. 1999. ‘Décolonisation’, Le Figaro Littéraire, 12 aout, pp. 15.
Rougé, R. (ed.)^(eds.). 1986. Les Immigrations européennes aux Etats-Unis, 1880-1910 (Presses Universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne: Paris).
Rougier, Bernard 2016. “Israel entre chaos régional et défis intérieurs’.” In Israel entre chaos régional et défis intérieurs. Théatre Adyar, Paris.
Rouland, Norbert. 1996. ‘Conclusion générale.’ in Norbert Rouland (ed.), Droits des Minorités et des Peuples Autochtones (Presses Universitaires de France: Paris).
Rouland, Norbert (ed.)^(eds.). 1996. Droit des Minorités et des Peuples Autochtones ( Presses Universitaires de France: Paris).
Rouland, Norbert. 1996. ‘Troisième partie: le Droit des Peuples Autochtones.’ in Norbert Rouland (ed.), Droits des Minorités et des Peuples Autochtones (Presses Universitaires de France: Paris).
Roussel, Eric. 2007. Pierre Mendès France (Gallimard).
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Rowley, Chris, and Mark Lewis. 1997. ‘Introduction: Greater China at the Crossroads: Convergence, Culture and Competitiveness’, Asia Pacific Business Review.
Rubin, J., Jernudd B.H., Das Gupta J., Fishman J.A., and Ch.A Ferguson (ed.)^(eds.). 1977. Language Planning Processes (Mouton: The Hague).
Ruf, Isabelle. 2000. ‘Allié des nationalismes, le “génie des langues” joue un rôle ambigu: les langues organisent chacune le monde à leur manière propre et peuvent tout dire en dépit des discours nationalistes qui les récupèrent’, LeTemps, Samedi 5 août 2000, pp. 7.
Ruiz, R. 1994. ‘Language policy and planning in the US.’ in Grabe W. et al. (ed.), Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (Cambridge University Press: New York).
Rupesinghe, Kumar, and Valery A. Tishkov (ed.)^(eds.). 1997. Ethnicity and power in the Contemporary world (United Nations University Press: Tokyo-New York-Paris).
Rushdie, Salman. 1982. “‘Imaginary Homelands.” In London Review of Books, 18-19. London.
———. 1993. Patries imaginaires (Bourgois: Paris).
Ruttenberg, Roee. ” A reminder to Israel from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr” In +972 Magazine.

PART B- Details

Radzivill, Catherine. 1921. Testimony against the Protocole des Sages de Sion. American Hebrew 15 (21 février).

La princesse fut la première à démentir l ‘authenticité de l’ouvrage et reconnaissait formellement les passages que lui avait lu leur véritable auteur, Mathieu Golovinski. Personne ne la crut.

Ramadan, T. (2009). Keynote address. Interdependence Day: Art, Religion, and the City in the Developing World of Interdependence, Istanbul.

We are facing a great deal of confusion, whether about today’s topics or Turkey.
Let’s face the confusion and add a methodology.
I’m dealing with Muslim intellectuals, grassroot level organisations, women….It getting confusion.
Concepts are complex, whether Western (rationality, democracy) or Moslem, so are the perception.
Power struggle, lack of democracy (meaning liberal), economy…
Victim mentality and being victims. Stop being victims!!! But sometimes there are real victims. Let’s not lecture or patronize. Consistency is lacking when it comes to Turkey. What are our goals instead of starting with problems.
It’s high time for Europeans to deal with religions, women, economy and development. Inductive critical approach is quite important to try to find in the different fields the confidence. WHO AND HOW they can do it! This is a philosophical approach. Lack of humility, lack of understanding, lack of understanding the dynamic of society.
Democracy vs Islam is laughable. Last summer, I wrote an article on the Guardian about Turkey being part of Europe and received the responses the most violent…This discussion is quite revealing about the European confusion.
Rule of law, human rights…we are religionizing the problems! We speak about culture because we are afraid to talk about politics.
When it comes to Turkey, let’s say something about what’s happening in the West. The reluctance to integrate Turkey is a reluctance to integrate Islam in Europe….this is something we can find at all levels of our society. You target what’s visible. While we need the Turkish debate as European, you don’t realize that many Europeans are muslim, and women!
The integration of Turkey is essential to address the issue of Islam. I turn to the Turkish and Muslim to beg them for a critical approach. We are not acting against ourselves, we are acting from within our own values. There is no contradiction between Islam and Democracy.

— (2012), ‘Waiting for an Arab Spring of Ideas’, International Herald Tribune, October 1st, 2012.

(paper spotted by Marko Weinberger, President of JCall Switzerland)
During a recent visit of the United States, I was asked by intellectuals and journalists: were we misled, during the Arab awakening, into thinking that Muslims could actually embrace democratic ideals?
The short answer is no. Participants in the recent violent demonstrations over and Islamophobic video were a tiny minority. Their violence was unacceptable. They do not represent the millions of Muslims who have taken to the streets since 2010 in a disciplined, nonviolent manner to bring down dictatorships.
(…)Arabs and Muslims in general, have a longer memory and a broader view. Their mistrust is fueled by America’s decades-long support for dictators who accommodated its economic and security interests; by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, by the humiliating treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantànamo Bay; and by America’s seemingly permanent and unconditional support for Israel.
The United States and its European allies would be well advised to examine why Muslims are seething. Withdrawing from Afghanistan, respecting U.N. resolutions and treaty obligations with regard to Palestine, calling back the killer drones and winding up the “war on terror” would be excellent places to start.
However, the time has come to stop blaming the West for colonialism and imperialism of the past. Muslim-majority societies must jettison their historic posture as victims and accept that they are empowered actors, as millions of Arabs demonstrated last year by coming out into the streets and changing the course of history.
The timeworn dichotomy of “Islam versus the West” is giving way to an era of multipolar relations. The world’s economic center of gravity is shifting eastward.(…)
Some Muslims are too quick to rejoice at the decline of American power. They seem unaware that what might replace it could well lead to a regression in social and human rights and to new forms of international dependency.
The Arab peoples do not want to disregard the cultural and religious traditions that have long defined and nurtured them. As they pursue values like freedom, justice, equality, autonomy and pluralism, and the new models of democracy and of international relations, they need to draw on Islamic traditions Islam can be a fertile ground for political creativity (…).
The arab world and Muslim-majority societies need a throughgoing intellectual revolution from within that will open the door to economic change; to spiritual, religious, cultural and artistic liberation; and to the empowerment of women. The task is not an easy one.
A struggle for political and religious authority is taking place in these societies. There are deep divisions among Sunnis -traditionalists, secularists, reformers, Sufi mystics- and also between Sunnis and Shiites. At the moment, Arab thought has been hindered by a barren ideological construct that pits secularists against Islamists, making it impossible for either to indulge in in-depth reflection about the intellectual limitations that afflict both of them.
(…)
We don’t need more laws. We need courageous scholars and intellectual who are willing to discuss topics their fellow Muslims don’t want to hear: their failings, their tendency to play the victim, the need to take responsibility for their actions. Only that sort of leadership will halt the tide of religious populism and emotionally driven blindness of the masses.
(…)
There can be no true democracy in the Middle Est without a profound restructuring of economic priorities, which in turn can come about only by combating corruption, limiting th prerogatives of the military, and above all, reconsidering economic relations with other countries and the gross inequalities of wealth and income within Muslim countries. The emergence of a dynamic civil society is a precondition of success. Concern for free and critical thought must take the form of educational policies to build schools and universities, revise outdated curriculums and enable women to study, work and become financially independent.
The Arab world has shaken itself out of its lethargy. Buth the uprisings do not yet amount to a revolution. The Arab world must confront its historical demons and tackle its infirmities and its contradictions: when it turns to the tarsk, the awakening will truly have begun.

Ramonet, Ignacio. 1996. Québec et Mondialisation. Le Monde Diplomatique (505):32.

Le Québec est un cas d’école que certaines régions de l’Union européenne observent avec le plus grand intérêt, parce que, dans un cadre démocratique, il pose, depuis plusieurs décennies, la question de sa souveraineté, de son indépendance, bref, de sa séparation du Canada. Et qu’il le fait désormais dans un contexte géopolitique modifié par l’Accord de libre-échange nord-américain (ALENA) liant le Canada, les Etats-Unis et le Mexique.
Or tout projet d’intégration suppose l’adoption de règles communes qui diminuent la souveraineté des Etats. Parce que les centres de décision s’éloignent, les Etats -naguère ciments de l’unité- voient leur cohésion nationale se desserrer, se distendre, et parfois se fragmenter. Surtout si certains de ces fragments possèdent des traits culturels, (la langue surtout) distincts. C’est comme si la force de la fusion provoquait de multiples fissions.
De surcroît, l’aspiration québécoise coïncide avec le phénomène majeur de la mondialisation. Celle-ci, en encourageant la déréglementation, contraint également les Etats à abandonner des pans entiers de leur souveraineté, dépouille les gouvernements d’importantes prérogatives, impose partout, sans tenir compte des singularités locales, d’identiques comportements économiques. Dans un tel contexte, que devient la question nationale?
Six mois après le référendum du 30 octobre 1995 et la défaite d’extrême justesse des partisans de l’indépendance du Québec (49,4% des voix), cette interrogation reste d’actualité. Certes M. Lucien Bouchard, premier ministre depuis le 29 janvier dernier, vient de rappeler que la souveraineté demeure l’objectif du Parti québécois (au pouvoir depuis 1994) mais que la loi lui interdit d’organiser un second référendum sur le même sujet pendant ce mandat. Il faudra donc attendre pulieurs années pour que, si le Parti québécois gage les élections législatives, les citoyens se prononcent à noveau. Dès à présent, les sondages indiquent que la majorité (55%) est favorable à l’indépendance, et que celle-ci est “inexplicable pour 75% d’entre eux”.
A Ottawa, le premier ministre du canada, M. Jean Chrétien, semble décidé à réviser le fédéralisme et à reconnaître enfin le caractère distinc ud Québec. Mais l’autres fédéralistes se comportent en “mauvais gagnants” et au nom du principe “si le Canada est divisible, le Québec l’est aussi” n’hésitent pas évoquer une partition de la Belle Province.
Afin de préserver le droit des anglophones à demeurer liés au Canada, ils proposent d’accorder l’indépendance aux seules circonscriptions où le “oui” l’aura emporté.
Ils encouragent également les populations autochtones (Inuits et Indo-Américains) qui jouissent d’une large autonomie , contrôlent d’immenses territoires et demeurent
“sous la protection” du gouvernement fédéral, à réclamer à leur tour l’indépendance à l’égard du Québec afin de réduire celui-ci à une petite “région en forme de saucisse consistant surtout dans des fermes entre l’est de Montréal jusqu’à la ville de Québec”.
De telles idées sont irresponsables et ont provoqué, partout où elles ont été appliquées, de l’Irlande du Nord au Caucase, des guerres interminables.
On le voit, le référendum du 30 octobre dernier n’a rien réglé, il a tout au plus aggravé la situaion économique avec le départ de nombreuses entreprises hostiles au projet souverainiste.
Pour faire face, M. Lucien B ouchard a organisé du 18 au 20 mars, une conférence sur le devenir économique et social du Québec

___1997. L’empire américain. Le Monde Diplomatique (515):1.

POUR POINT 2.2. EN EXERGUE: Il est des périodes dans l’histoire du monde où l’hégémonie d’un Etat, en raison de la défaite ou de la décomposition de ses principaux rivaux, s’exerce soudain sans partage sur toute la planète(…)l’acteur politique qui a dominié le XXème siècle, les Etats-Unis d’Amérique. A l’échelle internationale, les Etats-Unis se retrouvent donc placés dans une situation de suprématie qu’aucune puissance n’a connue depuis plus d’un siècle.

POINT 1.1.1.2: Consciente de ses atouts retrouvés, dopée par une économie flamboyante, l’Amérique reprend ses prétentions à régenter le monde.
P.163: C’est que la conquête des parts de marché reste au premier rang despriorités antionales de cette superpuissance. (…) Et les meilleures armes idéologique dont dispose cette “diplomatie de négoce” pour promouvoir les exportations sont les programmes audiovisuels (cinéma et télévision). Dans l’Europe des Quinze, de 1985 à 1994, la part de marché des films américians est passée de 56 à 76%. Et sur les 50 chaines européennes de télévision à diffusion nationale “en clair”, les films américains représentaient, en 1993, 53% de la programmation. En dix ans, le bilan commercial de l’audio-visuel européen face aux Etats-Unis s’est terriblement dégradé: les pertes, 0,5 milliard de dollars en 1985, s’élevaient, en 1995, à 4 milliards de dollars, ce qui a entraîné la disparition de quelques 250 000 emplois…Même suprématie dans les domaines aéronautiques, informatiques, des réseaux télématiques (internet), du pétrole etc…sans parler du colossal potentiel des fonds de pension américains , qui consittuent la principale force de frappe des marchés financiers. Nulle autre pussance, à l’heure actuelle, ne peut rivaliser avec l’Amérique ou s’opposer à ses offiensives économique.
Est-ce une raison pour imposer au monde sa loi? Quand émergent déjà, à l’horizon géopolitique, les mastodontes du futur – Chine, Inde, Union européenne-

___1999. La cause des femmes. Manière de voir (Le Monde Diplomatique) FEMMES, LE MAUVAIS GENRE ? (44 , mars-avril 1999).

1. DU CORPS À L’IDENTITÉ

Le langage est le premier véhicule du pouvoir. C’est pourquoi la féminisation des noms est un objectif important, en dépit des apparences. Rendre visible le monde des femmes, ce devrait être un souci collectif aujourd’hui. De par les avancées effectuées, on croit trop souvent qu’il n’y a « plus de problème », or les faits révèlent le contraire. Le corps féminin reste considéré
comme une marchandise, qui se négocie sans états d’âme. Quant à la violence masculine, elle est l’une des principales causes de décès des femmes à travers le monde, en cette fin de XXe siècle. C’est pourtant un sujet tabou, comme le demeure la
question des clients de la prostitution. D’autres domaines autrefois interdits, tels que les mutilations sexuelles faites aux femmes, sont à présent explorés. On progresse d’un côté, alors que de l’autre, sont remis en question des acquis trop vite considérés comme définitifs. Le cas de la pilule abortive en est un bon exemple.

Le sexisme à fleur de mots
Agnès Callamard

Le corps humain mis sur le marché
Marie-Victoire Louis

Ces filières de l’Est
Yves Géry

La prostitution, un droit de l’homme ?
Florence Montreynaud

De la violence sous toutes ses formes
Sylvie Jean

Le Burkina Faso fait reculer l’excision
Joëlle Stolz

Tirs croisés contre la pilule abortive
Michèle Aulagnon

Pour la « parité domestique »
Alain Bihr et Roland Pfefferkorn

___1999. L’An 2000. Le Monde Diplomatique (Decembre 99).

LE MONDE DIPLOMATIQUE – DÉCEMBRE 1999 – Page 1
L’an 2000

Par IGNACIO RAMONET

PARVENUS au seuil de l’an 2000, date mythique longtemps synonyme de futur et qui sera désormais notre
présent, comment ne pas s’interroger sur l’état actuel du monde ?

Phénomène central : tous les Etats sont entraînés dans la dynamique de la mondialisation. Il s’agit d’une seconde révolution capitaliste. La mondialisation touche les moindres recoins de la planète, ignorant aussi bien l’indépendance des peuples que la diversité des régimes politiques.

La Terre connaît ainsi une nouvelle ère de conquête, comme lors des colonisations. Mais, alors que les acteurs principaux des précédentes expansions conquérantes étaient les Etats, cette fois ce sont des entreprises et des conglomérats, des groupes industriels et financiers privés qui entendent dominer le monde. Jamais les maîtres de la Terre n’ont été aussi peu nombreux ni aussi puissants. Ces groupes sont situés dans la Triade Etats-Unis- Europe – Japon mais la moitié d’entre eux sont basés aux Etats-Unis. C’est un phénomène fondamentalement américain.

Cette concentration du capital et du pouvoir s’est formidablement accélérée au cours des vingt dernières années, sous l’effet des révolutions des technologies de l’information. Un nouveau bond en avant sera effectué à partir de ce début de millénaire, avec les nouvelles techniques génétiques de manipulation de la vie. La privatisation du génome humain et le brevetage généralisé du vivant ouvrent de nouvelles perspectives d’expansion au capitalisme. Une grande privatisation de tout ce qui touche à la vie et à la nature se prépare, favorisant l’apparition d’un pouvoir probablement plus absolu que tout ce qu’on a pu connaître dans l’histoire.

La mondialisation ne vise pas tant à conquérir des pays qu’à conquérir des marchés. La préoccupation de ce pouvoir moderne n’est pas la conquête de territoires, comme lors des grandes invasions ou des périodes coloniales, mais la prise de possession des richesses.

Cette conquête s’accompagne de destructions impressionnantes. Des industries entières sont brutalement sinistrées, dans toutes les régions. Avec les souffrances sociales qui en résultent : chômage massif, sous-emploi, précarité, exclusion. 50 millions de chômeurs en Europe, 1 milliard de chômeurs et de sous-employés dans le monde… Surexploitation des hommes, des femmes et – plus scandaleux encore –
des enfants : 300 millions d’entre eux le sont, dans des conditions d’une grande brutalité.

La mondialisation, c’est aussi le pillage planétaire. Les grands groupes saccagent l’environnement avec des moyens démesurés ; ils tirent profit des richesses de la nature qui sont le bien commun de l’humanité ; et le font sans scrupule et sans frein. Cela s’accompagne également d’une criminalité financière liée aux milieux
d’affaires et aux grandes banques qui recyclent des sommes dépassant les 1 000 milliards de dollars par an, c’est-à-dire davantage que le produit national brut d’un tiers de l’humanité.

La marchandisation généralisée des mots et des choses, des corps et des esprits, de la nature et de la culture, provoque une aggravation des inégalités. Alors que la production mondiale de produits alimentaires de base représente plus de 110 % des besoins, 30 millions de personnes continuent de mourir de faim chaque année, et plus de 800 millions sont sous-alimentées. En 1960, les 20 % de la population du monde
les plus riches disposaient d’un revenu 30 fois plus élevé que celui des 20 % les plus pauvres. Aujourd’hui, le revenu des riches est 82 fois plus élevé ! Sur les 6 milliards d’habitants de la planète, à peine 500 millions vivent dans l’aisance, tandis que 5,5 milliards demeurent dans le besoin. Le monde marche sur la tête.

LES structures étatiques de même que les structures sociales traditionnelles sont balayées de façon désastreuse. Un peu partout, dans les pays du Sud, l’Etat s’effondre. Des zones de non-droit, des entités chaotiques ingouvernables se développent, échappent à toute légalité, replongent dans un état de barbarie où seuls des groupes de pillards sont en mesure d’imposer leur loi en rançonnant les populations. Des
dangers de nouveau type apparaissent : crime organisé, réseaux mafieux, spéculation financière, grande corruption, extension des nouvelles pandémies (sida, virus Ebola, Creutzfeldt-Jakob, etc.), pollutions de forte intensité, fanatismes religieux ou ethniques, effet de serre, désertification, prolifération nucléaire, etc.

Alors que triomphent, apparemment, la démocratie et la liberté dans une planète largement débarrassée des régimes autoritaires, les censures et les manipulations, sous des aspects divers, font un paradoxal retour en force. De nouveaux et séduisants « opiums des masses » proposent une sorte de « meilleur des mondes », distraient les citoyens et tentent de les détourner de l’action civique et revendicative. Dans ce nouvel âge de l’aliénation, à l’heure de la world culture, de la « culture globale » et des messages planétaires, les technologies de la communication jouent plus que jamais un rôle idéologique central pour museler la pensée

Tous ces changements, rapides et brutaux, déstabilisent les dirigeants politiques. Pour la plupart, ils se sentent débordés par une mondialisation qui modifie les règles du jeu et les laisse partiellement impuissants.
Car les vrais maîtres du monde ne sont pas ceux qui détiennent les apparences du pouvoir politique.

C’est pourquoi les citoyens multiplient les mobilisations contre les nouveaux pouvoirs, comme on l’a vu récemment à l’occasion du sommet de l’Organisation mondiale du commerce (OMC) à Seattle. Ils restent convaincus que, au fond, le but de la mondialisation, en ce début de millénaire, c’est la destruction du collectif, l’appropriation par le marché et le privé des sphères publique et sociale. Et sont décidés à s’y opposer.

Raspberry, William. 1997. Innovating Isn’t Educating. The Washington Post, Jan. 31, 1997.

quotation from Casey, J.W. 1998. ‘The Ebonics Controversy: Critical Perspectives on African-American Vernacular English’. The Keiai Journal of International Studies 1: 179-214.

Ravid, Barak, Erekat, Saeb, and Tzipi, Livni (2014), ‘The diplomatic angle: How can we get closer to peace?’ paper given at Israel Conference on Peace, David Intercontinental, 8 July 2014.

Ravid:I’d love to put in prison the kids who insult arabs on FB…but some ministers also are writing horrible things. People who are incenting the population here are the same as those in Gaza feeding hatred.
how many words make a headline in Haaretz and how many words are necessary to incense haters?
we need to address the two sides of the equation and go beyond let’s beat them all up.
In Gaza lies our concern. It’s our duty to provide security to all citizens of this country. All the discussions in the cabinet are really measured and matter of fact.
Outcome is very measure.

Rawick, George P., ed. 1977. The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. 10 vols. Vol. 10. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

quoted in Rickford, J. R. (1998). The Creole Origins of African-American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence. African-American English: Structure, History and Use. S. S. Mufwene, J. R. Rickford, G. Bailey and B. John. London, Routledge: 154-200.

Rawls, John (1971), A theory of justice (London: Oxford University Press).

Raynaud, Philippe. 1995. Le spectre du multiculturalisme américain: l’anticipation américaine. Esprit (Juin 1991):88-89.

Raz, Joseph (1994), ‘Multiculturalism: a liberal perspective. ‘ Dissent, (Winter ), 67-79.

Raz, Mossi and Finkel, Lior (2014), ‘NGO Meeting’, in JCall EU (ed.), (Tel-Aviv: Meretz).

Présents: JCall members David Chemla, Gérard Unger, Ilan Rozenkier, Gershon, Muriel, Giorgio, DRM, Dubby, Heritage Organization with Russian speakers, Anne, Eyal Raviv (MITIS), Gallia Golan Peace Now, steering commmittee of board of NGOs, Fred,

Lior: Peace NGO Forum 2006 by Dr. Ron Pundak, idea behind the forum was synergy between peace organisation both P and I. Creating and messaging together to make the Peace camp louder and our voice stronger. Parallel organisation (IP sides), political committee on each side, womens group, media, envorinlmnt , jerusalem groups, but also joint activities. 83 organisatons combined.

Gallia: This forum is made of people from various organisation. Everyone does what they plan to do, but to give a backing forum to empower individual groups. We are not dictating orders. One joint meeting once a year, ad hoc committees are also joint. Not easy to work together but fairly successful so far. got free from Paris Center for Peace. Much more active now. Not easy in Israel and on the left but Ron helped created an atmosphere which was extremely open.

Gershon: not all organisations can take political statements, which is why we created the policy forum. When we do such a political statement we specify in which name we speak.

Dan Jacobson: problem between the forum as such and member organisations. We take great care not to encroach on the members’ specific ativities. Informal division of labor. We take charge of external relations (foreign policy) such as regular meetings with diplomats and ask them to take a more assertive role whereas members of organisations such as Yariv Openheimer (Peace Now) focusing on the internal front.

We are boycotting products from settlements. We hope to see the process revive and hope to see a change in government sooner rather than later. Relations with Meretz are obvious since we are sitting in their premises. We are getting larger and older although on Saturday, mostly young people showed up at the demonstration.

Giorgio: antinormalisation? Gallia, it depends on groups such as women groups. Gershon: the problem is more an atmosphere of fear among palestinians. When you can give the confidence of palestinians that they will be safe, they participate. Abou Mazen has created a committee in order to speak to the I public opinion. Function headed by Madiani in order to open channels to speak directily to the Israelis. We need empowerment from the Palestinians.

Georgio: met Italy’s foreign minister Federic Mogherini who is coming to I and P second week of July. She met Italian JCall for some suggestions to meet the NGOs and we advised her to meet. The socialists have a strong hold in Europe and should meet the Forum.

Whenever an event related to our goals, we make a statement. Peace now does it on a more regular basis. As an umbrella, it’s more difficult so PN is the leading. Very delicate balance: forum is a resource. Policy committee is an instrument, informal, acting as the external face of the Forum. We speak distinctly and diversely.

Gallia asked how active JCall is regarding the EU. What are our guidelilnes regarding the boycott of products in the settlements? In France, we have contacts with the Presidents of France, media and intellectual. We exist and are well known. French opinion is hostile to settlements and we are more accepted in the French opinion than in the French Jewish opinion. Hunger member of Executive Committee of CRIF.We are more understood and people know better what we want.

David: Secretary of JCall EU but all JCall groups are independent.

Regarding settlements policy

Yariv Oppenheimer: We are all doing an important work speaking with our communities to create different realities in the region but as people are again paying with their lives now. Poeple felt that the conflict is taking place in a different reality which didn’t really concern. These sad and scary weeks also made people feel that someting has to be done. We need to be more active, passionate and aware that there’s a public looking at us. We have a bigger power than we think. People are afraid now that their kids is being kidnapped but behind this fear there is an opportunity. Our succsss at our last demonstration wasn’t because of us but because of the situation. After hostility, people understand that war isn’t a solution. Sad and interesting time.

Willy: No statistics on our number as it is illegal to provide this kind of info but we are a small community but JCall Belgium is a committee of 20 pax but 700 members of the Jewish Secular Cultural Center. Our goal is to speak and be heard by mainstream jewish opinion. It’s different from our solidarity towards Peace now as before.

Chemla, I agree that the difficulty is also an opportunity. What can we do together? How to convey your message to the Jewish people around the world? Bringing well-knowned people to Israel.

Dan Jacobson, steering committee on policy.

Raz, Mossi (2016), ‘Le Meretz et le conflit proche-oriental’, paper given at Israel entre chaos régional et défis intérieurs, Théatre Adyar, 10 avril 2016.

Mossi Raz, a dirigé Kol Hachalom, radio qui émet vers Israel et Palestine avec programme mixtes. Secrétaire général du Merez
Une alternative politique à la coalition extrêmement fragile du gouvernement israelien?
This coalition is pretty stable, despite all odds. First we have to understand what it is. It’s the right wing coalition. I was surprised that Labour thought it had a chance. Why is Netanyhu even stronger than a year ago. For :
1) security reason, despite the fact it’s not actually in danger. Israelis feel that Netanyahu gives them the security
2) economic boom: the capital of Israeli citizen is at the 11 rank.
Average israeli citizen is very happy. We played basketball but the game was football. We were dealing with economy when Netanyahu was dealing with life itself. It’s slogan was “Where’s the way to Jerusalem? Go left”, this explains why we keep losing. We have to understand that we might provide israeli the feeling that they are safe. Labor and Meretz become insignificant politically, the former lost 50% of the little they had a year ago, Meretz gained one….
Vote for tax reduction in the settlement was only voted against by Meretz. What were the others doing, including Arab israelis.
When Israel is the ruling master of everything, who can sit at the negotiation, who will go to prison, who will be blocked at the border.
For many years, I thought that both Israelis and Palestinians didn’t know what really happens in the territories. We saw recently with the killing of a weakened terrorist that we need your help to open Israeli lives.
Who owns the gaz we discovered? economic issues regarding its export etc…

Reclus, E. (2010). L’Aborigène se meurt. Paris, Librairie La Brêche.

Chapitre intitulé à l’origine Fin d’une Race, dernier chapitre de Reclus, E. (1894). Le Primitif d’Australie ou les Non-Non et les Oui-Oui. Etude d’ethnologie comparée. Paris, E. Dentu. Présentation par l’éditeur (aucun nom): 7: (…)ethnologue en chambre, le frère aîné d’Elisée Reclus ne se rendit jamais sur le “terrain”: Il pratiquait l’ethnologie comparée en dressant, à partir de fiches extraites des nombreux livres qu’il dépouillait, des parallèles pleins de hardiesse entre les peuples du monde entier. Une seule idée directrice, simple, élémentaire même, mais fondamentalement bien orientée le guidait: “Partout, l’homme ressemble à l’homme” Elie reclus admire les qualités artistiques des dessins aborigènes; il admire l’absence de gouvernement (…) qui caractérise les sociétés australes; il souligne les faculté d’apprentissage (…) de ces hommes des antipodes. 8: (Ce texte a été critiqué car) “peu savant, aux méthodes et au vocabulaire anachroniques, texte conséquemment inutilisable. Voire. Sur le plan historique, d’une part, Elie Reclus analyse correctement comment les aborigènes, à l’instar des premiers habitants de la Floride, curent, devant les navigateurs à la peau blanche, être en présence de leurs ancêtres ressuscités; comment se déroulèrent les premiers contacts avec les migrants, principalement britanniques; comment la colonisation du continent australien supposa l’emploi des mêmes armes que celles employées en Amérique du Nord et du Sud, et comment les virus provoquèrent les mêmes épidémies; comment la faune et la flore en furent affectées; comment on utilisa les Aborigènes contre eux-mêmes en les incitant à se donner une police et des rois australiens; (…); comment les cultures, une fois mises à terre, font de beaux sujets d’étude et dûment étiquetées, sont exposées dans les musées. (…) 9: Les mots et la phrase chantournés d’Elie Reclus ne sont pas une bizarrerie de style gratuite et macabre; délibérément pétris d’archaïsmes que complètent que les néologismes, ils signifient que leur auteur, horrifié, se voulait subjectivement étranger à son siècle. 11: Texte l’ABORIGENE SE MEURT Il n’est pas encore tout à fait mort, le pauvre Nègre, mais il ne traînera plus longtemps. Il est tombé sous les coups d’une Civilisation dont les campagnes, dites pacifiques sont plus meurtrières que ne fût jamais guerre entre sauvages. (..) Des évaluations, très sommaires, il faut en convenir, portent de 15 à 25% des décès la proportion des individus abattus par la carabine, et de 33 à 50% la mortalité provenant des maladies infectieuses. Nous ne supposons pas que la population totale ait jamais été considérable. Quatre ou cinq cent mille, disions-nous? Quand débarquèrent les forçats, toute cette géniture humaine n’eût pas rempli une seule de nos grandes villes. Tombée aujourd’hui à trente mille, dit-on, elle tiendrait en un faubourg de Melbourne. (…) De 1842 à 1876, l’espace d’une génération, la population des natifs (Narrinyéris) tombait dans le Sud-Australie, de douze milles à quatre mille. 12: Un jour qu’il haranguait sa troupe de Zanzibari, Stanley, le fameux civilisateur d’avant-garde, dit un mot de génie: “Nos âmes sont dans nos fusils”- En effet le fusil est le symbole par excellence de la civilisation moderne. (…)notre civilisation est un breuvage que ne sauraient supporter les organismes qui ne connaissent que l’eau pure. (…) Nous respirons la peste. Quand un Atoure ou un Otomaque de l’Orénoque entend un Blanc éternuer, il s’enfuit aussitôt. (évoque la grippe propagée par une voyageur lui-même en bonne santé qui a décimé les Piadjis) 13: Telle la pestilence que les Puritains remerciaient l’Eternel d’avoir lâchée sur les Cananéens de Massachusetts. 14:: (rapportant les propos de) Miles: “de la populeuse tribu trouvée par Cook à Botany Bay, Maorou est sul resté” Le Missionnaire Petitot: “Quand on pense aux razzias opérées par la phtisie galopante, par la fièvre typhoïde, par la stangurie, par la coqueluche, par la rougeole, l’influenza et la syphilis, (…) on pardonne aux Indiens de nous appeler Ewié Daetlini, ceux qui traînent la mort après eux!” (…) On demande pourquoi les envahisseurs ne fusionnèrent pas avec la popuation native? (…) 15: Mais le Britisheur (…) n’avilira pas son sang en l’inoculant à quelque créature inférieure. Ce puritain, ce haut perhorresce la miscégénation, dit-il; son humanité à lui commence et finit avec l’Anglo-Saxon. Et pourtant quelle race fut autant que la sienne croisée! 15-16: -En Australie encore (…). Il arrive, s’installe, s’arrange confortablement, supprime l’indigène mâle, supprime l’indigène femelle. – “Et qu’on ne m’en parle plus!” 16: Et le métissage intellectuel? (…) Aux moricauds de belle disposition ils avaient enseigné l’écriture, l’arithmétique, le catéchisme avec une tantinet de théologie. 16-17:(Citant Bonwick décrivant les prouesses de quatre Tasmaniens élevés par Robert Clark)”Pourquoi la race entière ne se serait-elle pas, comme eux civilisée? Et vingt ans après, quel désenchantement: “une tourbe d’ivrogne et d’ivrognesses que ces indigènes” 18: Les Australiens ne se soucient pas d’élever une famille. Depuis qu’on les a dépossédés de la terre, leur lignée n’a plus de racine. (…) Dans la Nouvelle-Galles du Sud, les nègres parqués ont augmenté de 3% dans l’année 1887-1888. Les enfants y prospérèrent. En 1881, à Victoria, la presque totalité des négrillons allait à l’école. Cela prouve que la race périt par le crime de l’homme et non par la faute de la nature. (…) L’ennui sévit sur ces peuplades qui jadis étaient toujours sur pied, errant de la brousse à la rivière et de la rivière à la forêt. Resserrées aujourd’hui en d’étroits espaces, elles paressent et pourrissent en leur mauvaises paillotes. 20: Le Sauvage dont l’Européen a envahi l’habitat n’est plus chez lui sur son sol natal. La nostalgie le prend: il en sort par les joies factices d’une ivresse énervante, mais pour retomber dans la tristesse et le découragement. Il s’hébète comme un animal captif. (…) Ainsi l’arrêt a été prononcé et nous nous portons ses exécuteurs. Le Nègre aux cheveux lisses périra et de notre main. Le plus vieux de notre espèce, l’Homme Ancien, bientôt disparaîtra. Avec lui ses capacités, ses possibilités et ses souvenirs. (…) C’est au profit de la Civilisation qu’on l’extirpe, paraît-il. (…) La forêt des grandioses eucalyptes, témoins d’autres âges, (…) est envahie par les usines stridentes, grinçantes et ronflantes. 20-21:D’infatigables scieries débitent en copeaux les arbres gigantesques. Puis les copeaux sont broyés, triturés et malaxés en une pâte que des machines avalent nuit et jour, et jour et nuit regorgent en hectares de papier imprimé le Progrès de ci, le Progrès de lè, et le Patriote et le Citoyen, et le Républicain, et le Justicier et le Libertaire et l’Egalitaire et le Fraternitaire. 21: En même temps que le Terrigène, disparaît son milieu. Déjà le continent change de face. L’immigrant est arrivé avec un cortège de familles nouvelles, tant végétales qu’animales (…) les espèces nouvelles ont si bien prospéré, aux dépens des indigènes, qu’il s’est formé des variétés locales. 22: Attaquée de toutes parts, la Grande Sylve diminue de jour en jour: les acacias écorcés, les eucalyptes ceinturés meurent lentement, protégeant jusqu’au temps voulu les semis de pins et de sapins, chênes, ormeaux et platanes. 25: Ce qui lui reste de sang est soutiré par la vermine étrangère. L’Irlande lui a député la Puce, l’Ecosse le Morpion et l’opulente Angleterre le Pou, le pou niché dans la tignasse qu’ont blanchie l’âge et la misère. Le Roi déchu inspecte son royaume, le Souverain légitime du continent austral contemple les copeaux et rognures. 25-26: s’ils n’avaient fait que nous tuer! Mais ils nous ont ravi la liberté, nous ont dépouillé de l’honneur. Jadis nous ne savions pas voler, ni mentir, ni tromper notre frère, ni trahir notre ami 26: Son âme s’exhale en un hoquet empuanti de brandy. C’en est fini de l’Antichtone. 26-26: Fini? non pas. On le retrouvera dans la voirie. Des anatomistes départiront ses os minutieusement d’avec le reste des chiens crevés. Ils scieront la boîte cranienne pour mesurer son épaisseur et jauger sa contenance, diront ce que la cervelle pesait de grammes, étudieront la texture du périose, ne s’épargneront pas aux délicates mensurations dont ils emplissent les mémoires spéciaux. Puis il vous nettoieront les pièces par le menu, les relieront par les ressorts d’acier. Le squelette blanchi, veri, luisant comme ivoire, dressé en noble attitude, figurera à la place d’honneur du Museum, sur un fond de verlours rouge, dans une vitrine à glace montée sur eucalypte odorant: HOMO SAPIENS, AUSTRALIENSIS NIGER LEÏOTRICHOÏDES 29: Quand il ne sera plus, le pauvre nègre, on lui découvrira de remarquables aptitudes et des qualités exceptionnelles. En attendant, ceux qui l’ont étudié s’accordent à le dire un grand enfant. Semblable à son cousin d’afrique. Il se donne tout entier au moment présent, oublie vite le passé, se montre insouciant de l’avenir à un degré qui étonne (…) – Comme nous, alors? Partout, l’homme ressemble à l’homme. 31: Mais, remarquait Abel de Rémusat, il sera trop tard pour étudier les hommes, quand il n’y aura plus que des Européens! Les antichtones sont nos ancêtres du Cro-Magnon ressuscités par miracle. Ils vivaient notre pré-histoire. Etudier cette mentalité disparue, lui arracher ses secrets, quelle aubaine. Mais notre civilisation avait d’autres soucis. 33: Hé bien! Pour avoir été touché par cette Civilisation, l’Autichtone se meurt. Cet étranger (…). On l’avait acclamé comme un Dieu bienfaisant; il se révéla Démon méchant et terrible. Quel désenchantement pour les Maoris, Alfoures et Nofoures, quelle désillusion pour les Dayeris, Narrinyéris et Ouolti-Ouoltis! 34: La Civilisation qui a mis nombre de siècles à venir, prononce l’arrêt de mort contre l’Autochtone, parce qu’il ne se civilise pas à la première sommation. L’aîné de l’espèce humaine n’a plus qu’à mourir, le cadet a hâte d’entrer dans l’héritage. 35: Le mal est fait, pourquoi s’attarder en regrets inutiles? (…)Donc brisons là-dessus. Au lieu d’accuser les civilisés de là-bas et de vitupérer leurs agissements, avouons que ces marchands de cuir, c’est nous, et les débitants de laine, nous encore – Faisons mieux. Reconnaissons les Dayéris et les Narringyeris qui sont à nos porte. De Ouatchandis et de Babrorongs nous ne manquons pas, sans parler des Peaux-Rouges dans le Forez, des Maoris en Brie. Paris ne chôme ni d’Apaches ni d’Aléoutes. Il y a des Papous et des Zoulous dans notre quartier. Aidons à vivre les Khonds et les Andamènes de notre rue. Faut-il que les misérables soient trop loin pour que nous leur prodiguions nos sympathies? Réserverions-nous notre équité pour les gens de là bas, là bas? N’aimerions-nous le prochain que s’il est aux Antipodes?

____(1885), Les Primitifs. Etudes d’ethnologie comparée (Paris).

___ (1894), Le Primitif d’Australie ou les Non-Non et les Oui-Oui. Etude d’ethnologie comparée (Paris: E. Dentu).

Redonnet, Jean-Claude. 1994. L’Australie, Que-Sais-Je? Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

Reese, Renford. 1997. Ebonics can provide a lift to students. Daily Bulletin, March 9, 1997.

Nearly 25 years later, the memory still stings.
As an African-American first grader growing up in a small, segregated town in Georgia, I would raise my hands in what happened to be the county’s first integrated class.
My answers tumbled out in the speech pattern that I heard everywhere but in school and on television. We didn’t know the name back then, but everyone who lived in “Blacksville” -as my section of town was known- spoke vernacular black English -or ebonics. It was the language to which we jumped rope, played basketball and broke bread with our families. When our grandmothers told us stories, they spoke in this manner.

I know I had the answer but my teacher would shake her head in disgust or look the other way as though I were a lost cause. Sometimes white children laughed. Occasionally, the teacher joined in. You can’t imagine how confusing it was not to get a genuinely positive response when you know you’re right.
Nobody ever said, “there is nothing wrong with what Renford said. The way he speaks is part of his culture. The most acceptable way to communicate his idea is as follows…..” . In fact, I was 12 years old before I realized there was a difference between standard English and the way I spoke. But by that time, I had already climbed inside a shell. In high school, I was an A student, but I didn’t contribute in class for fear of being ridiculed. It is painful to know an answer but be afraid to raise your hand.

I didn’t feel comfortable speaking in a public setting until my junior year in college. At Vanderbilt University, two African-American professors took me under their wings. In the classroom, they spoke eloquent standard English. But in our mentoring sessions, they helped me feel comfortable b y speaking ebonics.
From these two professors, I learned what I should have been taught in grade school: that speaking ebonics didn’t make me intellectually inferior. They also taught me there was an time and place to speak ebonics and that standard English was the language of social and economic mobility.

Critics seem to worry that the Oakland school board’s decision to recognize ebonics will prevent African-American students from excelling. But these opponents appear oblivious to the real stumbling block to achievement.

Teachers who fail to validate a child’s culture -or make him or her feel inferior because of his or her background- rob him or her of the confidence to thrive. I can’t think of a better way of boosting the confidence of Ebonics speakers than “embracing the legitimacy and richness” – as the resolution still reads- of the language in which their grandmothers told them stories. It’s unfortunate that Oakland felt the need to backpedal on its decision.

With the the help of my mentors, I overcame my linguistic challenges. Last year, I received a doctorate from USC. Today, I’m a college professor. But many of my peers were not so successful in rising over their insensitive schooling.

I’ve only been teaching at the university level for two years, but this much I know: to direct someone to a new place, you have to know where their journey starts. I speak a little of 15 different languages. When I have students who are bilingual, I make sure that I greet them for the first time in their native tongue. The practice sends the message that I respect the students’ heritage. The other students get the message that they are to show respect, too.

This is the idea behind “Colorful Flags”, a program that I direct at USC’s Centre for Multiethnic and Transnational Studies. The program provides training in cultural sensitivity to Southland residents. Participants receive pocket-sized cards that offer the spelling and pronunciation for common phrases in the languages most often spoken in their community. There are 22 options in all, including Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Armenian, Farsi and Swahili. Approximately 50,000 students in seven school districts in Southern California and 1,5000 officers from the Los Angeles Police Department have benefited from this valuable cultural experience.
Last spring, the program received the ultimate endorsement. The Los Angeles Human Relations Commission hailed the approach as a model for easing ethnic friction in Southern California.

Now that Los Angeles recognizes the value of dignifying the languages of immigrants among us, ti’s time to see the value in providing the same recognition to children who speak Ebonics.

At least Oakland had the chutzpah to begin a process of education reform

___1998. From the Fringe: the Hip Hop Culture and Ethnic Relations. Paper read at Far West and Popular Culture Conference.

The “hip hop culture” has permeated popular culture in an unprecedented fashion. Because of its enormous cross-over appeal, the hip hop culture is a potentially great unifier of diverse populations. Although created by black youth on the street, hip hop’s influence has become worldwide. Approximately 75% of the rap and hip hop audience is nonblack. It has gone from the fringes, to the suburbs, and into the corporate boardrooms. Indeed, McDonald’s, Coca Cola, Sprite, Nike, and other corporate giants have capitalized on this phenomenon. Although critics of rap music and the hip hop culture seemed to be fixated on the messages of sex, violence, and harsh language, this genre offers us a paradigm of what can be. The potential of this art form to mend ethnic relations is substantial. In the 1950s and 1960s the “Beat Culture” challenged the status quo in ways that unified liberals and prompted change. In the same vein, the hip hop culture has challenged the system in ways that have unified individuals (particularly youth) across a rich ethnic spectrum. This paper will discuss the development of the hip hop culture, the cross-over appeal of hip hop, and the potential of this culture to mend ethnic cleavages in our society.

http://www.csupomona.edu/~rrreese/HIPHOP.HTML

Busy Bee Starski, DJ Hollywood, and DJ Afika Bambaataa (founder of the Zulu Nation in New York) are the three New
York artists who have been credited for coining the term “hip hop”.6 This genre began in the`70s with funky beats resonating at house parties, at basement parties, and the streets of New York.7 According to Geneva Smitherman, the foundation of rap music is rooted in “Black oral tradition of tonal semantics, narrativizing, signification, playing the dozens, Africanized syntax, and other communicative practices.”

8 LANGUAGE: Street language is transmitted to the hip hop culture through rap music. One can hear a Chinese or Filipino hip hopper using the same slang as the African American hip hopper. Irrespective of their ethnicity hip hoppers use adjectives such as dope, da bomb, legit, hittin, all that, to describe something that is excellent. The word “nigger” is one of the must popular words of hip hoppers. Contrary to the traditional derogatory meaning of the word, hip hoppers use the word as a term of endearment. One can hear a white, Asian, or Latino hip hopper saying, “TJ is my niggah,” which means “TJ is my good friend.” The vernacular of this culture changes constantly. What might be a cool statement today, might be “played out” (outdated) in a year. Street language has become a pidgin language of sorts. Even if hip hoppers have different first languages, they still can understand the slang of hip hop. Hence, this culture is bounded linguistically. I can personally recall my trip to Japan in 1995 in which my friend saw a Japanese teenager with a Snoop Doggy Dog (famous rapper) cap on–the teenager could barely speak English but he was fluent in street slang.

5 Robert Hilburn, “Year in Review/Pop Music; In the Shadow of Hip-Hop; Rap is Where the Action is, and its Popularity Still
Hasn’t Peaked. Could Rock `N’ Roll Be Finally Dead?” The Los Angeles Times, December 27, 1998, 6.

7 S.H. Fernando, The New Beats, (Anchor Books Doubleday: New York, 1994), IX.

8 Chris Dickinson, “3-CD Set Chronicles History of Rap,” Everday Magazine, January 4, 1998, 3.

9 Geneva Smitherman, Black Talk: Words And Phrases From The Hood To The Amen Corner , (Houghton Mifflin:
Boston, 1994), 3.

___(1999), ‘The socio-political context of the integration of sport in America’, Journal of African American Men, 4 (3, Spring).

It took American society (the Supreme Court) 58 years to realize the “separate but equal” clause was unjust, unconstitutional,
and undemocratic. In the historic 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education case, the Supreme Court ruled public school
segregation unconstitutional (Dye, 1995, p.48). This decision along with the Rosa Parks experience was the impetus for the
“Civil Rights Movement.” The Montgomery bus boycott movement, sit-ins, and various other protests effectively precipitated
social change (Kelman, 1996, p.256).

___2000. Ebonics: some illustrations. Pomona, Cal. tape.
Reese, Renford. 2005. Noble principle, Ignoble practices: Race and the US Criminal Justice System. Paper read at 37th International Institute of Sociology Conference: Ethnic Minorities and the Criminal Justic System, at Stockholm, Norra Latin, room 459.

this is Renford Reese, Assistant Professor of Political Science, California State Polytechnic University, California and Director of Colourful Flag Human Relations Program. Today is March 23d, 2000. I am making this tape for Daphné Romy. This tape is an exercise in Ebonics, or BVE, Black Vernacular English.

I grew up in a little town called McDonough, Georgia.abt 25 miles away from Atlanta.
Indeed BVE was my first language. I want to go over some of the differences between standard English and Black Vernacular English or as some people call it today Ebonics.

One characteristic of BVE is the invariant be. In SE we would say:

“we study all the time”

in BVE we will say:

“we be studyin’ all the time”
In SE we would say:

” we go to the store when we are hungry”

in BVE we will say:

” we be goin’ to de store when whe be hongry”

In SE we would say:

” my mamma cooks well ”

in BVE we will say:

” ma mamma be cookin’ good ”
Another characteristics of BVE is the absence of the verb or the contracted sentences. For instance:

In SE we would say:
” we are friends ”

in BVE we will say:
” we friends ”

or we will use the invariant “be” form:
“we be friends”

Another characteristics of BVE is the double negative.

In SE we would say:
“I don’t have any”

in BVE we will say:
“I don’ have none”

Now, listen to the following statement. Something that is perhaps complex to the foreign ears

“l’k at dat electric car it dun’ even much have no motor in it”
I said:look at that electric car it does not even have a motor in it

another characteristic of BVE is the d replaces the th sound

instead of the you hear de
instead of that you hear dat

for instance
“should we do is dis way or dat way”.

The standard way of saying that sentence is: “should we do it this way or that way”

for instance
“well, dat’ s dat”

in SE
“We would say well that is that”

another characteristic or an example of BVE is, instead of saying a sentence:
“there she is ”

in BVE we would say
“dere she goes”
or
“dere she go”

This concludes this exercise in Black Vernacular English.
Ren’s bio:

Renford Reese, Ph.D.
In 1996, Renford Reese received his doctoral degree from the University of Southern California’s School of
Public Administration. He received his Master’s degree in public policy from the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies in 1990. He received his Bachelors of Arts degree in political science from Vanderbilt University in 1989.

Dr. Reese grew up in a rural town in Georgia(McDonough). His father, Earnest Reese, was a pioneer in the field of journalism. When Dr. Reese was growing up in the early 1970’s his hometown was still partially segregated by railroad tracks. Because most of the blacks were forced to live in a certain area of the town, his community was labeled “Blacksville” on the town’s map.

As an African-American boy of 12 years old, he did a seventh grade social science project on “gerrymandering” in his town. He became infuriated at the constructed division between the black and white communities. He also
became disgruntled with the lack of dialogue between these communities. At a very early age, he realized that he would like to dedicate his life to issues that help people of different races bridge gaps of mistrust.

In 1993, as a second year doctoral student and a “Presidential Fellow” at USC, he created the acclaimed “Colorful Flags” program. The tragic death of Latasha Harlins in South Central Los Angeles and his dissatisfaction with race relations prompted him to create this multiethnic human relations module.
Today, this program has serviced approximately 130,000 K-12 students in 17 school districts in California. This program has also been implemented in police departments, hospitals, and various other organizations. Reese has authored two cultural sensitivity manuals and one curriculum guide. He has developed a Colorful Flags board game. In 1996, he wrote the play “Bus Stop Soliloquy,” which is a candid depiction of ethnic relations in the U.S. This play was produced as the short film, “Life Ain’t No Crystal Stair,” by Emmy Award winner, Saul Landau. This film was a finalist in the 1999 National Television Festival (“Telly Awards”). He recently completed a screenplay entitled, “Black Jack Chameleon.” This play is also about ethnic relations in the U.S.

Dr. Reese is currently an assistant professor of public administration at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. He spent the Spring of 1994 traveling throughout Japan as a “Presidential Fellow” doing research on the Cultural Differences in Leadership: U.S. vs. Japan. He did his doctoral dissertation research on intergroup relations and ethnic conflict at the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development in Geneva, Switzerland.

In the summer of 1999, he was a Visiting Faculty Scholar at the University of Toronto, Canada and in the summer of 1998, he was a Visiting Faculty Scholar at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. He has lectured or presented papers on his research in various places around the world including Canterbury, England, Cologne, Germany, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Oslo, Norway, and Tel Aviv, Israel. He has been an Adjunct Professor of Public Policy and Management at the University of Southern California. He has been a Sociology Instructor at Olympic College in Bremerton, Washington. He has also lectured in the Department of Education at the University of San Diego. He has written several articles on ethnic relations. His most comprehensive work on this topic was featured in the June 1997 edition of Multicultural Review (volume 6, number 2). Dr. Reese’s future objective is to continue to teach in the “academy” and to be a “roving” ambassador between the different ethnic communities. Ultimately, he would like to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

___ (2005), ‘Noble principle, Ignoble practices: Race and the US Criminal Justice System’, in Renford Reese (ed.), 37th International Institute of Sociology Conference: Ethnic Minorities and the Criminal Justic System (Stockholm, Norra Latin, room 459: California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, US).

Othering and Criminalisation of Muslims in Australia and Britain after 11 Sept 2001, Scot Poynting and Victoria Mason, Universty of Sydney, Australia

2001 American paradigm, prison races 2005.
Victimization and partial unequal treatment.
14th ammendment about race.
Since Rodney King’s case, situation of black males has worsened.
Civil Right Movement of 63, M. Luther King Hegelian dialectical perspective of confronting the media with proofs: brutalization of US citizens.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” Martin Luther King
Critical race studies: primary outcome is that law isn’t designed to protect but to empower those who are the elite.
1995 Crime Patrol Law.

___ (2010), Hong Kong Nights (Daily Bulletin; Atlanta: Darby Printing) 226.

Dédicace: “In the Spirit of Michael Jackson: “Make this World a Better Place” “
121: The rest of the world developed on the back of Africa. Now look at us. The children of the Diaspora are rootless and at the bottom rungs of society wherever we go. People hate us and despise us in our own country.
Dez reflected, “I remember a couple of years ago one of my African professors was invited to give a lecture in the New Territories. He invited me to go with him. He discussed the Chinese presence in African and Chinese relations with Sub-saharan African countries. The talk was insightful and engaging. There was substantive back and forth during the Question and Answer part of his lecture at the very end. It was a good event. I remember they invited us to dinner on the 15th floor of one of the big hotels over there. There was a white Ph.D. student from California who was doing his dissertation research on the issues that were discussed. He was fascinated by the talk and told my professor so.
122: He hung around with us so long that my professor asked him if he wanted to join us for dinner. When we got to dinner, there were 5 Chinese hosts, me and my professor, and the Ph.D. student. They raved about the lecture to my professor before we took our seats. The Ph.D. student walked in a bit late and introduced himself. At the table, it was embarrassing. In fact, there are few times that I have been more embarrassed in my life.”
“What happened?” Marchawn asked.
Dez continued, “After the white Ph.D. student showed up and introduced himself, we all sat down to eat. About 80% of the focus was on him and his research. The Chinese hosts had almost forgotten about my professor. One of the hosts sitting beside the student kept staring at him and eventually said, I kid you not, “Mr. Charlie if you were a woman, I would want to marry you” (…)
“So was the professor angry that most of the attention was focused on someone that wanted to be like him”?
“He didn’t seem bothered at all, which bothered me. He seemed totally content with how things unfolded. If you were him, wouldn’t you have been furious”?
Marshawn said, “That’s a good question. I think I would have been more like the professor. I don’t know what he was thinking on the inside, but I think I would have been more like him. “
123: (…) It really dawned on Dez after Marshawn’s comments that, although they vibed and shared the same interests, they really did come from two different worlds. Marshawn’s simple explanation of why the professor might not have been mad showed a type of wisdom that only came from poverty, pain and struggle. Although he had been exposed to poverty and had lived a temporary experiment in poverty, Dez suddenly realized he lacked Marshawn’s authentic perspective.
Dez started to discuss big picture issues. Well, people talk about China being the world’s next superpower. China’s hegemony will be restricted”(…)
“The British Empire was successful , in large part, because people admired the British ways. People in the colonies liked the British Accent, the demeanor, the air of sophistication, the worldliness of the British. When America replaced the British after World War II, it replaced the British sophistication, with the American free spirit.
124: “In each case, the British and the Americans have inspired people to want to be like them. America has mainly done this through its exports of popular culture to every pocket of the world.”
“I see what you’re getting at. The dinner table experience showed you that the Chinese are still idolizing the West”
“That’s exactly my point, my friend. How can we be a superpower like the U.S. has been when our women are lightening their skins to be like Caucasian models and when, even our intellectuals, are fawning over whiteness?”
“So China’s hegemony will be restricted.
128: (…)”I have always wanted to be proud of my country.”
“So what happened?”
“I don’t know, I think that pride has to come naturally. We had to pledge allegiance to the American flag in school. We sing our national anthem at all the sporting events. I don’t sing it with pride and I never pledge my allegiance to the flag with pride. I don’t know too many people where I’m from who felt America cared about them enough for them to take pride (…). We are Americans because we were born there. That’s it.
129: I have resentment because we’re phony, contradictory and hypocritical. We preach one thing and practice another. We have a man in office right now that happens to look like me; he’s trying to do the right thing but people won’t let him.(…) I got mad love for him because I know where his heart is. The homies in the set had a party the night he won. At the same time, they know nothing was going to change for them because America will not let him make dramatic changes. Everything has to be watered down. The man inherited so much chaos but yet the people want to constantly blame him.
(…)
“I just think that we have misplaced priorities in my country (…). All this talk about winning the war on terror (…)we have over 14,000 homicides per year and we’re spending billions of dollars trying to root out Al-Qaeda.(…). In Chalktown, am I more likely to get killed by Al-Qaeda or aby a rival gang? So where should our resources be going?”
130: “So I’m curious, when you have events like the Olympics, do you pull for your country?”
“Yes, 100% of the time, when it’s swimming, gymnastics, basketball, or the horseback competition. I always pull for the U.S.
(…) I know it sounds strange, but most people I know are like me. It’s a love-hate relationship we have.(…)
131: “I do have some resentment because we’ve got over half the kinds that look like me dropping out of inner city high schools. You got young black men like me being incarcerated in jail or prison at 6 times the rate of someone who is white for the same crime. You got jobs that could be coming to the ‘hood” being shipped overseas. Why should I salute the American flag and sing the anthem with pride?”
139: “We’re on the same page but as my nanny in Cape Town used to say, we were baptized in different water.”
“What do you mean by that”?
We’re different. We grew up different. We’ve had different experiences. He grew up harder than we can ever imagine, Trek. What it took him to survive the streets of L.A. and the minefields in his community we can never understand.

— (2010), ‘Politics of Hate Undermine Our Democracy’, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/San Bernardino Sun (CA), July 23.

In the age of political polarization, perpetual finger-pointing, and accusatory rhetoric, being a popular president in today’s time seems to be an impossible task. In a recent Gallup Poll, President Obama’s approval rating was at 46 percent. Some 81 percent of Democratic voters and 12 percent of Republican voters approve of the president’s performance. The visceral hate found in the disapproval of the president’s job performance is partially based on irrationality.

The controversial Tea Party billboard in Iowa showed a photo of Adolf Hitler with the caption “National Socialism.”
It showed Vladimir Lenin with the caption “Marxist Socialism” and Obama with the caption, “Democrat Socialism.” Comparing Obama to Hitler and Lenin is irrational.

Conservatives refer to the president’s leadership as unabashedly socialist without a nuanced deconstruction of the nature of American public policies. The word socialism means collectivism or community. During the Cold War, socialism and communism were propagandized by the U.S. to mean bad, dark, evil. Today, the definition of socialism has been appropriated and reinterpreted as meaning misguided.

The idea that the true American spirit is the “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” phenomenon lacks sophistication.
Adam Smith’s capitalism, in its purest form, allows the “invisible hand” of the market to work its magic without interference from the government. So at any point there is government interference in domestic affairs, it can be construed as socialism.

In modern times, we have accepted the progressive tax system, which is socialist in nature. Federal, state, and local governments give big businesses tax-breaks, which is a form of socialism. Farmers receive welfare by way of subsidies, which is socialistic. College students receive financial aid, which is socialistic. K-12 public education is compulsory; this is not the case in all countries. This educational feature in U.S. society is also socialistic. Unemployment benefits are socialistic—so too is Medicare and our social security system. The fact is that no developed country in the world functions without embracing some elements of socialism.

When Obama gave his special address on K-12 education, I heard a parent say she would not allow her children to listen to the president’s socialist propaganda, which encouraged students to be disciplined, focused, and committed in school. The president’s message broadly stated that school is important to future success. It did not matter to this woman that her children could have benefitted from these encouraging words from the president.

Although Obama passed historic health care reform legislation that protects ordinary citizens from the insensitive treatment of insurance companies, there is someone that has a pre-existing condition and could not get insurance without this bill that still hates the president. Obama allotted a significant portion of the stimulus money to help those whose houses have been foreclosed on yet there is someone in this situation that hates the president. The president recently passed a historic
financial reform bill that protects consumers from predatory lenders and other exploitative business practices yet there is a person that has lost everything because of these practices that still hates Obama. The president has worked tirelessly on multiple occasions to extend unemployment benefits to the unemployed; however, there are millions of those that directly benefit from the president’s advocacy on this issue who hate him anyway.

Of course people have the right to oppose the president’s policies, but irrationality is reflected when people that are directly benefiting from Obama’s agenda vehemently oppose him. These Obama-haters will not give him a slither of credit for making efforts to better their lives. Why? Because they are shortsighted, naive, and easily manipulated by a handful of rabble-rousers that want the president to fail by any means necessary.

Our democracy was designed for bargaining, negotiation, conciliation, and reconciliation. Our democracy was designed for informed citizens to elect independent-minded representatives that would reflect the will of the people. Republican lawmakers are undermining the spirit of our democracy because of their lack of independent-mindedness. When Republican senators Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, and Susan Collins recently sided with Democrats on financial reform legislation, conservative talk show hosts characterized them as idiotic sell-outs.

Moreover, any Republican that tries to reach across the aisle and effectively participate in the democratic process of policymaking is lambasted and ridiculed. Senator Lindsay Graham has attempted to moderate his conservative stance on a number of hot button issues.
For these efforts, conservative radio host Mark Levin called Graham an “irrelevant weirdo that speaks gibberish.”

In Federalist Paper #10, Founding Father James Madison warned us against the threat of factions undermining our democracy. Today, a few guys with a microphone and access to the public airwaves are leading a dangerously counterproductive faction that is undermining our democracy.
Madison and his founding colleagues did not intend for a handful of non-accountable citizens to have this embarrassing level of control over our lawmakers.

In order for American citizens to heal the wounds of our broken democracy we must transcend the politics of hate and hold each rabble-rouser (on the Left and the Right) accountable for their divisive language. We must begin to elect lawmakers that are independent-minded. As this nation is immersed in multiple crises, now is not the time to embrace the “Us v. Them” perspective. This is the time to argue, debate, reconcile, and move forward collectively. This is the democratic formula that has made America great. This is the American way.
Renford Reese, Ph.D. is a professor of political science and the founder/director of the Colorful Flags program at Cal Poly Pomona University. He is the author of “American Bravado” (2008), “Prison Race” (2006), and the widely discussed “American Paradox: Young Black Men” (2004). See Reese’s work at: http://www.RenfordReese.com

___ (2011), ‘The Deficit, Taxes, and Politics’, The San Bernardino Sun (CA), August 18.

President Obama’s approval rating recently dropped below 40 percent for the first time in his presidency. Cuts in spending and raising taxes are currently at the heart of the president’s tug of war with the Republicans. The harder he has tried to appease and compromise with the Republicans the harder they have fought him. This constant struggle has diluted the president’s mojo.

Ideologues in the Republican Party have been staunchly against any new taxes—even it means that increased taxes will help reduce the deficit. Recently, I asked my political science students at Cal Poly Pomona the following question: “If you are not sacrificing your life for this country in our military, how else do you sacrifice for this country besides paying taxes?” There was no response. Our taxes help build our roads and schools; they help pay the salaries of our teachers, police officers, and our military personnel.

In discussing the deficit-reduction debate for my class this summer, I discussed the topic of taxes and patriotism with my students. I defined patriotism as an enthusiastic love for one’s country. For my example of patriotism in the U.S., I stated the following: The people that want to be taxed for the development and wellbeing of our country have been labeled as un-patriotic Americans. The people that do not want to pay taxes see themselves as patriotic Americans. Moreover, the people that want the president to fail, even at the expense of the country failing, consider themselves true patriots—real Americans. In giving this example to the students, at the expense of confusing them, I showed them why our current politics are dysfunctional. The fact is, if you are not willing to serve in our military or pay taxes in this country your patriotism is based on non-sacrificial rhetoric.

Anger, hostility, and anti-Obama sentiment have blinded conservatives and restricted them from embracing fundamental principles of our democracy. Compromise is democratic. In the Iowa debate, Republican candidates were asked if they would accept a five or ten-dollar cut in spending to a one-dollar tax increase formula. All eight candidates said no.

Fearful of an increasingly extremist right wing, Republican candidates are afraid to go solo and moderate their views. They are afraid to tell the ideologues in their party that we cannot create jobs just by cutting the deficit–that we cannot just cut, cut, cut, and then build, build, build–revenue has to be raised in order to invest in building infrastructure, investing in education and technology. These candidates have been afraid to tell their followers what billionaire Warren Buffet recently told America: “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.” Maybe these comments will give the Republican presidential candidates courage to finally deviate from the party line.

Buffet’s insightful commentary in the New York Times tells us that the leading conservative voices have been brutally dishonest with their followers about increased taxes and job growth. Buffet writes, “I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone–not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77–shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.” He goes on, “People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.” Obama has been trying, without much success, to make this case for two years.

Buffet, one of the most trusted voices in the business world, gave Obama a gift that is worth more than any campaign contribution. He has given the president oxygen when he needed it the most. Without the “increased taxes will kill job growth” argument the Republicans will be disillusioned and without their primary talking point. If Obama ever gets his mojo back, he has one patriotic American to thank.

Renford Reese is a political science professor and director of the Colorful Flags program at Cal Poly Pomona. A former Fulbright Fellow at the University of Hong Kong, he is the author of five books. http://www.RenfordReese.com

Reese, Renford (2012), ‘ What if Obama had Romney’s Profile?’ San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Bulletin (CA), September 18.

Democrats are riding the wave of an extraordinary convention that was just what the doctor ordered – in more than one way.
The convention inspired a Democratic base that was largely uninspired before the convention. Bill Clinton’s masterful speech added clarity to the choice that sits before the American people in November. Clinton’s simple explanations regarding the
limitations of the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan platform were crystal clear, timely and believable. So much so that Romney, to the dismay of conservatives, praised Clinton for elevating the Democratic National Convention.

Prominent conservatives such as George Will, Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingraham and Bill Kristol have begun to criticize Romney’s tactics and his will to win this election. In his column titled “Speak Up,” Kristol stated that it is time for Romney to engage in
specifics. According to Kristol, “When a challenger merely appeals to disappointment with the incumbent and tries to reassure voters he’s not too bad an alternative, that isn’t generally a formula for victory.”

Maybe it was Clinton’s speech that prompted undecided voters to begin doubting Romney’s credentials to be president, and maybe it also made Romney begin to doubt his own credentials to be president. His premature, crass, and un-statesmanlike criticism of the Obama administration regarding the deadly riots in Libya and Egypt sharply points to a credibility problem. This all compels me to ask the hypothetical question: What if Romney had Obama’s credentials and Obama had Romney’s credentials?

In three years and seven months in office, what if Romney had advocated for and passed legislation related to gender equity, consumer protection, children’s health insurance, clean energy, student loans, veterans’ affairs and food safety? Coupled with this, what if the private sector experienced 29 months of job growth and the S&P 500 stock index had risen by 64 percent since he took office? On the hawkish front, what if Romney was responsible for killing Osama bin Laden and other high profile Al-Qaeda leaders? With these credentials Romney would win this election in a landslide – especially if Obama had Romney’s profile.

What if Obama was the CEO of Bain Capital and sought profit by any means necessary, including outsourcing jobs to foreign countries?
He would certainly not be able to tout this as an accomplishment on the campaign trail. What if Obama was only willing to show two years of his tax returns? This would surely be scandalous because no other president in U.S. history has concealed their tax returns. What if it had been revealed in 2008 that presidential candidate Barack Obama hid a portion of his wealth in a Swiss bank or in the Cayman Islands?
We all know the answer to this question.

There is no way Obama would have been elected president with such a mark on his record. And finally, what if Obama changed positions on: universal health care, global warming, gun control, minimum wage, stem cell research, campaign spending limits, the TARP program, capital gains and the right to choose? With this profile, Obama would lose this election in a landslide.

What explains this paradox? There are those who dislike President Obama’s policies. There are those who are disappointed that his lofty 2008 rhetoric was not matched by immediate prosperity. There are those who dislike him “just because,” which morphs into those who hate him just because “he is not one of us.” For those in the latter group, they see Obama through an “us vs. them” prism: e.g., you are either one
of us or you are one of them. One of “them” represents everything unpatriotic and negative in our society: crime, welfare, socialism, terrorism, etc. One of “us” means that you share wholesome and traditional American values.

The “us” group will go to extraordinary lengths and make exceptions in order to embrace one of their own – even if he is adopted for symbolic purposes.

On his Sept. 10 show, Rush Limbaugh said that Romney could be Elmer Fudd and conservatives should still vote for him because he is not Obama.
This type of sophomoric and hateful logic is dangerous to our nation. The most problematic part of the dichotomous American political psyche is that our politicians have embraced the same hate and simplistic logic as Limbaugh.

Famed political philosopher John Rawls theorized that if we made our policy decisions behind a “Veil of Ignorance” (an imaginary blindfold), our policies would be equitable, just and fair. If we chose our presidential candidate in the same way, we would invariably choose the candidate with the most experience, transparency, consistency and compassion.

Reese, Renford (2012), ‘How the London Olympics will help Obama get Re-elected’, Inland Valley Bulletin/San Bernardino Sun (CA).

I followed the London Olympics each day with great anticipation. Like many of us, I wanted to know what the overall medal count was each day. From a geo-political perspective, the medal count is significant. China’s quest to be the overall medal leader is reflective of their desired Superpower status. Indeed, the success in the Games is symbolic of the perceived health, strength, and vitality of a nation. By winning the most metals with 104 and winning the overall gold medal count with 46, the U.S. Olympic team made an emphatic statement to the world, which echoes President Obama’s sentiments–the U.S. is not in decline.

Presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s pre-Olympics criticism that London might not be ready for the Games were widely criticized in London—garnering negative headlines in the British news such as “Mitt the Twit,” and “Party-pooper” among others. U.S. Olympian Carl Lewis stated the following about Romney’s pre-event criticisms: “I swear, sometimes I think some Americans shouldn’t leave the country…Are you kidding me, stay home if you don’t know what to say.” Lewis’s comments describe a person who lacks diplomacy—a critical skill for the leader of the free world.

Contrary to Romney’s presence at the Games, Michelle Obama’s attendance had the opposite effect. The First Lady was greeted warmly by the British, the international fans, and by the U.S. Olympic team. When the members of Team USA basketball walked into the stands to give the First Lady a hug after their victory over France, it was one of the most touching and memorable scenes of the Games. With grace, charm, and her own charisma, there is not a classier representative of the U.S. than the First Lady. I think most Americans can envision seeing Michelle Obama as the First Lady for four more years.

The Olympics inspired national pride. Americans irrespective of ideology or race cheered on Michael Phelps, Allyson Felix, Gabby Douglas, and LeBron James. The “USA, USA” chant seemed to resonate louder and prouder throughout these Games. This nationalism has the potential to mitigate some of the political divisiveness in the country. If so, President Obama will benefit from this esprit de corps.

Moreover, these Games were the full manifestation of Title IX, which ensured gender equity in college athletics 40 years ago. Gender equity has been at the forefront of Obama’s presidency. In fact, no U.S. president has worked harder to make this issue a priority. This was the first Olympics that the U.S. sent more women than men (269 compared with 261). The U.S. women won 58 medals to the men’s 45. Obama’s staunch support for women’s rights and gender equity paid off in London and will pay off in November.

At the opening and closing ceremonies, one conspicuous site was the physical appearance of the national teams. There was no national team that had the diversity of the American team. Our dynamic ethnic diversity was on display for the world to see throughout the Games. This diversity has contributed to this country’s greatness in and outside of the Olympic athletic venues. This inclusive multicultural spirit explains how we elected the first African American president in 2008 and why we will elect him again in 2012.

Obama will ultimately benefit from these Olympic Games because of the national pride they have inspired. These Games have shown each American and the world that the U.S. is not in decline under this President, but the opposite. The London Olympics also showed each American and the world the diplomatic maladroitness of Obama’s opponent and the grace, charm, and warmth of our First Lady. The Games reflected Obama’s prioritization of gender equity and his desire to build an inclusive America where everyone wins a medal. In the end, Obama will benefit from the collective love, pride, joy, and excitement that these Games brought to our nation, which will propel him to the top position on the podium and will enable him to win the ultimate gold medal.
Renford Reese, Ph.D. is a political science professor at Cal Poly Pomona University. He is the author of five books, and the widely discussed journal article, “The Olympic Ideals and the Multiple Agendas of the Games” found in the London Journal of International Sport (April 2012).

Reese, Renford (2012 ), ‘King Would Be Disappointed in U.S.’ San Bernardino Sun (CA), January 13,, sec. Opinion, A15.

As we celebrate Martin Luther King Day, it is important to reflect on King’s concept of the Beloved Community. In summarizing the efforts of the Civil Rights Movement, King stated, “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.” King envisioned a Beloved Community that was non-discriminatory, equitable, sensitive, and compassionate.

If King could observe America today he would be disappointed with the state of this nation. At the heart of the Occupy Wall Street protests are the staggering disparities between the rich and the poor in this country. The top one percent of Americans own approximately 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. King would adamantly agree that the top one percent should not live at the expense of the 99 percent. King would be disappointed that we have lost thousands of lives and spent over a trillion dollars in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He would not buy the argument that either war was necessary. He would be disappointed in our failure to provide quality education in our urban schools. He would also be disappointed in our biased and hyper-punitive criminal justice system.

King would surely be perplexed by the state of our presidential politics. He would see the similarities in the folks that denounced him in Birmingham, Memphis, and Washington, D.C. and those who denounce our current president. Observing the same hate, vitriol, and disrespect would surely disappoint him.

In many ways, President Obama has reflected the spirit of King. He has passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Child Insurance Act, Federal Hate Crimes Bill, Consumer Protection Act, Land Conservation Act, Health Care Reform, and repealed “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. He has endorsed the Dream Act, which secures higher education opportunities for illegal immigrants of good moral character. He has fought to extend unemployment benefits to those who have lost their jobs. In his own way, Obama has sought to embrace King’s concept of the Beloved Community.

Despite all of these humanistic achievements, there are those who still hate Obama and call him a “do-nothing” president. At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, King was hated by many in this country. They thought he was a rabble-rousing socialist who was cancerous to America. People hated King for trying to do the right thing—for trying to hold this nation accountable for living up to the egalitarian spirit of the Constitution. People hated King and could not explain why. He only became an icon of peace and racial reconciliation over a decade after his assassination.

In the same spirit, some people hate our president and cannot quite put their finger on why. King would be receptive to robust debate and opposition towards the president based on substantive policy issues; this is a reflection of our dynamic democracy. However, King would be ashamed of the hate-infused politics of dysfunction that have recently paralyzed our nation.

For many of us, Martin Luther King Jr. Day is simply a day off of work or a day off from school. From Congress to our communities, we should use King’s holiday to deeply reflect on our role in embracing a non-discriminatory, equitable, sensitive, and more compassionate society. In legislative assemblies, schools, and in the workplace, we should embrace behavior that would make King proud, not disappointed. In our private and public lives we should strive to embrace his Beloved Community.

Renford Reese, Ph.D. is a political science professor and founder of the Prison Education Project at Cal Poly Pomona: http://www.PrisonEducationProject.org
He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Hong Kong and is the author of five books.

Reese, Renford (2011), ‘Obama and The Republican Identity Crisis’, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin (Ontario, CA), May 27.

Republicans are currently going through an identity crisis. The party has been staunchly ANTI- Obama, Big Government, Taxes, Infrastructure Development, Green, Health Care Reform, Social Welfare, Gay Rights, Immigration, and Compromise. Republicans have been against so much that it is difficult to tell what they actually support. Indeed, their “Just Say No,” rhetoric is at the heart of their current problem.

Beyond lowering the deficit and cutting taxes, Republicans do not seem to have any other issues on their agenda. These two topics seem to be a universal Republican response to how to solve all of the nation’s problems.

Ask a Republican how do we create jobs and lower the unemployment rate? How do we solve the high drop out rates in our inner city schools? How do we reform our health care system? How should we embrace sustainable energy? How do we regulate corporate abuse? For these, and other complex questions, Republicans have a non-complex and simplistic answer: “We have to cut the deficit and lower taxes.” The lack of sophistication and nuance in this generic response is why Republican presidential candidates cannot gain traction.

Donald Trump is a prime example of the Republican “issues” problem. Trump could not muster any legitimate policy issues to challenge President Obama on so he turned to his birth certificate. When President Obama produced the birth certificate and exposed Trump’s silliness at the White House Correspondents Dinner, Trump realized that his 15 minutes of political fame were up; he had nothing else to campaign on so he rightly dropped out. Other Republicans such as Mike Huckabee, Haley Barbour, and Mitch Daniels will not run for 2012 because they inherently understand the “Conservative Paradox.”

In order to be a legitimate Conservative contender one must be validated by the Rush Limbaugh’s of the Right. Limbaugh’s Right requires Conservative candidates to be non-compromising ideological purists. They must necessarily be “Just Say No” candidates for Limbaugh’s approval. Astute Republican candidates are dropping (and will continue to drop) out of the race because they understand that they cannot win a general election with such a narrow-minded agenda.

The growing Republican identity crisis has been manifested in other ways as well. Traditionally, the party that has advocated the “Traditional Values” platform, Republicans seem more inclined not to practice what they preach.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Newt Gingrich’s unconscionable hypocrisy has been on center stage recently. How can either of these high profile Republicans lecture Americans about morality or traditional values? Gingrich’s explanation of his $500K Tiffany’s (jewelry buying) debt is not only embarrassing, but it undermines Republican credibility.

The clamorous demand by Limbaugh and his protégés that Conservatives be ideologically pure is sabotaging their hopes of having a legitimate Republican candidate for 2012. For example, Mitt Romney implemented Obama-style health care in Massachusetts. Instead of critiquing the pros and cons of his approach, many Republicans see Romney as unelectable because of this single policy initiative. The extreme Right’s hate, anger, and irrationality are the foundation of a political cannibalism that has hijacked the Conservative agenda and exacerbated the Republican identity crisis.

Obama has also played a significant role in this current complexion crisis. When he killed Osama bin Laden, Republicans could no longer claim to be stronger on the anti-terrorism and national security front. This also undercut the growing chatter on the Right that Obama was an un-American Muslim sympathizer. When he agreed in 2010 to extend the Bush tax cuts he temporarily took taxes off the table. He is now advocating drilling for oil in the U.S., so he has taken that issue off the table. He has agreed to substantially cut the federal deficit, so he has minimized this as an issue.

Republicans want to get in the ring and fight Obama but they lack a coherent fight plan. They are finding it increasingly difficult to box with Obama–because he takes jabs and body blows like no other, because he bobs and weaves like no other. Every time they think they have him against the ropes and cornered he escapes—delivering his own lethal jabs and body blows.

In the end, it will be the lack of a coherent Republican fight plan and the resilience of the toughest political boxer in American history that will leave one person standing in 2012. Maybe then, Republicans will realize that Obama was their best option all along.

___ (2012), ‘Les manifestations linguistiques de l’oppression: l’expérience des Afro-Américains’, Droit et Cultures, 63 (S’entendre sur la langue), 171-90.

___(2012), ‘GOP Extremism Killed Romney’s Chances’, Los Angeles Daily News.

Breaking view: GOP Extremism Killed Romney’s Chances, Professor Writes
An unemployment rate hovering around eight percent, a sluggish economy, and a growing deficit were supposed to make the incumbent president vulnerable and the Republican challenger the favorite. Indeed, this election was Romney’s to lose. But, Romney let conservative extremism snatch victory from his assured hands.

Romney lost this election because he began his campaign too far to the Right and could not work his way back to the center in time. In fact, it was his tacit embrace of the negative spirit of his party that undermined his presidential bid.

The overarching posture of modern day conservatism is oppositional. The no- compromise stance of Republicans has proven to be sophomoric, counterproductive, and undemocratic. Ask New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, what Republicans really think about bipartisanship and compromise—even when dealing with a devastating natural disaster. By so passionately trying to undermine President Obama’s agenda, Republicans in Congress undermined their own credibility. Ironically, this anti-Obama hate has crippled the GOP.

Republicans put their disdain for the president over the public good, which turned out to be a losing formula. Not only did they not achieve their four-year objective of making Obama a one-term president, the backlash to their hate is being seen in Obama celebrations throughout the nation.

Romney, a moderate by nature, got swept up in the intensity of the “anti-” Republican fervor. It was a costly tactical decision for Romney’s platform to so rigidly mirror the base of his party, which is anti-gay, anti-women rights, anti-immigration, anti-minority, anti-welfare, anti-health care reform, anti-global warming, anti-unions, and anti-education. When you are harshly oppositional to all of these groups you necessarily limit your voting pool.

Republican Senatorial candidates Todd Akins and Richard Murdock are reflections of the new unfettered conservatism. Akins’ infamous comment about “legitimate rape” and Murdock’s comment about how pregnancy from rape is “God’s will” are endemic of a callous, insensitive, and out of touch party that has lost its way. There is inevitable collateral damage when righteous conservatism goes unchecked.

If Romney were candid, he would tell us that his base held him hostage. He would tell us that instead of tap-dancing for the Rush Limbaughs of the right wing, he should have charted the same moderate course that he did as governor of Massachusetts. Moreover, he would tell us about his political dilemma; in order to appeal to his base he had to take an unyielding stance against a host of policy initiatives and groups. The more animosity he directed towards the liberal perspective the more it energized his base–but alienated others.

With Obama securing 80 percent of the minority vote and Romney securing 60 percent of the white vote, race politics was palpable in this election. The problem for the Republicans is that wooing only the white male vote is a failing strategy. And as the demographics increasingly shift towards a more diverse nation, Republicans will find it even more difficult in the coming years to win the White House and senatorial seats with their current philosophy.

In September, Republican Senator Lindsay Graham told the Washington Post: “We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.” Graham is right. If the Republican Party does not become more inclusive and less hostile toward progressive initiatives they will be irrelevant and extinct sooner than later.

___( 2010), ‘Obama’s Masterful Chess Game’, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/San Bernardino County Sun (CA), December 26, sec. Opinion, A15.

I begin my “Introduction to American Government” courses at Cal Poly Pomona by teaching students about the ideological spectrum. I discuss the political chess game of ideology. This quarter it was quite confusing for my students to understand Conservatism v. Liberalism because the traditional descriptors for each perspective seemed to flip-flop. For example, the new tax deal that was signed by President Obama is peppered with ideological contradictions. The bill passed with a 277-148 vote in the House and an 81-19 vote in the Senate.

Traditionally advocates of the underdog, Democrats voted to give the wealthy tax breaks with this bill. Republicans, traditionally advocates of reducing the deficit and adamant opponents of stimulus strategies, voted for this bill. The animated opposition to this bill came mostly from liberal Democrats that were, ironically, afraid of what the $858 billion price tag would do to the soaring federal deficit. Many conservative Republicans, who define themselves as “deficit hawks,” voted for this bill.

What was more confusing to my students than these ironic twists by politicians is the practical ideological contradictions embraced by the average American. For instance, one of my conservative students who opposes the president’s “socialist” agenda was laid off from his job several months ago. I asked him in class how he was surviving.

He said, “I’m surviving on unemployment benefits,” not really conscious of the contradiction. I told him that conservatives fought against extending the “socialist” unemployment benefits that he was receiving. It was Obama and the Democrats who fought for this student’s well-being and the millions of others in his situation.

In continuing to make my points about ideological paradoxes, I told my class of how my NASCAR-loving high school classmates in McDonough, Ga., are anti-elitist at their core. I asked, “Why would my former classmates oppose a tax on people who make $250,000 or more? Why would my rebel-flag-and-camouflage-wearing friends be against an estate tax levied on the very wealthy – the same country club types that they despise?” My puzzled students had no responses to these questions. The candid answers explain the tragedy of ideology in this nation.

Overworked and perpetually busy, Americans do not have time for nuance or detail. We have become reactionary and robotic in the way we respond to our politics du jour. Without introspection and a careful examination of why we support some policies and oppose others, Americans wait for ideologues to tell them what to think.

Imagine Rush Limbaugh telling one of my former classmates, who has been laid off from the Snapper Lawnmower factory in McDonough, that he should not take the president’s socialist unemployment benefits; he should refuse government-sponsored health care benefits for his three kids; and that he should support giving tax breaks for the wealthy and super-wealthy (like Limbaugh).

Rush and his proteges spout these instructions to naive followers on the airwaves daily. With the mesmerizing influence of a charismatic demagogue, Rush inspires his followers to passionately fight against their own best interests – metaphorically encouraging them to drink poisonous grape Kool-Aid.

The landslide congressional wins by Republicans in the midterm elections taught (or reminded) the president that the average American is not interested in a nuanced deconstruction of public policies. Instead, they are susceptible to manipulation by venomous sound bites and unflattering labels. Given this refresher, the president has masterfully retreated. He has compromised and given the Republicans the ideological leverage to expose their own glaring contradictions.

Obama has outmaneuvered his opponents on health care reform, finance reform, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the START Treaty. Now that he has given Republicans their tax cut, what else do they have on their limited agenda? He has effectively taken this trump card off the table. After adding $858 billion to the federal deficit, Republicans will soon get back to discussing fiscal discipline. This will sound contradictory.

In order to significantly cut the deficit now, Republicans are forced to tinker with one of the “Big Three” – Social Security, Medicare or defense. Each Republican understands the political consequences of tampering with Social Security and/or Medicare. As conservatives they understand the consequences of fiddling with the defense budget.

In the game of political chess, by taking taxes off the Republican agenda, Obama has effectively taken their queen. And by time he is inaugurated for a second term, the president will utter, perhaps under his breath, “Checkmate.”

Reese, Renford. 2020. “Chaos and Ubris.” Interview, edited by Daphné Romy-Masliah.

From: Daphné Romy
Sent: Tuesday, September 22, 2020 12:28 AM
To: Renford R. Reese

Subject: Ex: Shared from BBC News

Hi Ren,

I hope your doing well!
I’ve just heard about this strange feud and wonder what conclusions to draw … so better get it from the horse’s mouth of the expression can still be used…
warm regards!!!! D’

Allen, Kerry. 2020. “Investigation into US professor sparks debate over Chinese word.” In BBC Monitoring, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54107329.

Hi Daphné,
Good to hear from you. I hope you are well. I received my Ph.D. from USC and was an active member of the Black Graduate Student Association when I was there. In this scenario, context is everything. If the professor had malice intent for using these phonics, I agree that he should be reprimanded. But, this does not appear to be the case so I do not think he should be reprimanded or ostracized.
I think the African American students in this class should have understood the context of the lesson and not have been so hypersentive and accusatory toward the professor. I was tutored in Chinese for five years and occasionally spoke Chinese when I lectured as a Fulbright Fellow at the University of Hong Kong. I understand the intricate nuances of Mandarin and Cantonese. Their language is their language.

If I am teaching a “West African Politics” course and Niger is one of the countries that my course focuses on, what am I supposed to do when a group of students say they do not want me to say the word Niger because it is too closely related, in sound and appearance, to the N-Word?
It is going too far to accuse me of be incendiary because I say Niger or have my students read the word Niger in course readings.

In our post-George Floyd Racial Justice awareness movement we have to be careful about calling everything that might offend us as African Americans as racist or else we risk undermining actions and behaviors that are truly racist.
Ren

NOTE: Renford Reese publishes regularly in this blog and has a dedicated page on Afro-American Perspectives See also our ABOUT page

Reich, Tova (2008), My Holocaust (First Happer Perennial Edition; New York: HarperCollins) 326.

56: Maurice sighed. Every so often he encountered a specimen like this;his Blanchie called them the PCnicks, the even-Hitler-has-rights delegation. Their daughter in law Arlene was a card-carrying member of this union-soft in the head sheltered cuddled American liberal do-gooders type with absolutely no clue about what was possible on this planet in the department of chaos and horror.

166: Jesus Christ, the Poles were victims too-martyrs, Christians. Why was all the attention focused only on te Jews? That’s all anyone ever heard -Jews, Jeus, Jews. In places like China with over a billio population, they must be stunned when they discover one fine morning that therer are after all so few Jews in the world, given all the noise and trouble these Jews stir up and the landfills of verbiage they generate.
230: The Minister of Jihad indicated the Hasid (…) “That’s my son the doctor”
“He’s a doctor?” Maurice asked incredulously. Almost nothing could surprise me anymore.
(…)
They should call me Abu Majnun, not Abu Shahid! I sent him to the Harvard of terrrorist training camps in Afghanistan (…) but then the Rabbis got hold of him when he was on holiday in Ukrain looking for a preview of Paradise – the rabbis of Chabad. He mixed them up with the mullah of Hamas, my poor Shahid. Chabad, Hamas- what’s the difference? A bunch of beards on the prowl for lost souls (—). And this is my reward -a Jewish doctor without even a shingle”
“I see, I see”, Maurice replied, nodding his head sympathetically. Well, if that’s your son the doctor, then maybe that holy schwester nun over there talking to herself holding that urine analysis pish bottle is mine daughter the nurse. It looks like a shidduch made in heaven. Maybe we should introduce them.
326: The old man announces the new name of the museum in accordance with the terms of the agreement hammered out: United States Holocausts Memorial Museum.
One little s, the old man says. It’s not big deal, ladies and gentlemen. But two s’s? SS? Never! That’s were we draw the line.

Reid, Mark A. 1993. Redefining Black Film. Berkeley: University of California.

Reitz, Jeffrey and Breton, Raymond (1994), The illusion of difference: realities of ethnicity in Canada and the United States (Ottawa: C.D. Howe Institute).

release. 2000. Emigrés Go Home. Trend Newsletter, 27 november, 3.

The Russian Bazaar, a weekly newspaper in Brooklyn, New York, published “Why They are Leaving”. In the story, émigrés explained why they returned to Russia. Most left because they didnonèt feel part of the American culture. They also felt that the U.S. lacked what Russains call dukhovnost, the spiritual side of life. Wrote one returnee:”I don’t want to heap dirt on America, a country that acceptued us as its own. But neither I, nor my family, could accept the values of this world…And not because it’s worse that ours. It just isn’t ours”. It’s an important consideration in a n increasingly globalized world.The workforce may wanter, but many will come home again.

release. 2000. Globe-Hopping Workers. Trend Newsletter, 27 november, 8.

Re: December 10, 1998 Newsletter
We discussed the emergence of a global workforce in the December 10, 1998 issue and tracked its development in the March 2, 2000 issue. We anticipated a future where workers freely travel from country to country in search of economic and/or career opportunity, eventually coming chome.
The evidence keeps mounting. Some 60% of Nokia’s 56,500-employee worldwide workforce are non-Finns -1,000 of those live in Finland. In fact, foreigners outnumber Finns at the company’s research center in Henslinki, may from India. Nokia integrates foreigners into the workforce with a day of cross-cultural training, including a quiz about Finland’s recent history and a session on “dos and don’ts”.
During this same period, China has detected a “brain gain”, particularly among professionals educated and trained in the United States, Europe and Japan. Many Chinese people that left to study abroad in the 1980s did so amid considerable doubt that they would return home. However, experience gained abroad has given these now thirty -or forty-something professionals a significant edge in the newly privatized Chinese corporation.
A steady trickle of returnees over the past few years has turned into a steady stream. Chinese government officials say that the number of expatriates returning is rising by 13% a year. Most return for the opportunity, but also it is where their roots are. (cf. http://www.nokia.com)

Remaury, Bruno. 2019. Le Monde Horizontal (Corti ).

Dans la nuit de la grotte s’enfante le sacré p. 25

Renan, Ernest. 1878. langue et nation.

Une nation n’est pas constituée par e fait qu’on parle ue même langue, mais par le sentiment qu’on a fait ensemble de grandes choses dans le passé qu’on a la volonté d’en faire encore dans l’avenir.

Renault, Emmanuel. 2004. L’enjeu politique de l’identité. In L’identité. Paris: Editions La Decouverte.

___1999. Libéralisme politique et pluralisme culturel. Paris: Pleins Feux.

Reporter. 1982. Judge rejects suit for translation. New York Times, 24 oct., 49.

A l’origine du No. 60 de l’IJSL sur la question de la langue officielle et des droits linguistiques en 1986.

Reporter. 1986. Prop. 63 Deserves Approval. San Francisco Examiner, 26 octobre.

There is a curious aspect to the battle over Proposition 63, the proposal to designate English as the official state language. This is supposed to be one of the high-voltage issues on the ballot, as suggested by the emotional heat being generated in arguments for and against. But the heat is altogether on the peripheries; the public is, from all indications, unaffected by the noisy debate This is because the public, from all indications, unaffected by the noicy debate, because the public for once has its mind made up. On November 4 the voters will and shouId, we think–approve this proposition.
The polls show an overwhelming support; there is no stopping Position 63. Nor, after the returns are in, and through the months
years ahead, will the dark prophecies of the opponents ever materialize. This measure will not become, as they say now, an implement of racism, a tool for discrimination along ethnic lines. To the contrary, it will work to the vast benefit of immigrants and others in society whose prospects fur livelihood too often are crippled by deficiency in the language that propels this country’s economic life and its major activities otherwise.
This state constitutional amendment will serve to disabuse anyone of the nonsense, which otherwise might arise in future years, that multilingualism is a credible option in the larger affairs of California. The unforgettable message from the public majority-engraved as state policy–will be that people who want to succeed need to learn common language, quickly and thoroughly It is a message of practicality, not of ethnocenhicity The majority that favors this proposition is not racist or xenophobic, but simply realistic. We think the California majority wants to hell, immigrants to assimilate and succced rather than to raise a barrier against them. This is a law to help ove the melting pot, not interfere with it .
True enough, a large majority of immigrants is learning English rapidly and has a passion to do so, but some newcomers are neglecting this imperative. And while there is no push for a legal division of uages, there is some pressure to insert legal concessions to linguistic division (as on juries).
Proposition 63 requires state government to take “all steps necessary to insure that the role of English as the common language of the of California is preserved and enhanced.” It rules out any law which diminishes or ignores” that role. Actually, the measure does not reduce anyone’s constitutional rights. or forbid the teaching of foreign languages Nor do we think it would, as some people charge, eliminate bilingual education in public schools.
Rather, it could be a spur to more intensive and effective bilingual education,of the kind that gets quicker results in the teaching of English to newcomers than do some of the slowmotion bilingual curricull. No one should look upon Proposition 63 as an insult to ethnic identity: anyone can retain such identity. This initiative just asserts the obvious – that the citizen who does not become proficient in English is lost in the competition for higher achievement in this state.
Also, it expresses the conviction that the common language is the glue that helps to hold a society together. The frightful problems of some nations that are divided linguistically attest to the wisdom of the common-language thesis. even though some immigrants my feel that such a common designation denigrates their original languages. It does not. The long-term practicalities of national cohesion and the advancement of immigrants in American life. through linguistic assimilation. need to take precedence over temporary emotional responses Proposition 63 should be given a strong’”yes” vote

Reporter. 1988. Vote No on Bigotry. Tempe Daily News Tribune, October 22.

Politics is often a realm of nuance, compromise, grays, and maybes. It is a world rarely populated by things that are clearly good and clearly bad. Arizona has been treated to an exception to the rule in the form of Proposition 106 Without ifs. buts. or maybes, this proposal is bad stuff, to be clearly and simply rejected by the voters of this state onNovember 8.
Critics of the measure produce volumes of problems with the proposition. They name grief after grief that would be visited upon the state under such a jingoistic and draconian amendment to the constitution Adults seeking to learn English would be turned away because the amendment would forbid the use of foreign languages by government entities. Those facing civil court proceedings, such as divorce, liability, accident damage, would not be elig~ble for a state-supplied translator So the poor who don~t speak English would simply be out of luck in trying to pursue their nghts in civilcourt The use of foreign languages in tourism and economic deuek,pment efforts by the state might well be banned under the amendment. There is every reason
to believe that an Arirona governor on an official mission to Mexico could not give a speech in Spanish, much less have her paid staff producethe speech.

Proponents of the proposition give a standard rebuttal to all of these criticisms and more. They say that the amendment would really have no effect at all 50 why bother! Why all the efforts, all the money spent to promote the Official English measure! Why hire people and pay them as much as $1 per signature hi circulate petitions to put the measure on the ballot’
The Proposition 106 proponents’ rebuttal of the criticisms is disingenuous. They know exactly what it willdo it will set up a twotiered social and legal system in Arizona. instead oi encouraging non English-speaking people to learn English and move into the mainstream of social. economic. and political life in this state. the amendment will force those people to hide their language deficiencv, make them into second-class citizens. Above all, and this is most important to the most zealous supporters of this proposition, it will make it clear just whoh boss around here. it will codify racial and cultural bias It will steep in constitutional legitimacy the illegitimate notion that personal worth is based upon the color of oneh skin, the place of one’s birth. and the language one speaks.
The promoters of this meanspinted proposition don’t want those who don9 speak English to learn the language. They want them to go back home. They want them to leave or. at the very least, they want others like them to stay home and not come here in the first place The intentions behind this national campaign–and make no mistake, that~s exactlv what this is. not some home grown. grassroots exercise in democracy-have been laid bare by recent revelations and resignations at the very top of the organiration promulgating this institutionalired bigotry The resignations of Waiter Cronkite from the advisory board of U.S English. of organization president Linda Chdver. and finally of founder John Tanton document how fast this house of cards has crumbled under scrutiny Tanton$ bigoted paranoia about “those with their pants up being caught by those with their pants down~~ is sufficient evidence that this proposition is no warm-hearted effort to keep America’s melting pot perking along.

It’s rare that citizens get such a clear-cut opportunity to strike a blow against xenophobia. bigotry. and elitism Thev can strike that blow with a resounding..no.. on Froposition 11/6 November 8.

Reporter. 1989. Say it In English. Newsweek, 22.

Reporter. 1995. One Nation, One Language” “Would making English the nation’s official language unite the country or divide it”. US News and World Report, 25 septembre, 38-48.

Research, Bureau of Immigration and Population. 1990. Australian Immigration: A Survey of the Issues. Canberra: Bureau of Immigration and Population Research.

Resnick, P. 1994. Thinking English Canada. Toronto: Stodart.

___ 1994. Toward a Multinational Federalism: Asymmetrical and Confederal Alternatives. In A la Recherche d’un nouveau Contrat politique pour le Canada: Options asymétriques et options confédérales, edited by F. L. Seidle. Québec: Institute for Research on Public Policy.

Rhines, Jesse Algeron. 1996. Black Film/White Money. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

Ribó, Rafael (2013), ‘Catalan Ombudsman’, paper given at International Conference on Language Rights: Sharing best practice, Dublin Hilton.

Sindic de Greuges de Catalunya.
Speaks in Catalan for a few words.
sociological data

Spain is a plurilingual state 47,27 million.
a bit more than half live in a unilingual territory.
the rest Galicians 2.8 6%
Bask 2.3 4.5%
Catalan

Spanish constitution gives the official status to Castilian, while in Art 3 al.2 speaks that the other languages can be official in the respective self-governing Communities.
There is no single state institution that uses other languages than castillian in their daily life.
Cervantes Institute is unilingual to such an extent that specialists of our most famous writers are outside Spain (US and England)

Franco’s dictatorship
1979 Equality
1983 and 86: new
98% understands now Catalan
Council of Europe considers a great example.
Occitan recognized an official language in Catalan

at the age of 14, exam to prove full trilingualism Catalan, Castilian and English. Their results are better in Castilian than in the rest of Spain.

Catalan present everywhere such as twitter etc…all mass media

Consumer rights and linguistic norms in Catalan Statute 2006: Meets resistance from really powerful brands

public sectors: both languages are attended. Problem in counting system lowering level of Catalan for fear of translation.

Right to live in your own language
Right and respect to live together with other speaking communities
right to learn other languages and cultures in an open way
120 languages in Catalonia 18 foreign born populations

Complaints:
low percentage: 4000 queries, less than 200 directly linguistic complains: state apparatus in CaTalonia, spanish police and civil guard, tax agency, big services as social security on retirement pension. We solved all except the guardia civil! We also get complains from doctors who come from argentina who don’t speak catalan.
all these complains are solved.
Nobody is obliged to speak another language.

Future:

linguistic conflict is a political strategy from outside CataloNia
attempTs to divide Catalan language unity. Harming rights
Catalan demands for self determination
some spanish anwers for cleavages
a clear, fruitful and positive language inheritance and mandate
catalan and castilian speaking civil unity. A whole and Single People and Community.
Q&A
drm: Q Fraser: FRENCH. he apologized and simply recognized that he was eager to compel with the timeframe.
Ribo: english education? Not fully answered, he came back on the good figures in spanish but also admitted the very poor english, a spanish and not properly catalan problem.

Some assertions are wrong. Being a catalan, I do not share the description that our umbudsman has made. Our duality and richness, I don’t share that bitterness. He’s taking sides.

Immersion system outrageous problem (Fraser) 200 000 immersion enrolled. French language schools with some limited access even for children coming from francophone countries.

Rich, Roland. 1988. The Right to Development: A Right of Peoples. In The Rights of Peoples, edited by J. Crawford. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

40: La plupart de la littérature sur le sujet est en français. La méthode pour aborder ce sujet diffère de celle qu’adopterait un juriste formé dans la tradition anglo-saxonne. On parle désormais de la troisième génératin des droits de l’homme (note, le premier a utiliser cette expression est Karle Vasak, ancien conseiller juridique de l’Unesco) et qui inclent les droits au développement.

On distinque trois étapes (ou générations):
la première génération remonte aux Révolutions Française et Américaine
la seconde est issue de la Révolution Russe et fait écho aux concepts occidentaux des Droits Economiques, Sociaux et Culturels
la troisième est une réponse apportée au phénomène d’interdépendance globale et nécessite une coopération internationale pour leurs résolutions.
45: La Déclaration Universelle des Droits des Peuples adoptée à Alger le 4 juillet 1976 est divisée en sept parties:
La première s’attache aux droits des Peuples à exister et à préserver leur culture nationale et culturelle
la seconde concerne les droits à l’autodétermination politique et à la représentation démocratique
la troisième concerne les droits économiques et contient des déclations des droits des peuples à chosir leur voie de développtement spécifique
la quatrième concerne les Droits culturels légitimes des peuples dont les trésors doivent leur être rendus
la sixième concerne les droits des minorités sans aucune mentin d’un droit de sécession
La Déclaration ne tente pas de définir le terme de “Peuples” qu’elle tend à considérer comme synonyme de “nation”.

Rickard, J. 1988. Australia, A Cultural History. London/New York: Longman.

114: More than 16’000 men went to South Africa, compared to about 6’000 Canadians.
115: The tendency to see the United States as a model had encouraged the notion that a republic was at least a possible future.
First cerlebration of Emprire Day in 1905, stemming from Canada in the late 1890s, on May 24 (Queen Victoria’s birethday)…”the children of Great Britain and Greater Britain , “The Dominions beyond the seas”)…Catholic Schools generally declined to take up Empire Day. Casrdinal Moran of Sydney thougt it out of place and instead converted that day to “Australia Day”
116: In 1902 nearly all Australians would have agreed with Deakin in seeing “unity of race”y as “an absolute essential to the unity of Australia.,
117: White Australia meant not only an immigation policy which excluded non-whites, but a corresponding policy of, in Deakin’s words, “the deportation or reduction of the number of aliens now in our midst. Although the term “white Australia was never officially endorsed in the legislation, the strenth of the sentiment ensured that it was one of the first issues addressed by the new commonwealth parliament. In one sense racism itself awas part of the British heritage, but htere is no doubt that the advocacy of White Australia revealed a new and nastry stridency.
118: Whilst the fear of China had been one of Asian “hordes” submerging an Anglo-Celtick cultrue by sheer force of numbers, the Japanese threat weas perceived as a military one, all the more immediate for Japan having recently graduated as a world power on a par with the European nations. Would not Japan imitate Europe in imperial pretentions as well?

143:The Unique and, to many, the perplexing achievement of Australian democracy has been to combien and egalitarian tradition with the politics of class. Lacking a titled aristocracy and lesured class clonial societety encouged an egalitariansim of manners.
143-144: wHEN THE COLONIES FEDERATED IN 1901 THEIR POLITICA STRUCTURES VARIED, iN nEW sw, qUEENSLAND, AND South Australia something like a party system existed. In Victoria the severity of the 1890s depression and the political emphasis on recovery had discouraged polirisation. In Tasmania and Western Australia paries hardly existed at all.(…)It had taken Labor a mere 18 years , from its first NSW electoral successes of 1891, to establish its po9sition as one of the two parties. Appearances also suggested that Labor had dictated the terms of poiltical conflict, for although “Liberal” was at firstf the preferred name of the other party, as a political force it was also known as “Anti-Labor”…Austraians inherited a tendency to see constitutional virture in a neat politicala bi-polarity. Labor was the organisational peacemaker, and its methodes were often imitated. Labor was a trade union-based party. The party which musroomed after 1901 in Western Australi.
173: the great austrialian instituion, launched in 1923, Vegemite.
187: The sense in which Australians assumed a need for cultrual conformity is reflected in attitudes to minorities. At the best of times there were always those, like trade unionists, who resisted immigration programmes, but if there were to be immigrants then the general preference was fro Britishers.
The oft-made boast that Australians were 98% of Brish stock not only ignored the fact that the Irish-born might no wish to be so counted, but also defined all Australian-born citizens, even if of non-British decent, as “British”. Homogeneity was to this extent manufactured, and its proclamation was calculated to intimidate racial minoritesl. The White Austalia policy ensured that Asians were kept out, but the entry of small numbers of southern europeans, I talians, Yugoslavs and greeks, aroused hostility. As early as the 1890s some italians had entered the sugar industry in Queensland, but in the 1920s the European trickle became noticeable, though quotas enfured that it was still numerically dwarfed by the arrival of 261’000 british migrants. In the late 1930s refugees from Nazism, mostly Jews, added a new strand.
Even when such European migrants attempted to meet the demand to assimilate promptly their foreignness guaratneed that they were treated with suspicion.
188: “Above all, do not speak German in the streets and in the trams.
Modulate your voice. Do not make yourself conspicuous
anywhere by walking with a group fo persons, all of whom are loudly speaking a forwign language. Remember that the
welfare of the old-established Jewish communities in
Australia, as well as of every migrant, depends on your personal behaviour.
189: Few Australians saw immigration as socially beneficial. To be an immigrant entailed a cetrain stigma.
Aborigines could hardly be treated as immigrants, but more tellingly, they could be ignored, their very existence almost expunged from the national couscousness. So the Constitutin laid don that they should not be counted at the census as members of the Australian population. As late as 1928 it was possible for an inquiry to exonerate police in Central Australi who had shot 31 abos as a reprisal for the alleged murder of a white man…but by the 1939s there was the beginning of an agitation, led principally by anthropologists and church missionaries, to recognize a positive resp9onsibiltiy for the welfare of the abos. An anghropologist, A.P. Elkin startedd his carrier as an anglican priest, and whose work pioneered an understanding of abo religion. For the first time a pro-abo lobby, operating through the Association for theProtection of Native Races, began to be heard. In 1939 the Commonwealth Gvt, which contrtolled the Northern Territory but had no direct responsibility for abos in the STATES, ADOPTED A MORE ENLIGNTENED AND INFORMED POLICY, RECOGNISING aBORIGINAL RIGHTS, THOUGH STILL SEEING THEM IN AN ASSIMILATIONIST CONTEXT.
192: an important example was the emergence of the beach culture
193: Aftehr the Great War, the beach became the symbol of aAUstralia at pleasure.
195: When in 1941 Japan bombed the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, and the WWII suddnly began to impinge on the Australian conciousness the beech toolk on a new significance(…) the endless miles of glittering beaches had become a symbol of Australia’s vulnerability.
199: Sundeay evening,. 3 september 1939, young Prime Minister Robert Gordon Menzies annnouced the new ar and called for calmness, resolution, confience and hard work, implying a very diffent mood from that of 1914. Yet he still identified Australia as a « Dominion » of the « MOTHER Country », and the formula of words chosen deliberately suggested that Britain’s declaration automatically committed Australia.
The terms of Menzie’s address to the natin disguised the fact that a reassessment of Austrtalia’s rôle in its region and thw world at large had already begun. In a speech follwoing his appontment as PR, Menzies had emphasised that while in its approach to European Affairs Austalia had to depend on B ritish guidance, in the Pacific we had « primary resp9onsibilities and p rimary risks. The Austrtalian perspective was necessarily different, for « what Britain calls the Far East is to us the near nothr ». It foolwoed taht Austraia needed its won diplomatic representation, and in 1940 ambassadors to Japan, the US and China were appointed.

204: the labour governemnt of 1943 reconfirmed in 1946 sought to establish an independent foreign policy. Instrumental in this was Herbert Vere Evatt, the pugnacious and controversial external affairs minister.
205: When Japan entered the war, Evatt saw to it that unlike 1939, Australia made its own formal declaration. He was always eager to asset Australia’s interest in the allies’ conduct of the war, often irritating both the US and Britain. As planning for the peace began, Evatt emerged as a busy and determined spokesman for the samll nations, seeking to ensure that theri interests were not overlooked in the deals negotiated between the big Five. After the war, Asutralia was sympathetic to the emergent post-colonial countries, particularly Indonesia, and in 1948 Evatt’s intenational role was recognized in his election as President of the General Assembly of the UN.
206Chifley, who had succeded Curtin as PR in 1945 was sympathetic to Britains’ post-war economic problesm.
In 1950 Australia was anxious to be among the first to come to America’s aid in the Korean war.
206-207: American gratefulness for Australia’s speedy response contributed ti its readiness to sign the ANZUS Pact with Ausrtralia and NZ in 1951. This pact, partly designed to assuage Australian fears about the “soft ” peace treyty with japan deliberately excluded Britain.
208: Menzie’s dominance as PR from 1949 to 66 led to an economic shift that was already underway, with the US, and later Japan, looming larger in trade and investment. But from the Australian perspective, the real bereak with the past was signalled by Britain when it b wegan ngotiations in 1961 to enter the EEC. tHE MOVE suggested that the mother country had lost interest in its “dominion”.
210: At th the same time Australia’s relationship with the United States was evolving at differnt levels. The production of the first Holden car in 1948 by General Motors is generally regarded as a symbolic moment in this relatioship.
212: Perhaps the emerging complexity of the American relationship is best seen in the tradgedy of Vietnam.It was part of the Ausrtalian psychology -or at least the psychology of most policy makers, that there was a prime need to keep Amercia invoved in the Pacific region. There had always been uncertianties as to how binding the ANZUS commitment was, and it seemed that Australia sought every opportuniy to make the word flesh. In 1955 external affars minister Casey suggested to Menzies that it should be tacfully drawn to Washington’s attntion that « Australia would be sympathetic to the idea of an Amerrican base bing established on Australian soil: the Australia’s fefecne. So, too, the SEATO treaty negotiated in 1954, and to which the US, Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thaland were signatories, was welcomed ad complementing Anzus in engaging america in the region of australia’s concerne.
215: The Church of England, for example, began to look for its archbishops at home rather than in Englad, and in 1981 transfored itelf into the Anglican Church of Australia. A parallel transition was occurring in the Catholic Church, as the old generation of Irish.-born prelates gave way to Australian-Born successors.
The development of Canberra -since its inauguration in 1927 little more than a country town of public servants- was given priority by Menzies, and in the 1960s it beagan to acquire the scale and monuments which could help identify it as a national capital
Gorton tried to give an Australian flavour à une meeting du Président Nixon en lui assurant qu’il “iraient valser Matilda avec les USA”, BUT IT WAS THE ADVENT OF lABOR TO OFFFICE IN 1972, UNDER gOUGH wHITLEAM, WHICH SAW THE MOST DRAMTTIC FLOWERING OF WHAT CAME TO BE KNOWN AS “the new nationalism. Some changes were symbolic such as the restyling of the Commonwealth as the “Austrailan Goverment”.
216: The late 1960s saw a rapid expansion of subsidy to the arts, and this was largely justified in terms of the need to express an Australian culture(…). When, after decades of controversy and scalating expense, the Sydney Opera House was opened in 1973, it immediately became, for all its pactical faults as a building, a symbol of a new cultural optimism.
218: The Queen had become the Queen of Australia, appeals from Australian couts to the Privy CFoucil were gradually abolished, and so on. Australi was also shedding its small colonial emprie, in particualr Papua New Guinea.
independence was achieved in September 1975.
222: Although the entry of Japan into the war was not unexpected, Pearl Harb or was an immense shock(…). One advantage of PH from the Australian point of view, was that it ensured the USA’s participation in the war.
222: The transforamtion of Japan from wartime foe (a target for both racial fear and contempt) into a major trading partner has been accomplished quietly and carefully, but for many years the cultural implications of the relationship were tactfully avoided. Australian interest in Japan was littel more than polite, while Japanese inventstment in Austalia was accepted for the benefits it offered; that Japan’s graduation as a western econom ic power, revalling the US, might place Australia in another relationship of dependence has been for the most part ignored.
223: one recognises the profound changes that have occured since WWII, changes that have seen Australian society burgeon with a new diversity. No longer can it be assumed that the old Anghlo-éCeltic cultural hegemony will continue unquestioned.
224: Welcoming American troups in 1943. Prime Minister Curtin stressed their similarity to Australians. He spoke of the kinship with men and women who, largely, spring from the same stock as ourselves;”our visitors speak like us, think like us, and fight likeus”. Curtin was nevertheless wrong on all counts. (…). Ihey not only spoke differently. but ate differently; and their elaborate manners. particularly in dating and courting, clearly distinguished them from Australian men. Furthermore, Curtin’s reference to the shared “stock”ignored the slgniticant minority of black Americans.(…) for most Australians meeting the Yanks was an upyortunitv to make cultural comparisons.
225: A Labor government was forced, reluctantly, to consider the possible role of immigration in expanding Australia’s meagre population of seven million. (…) a programme was launched in 1947 (…). While the challenge of defending Australia was often cited as a jutification for immigration, it was more the commitment to economic growth which ultimately provided its rationale. Between 1947and 1469 more than two million migrants came. It hardly needed savmg that british migrants were preferred, and some 880,000 were attracted. 84 per cent on assisted passages.(…) ReFugees from eastern Europe, “dispLaced persons” as they were clinically dubbed, were accepted, with a nod towards humanitarian sentiment. Nordic migrants from northern Europe were welcomed as being the next best thing to British, but soon substantial numbers of southern Europeans, Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs and Maltese were taken: more than half a million arrived over the 1947-68
period, three-quarters of them paying their own way. If southern Eurupeans were only grudgingly accepted, Asians were virtually tabou. It was Calwcll who made the celebrated jest that “two Wongs do not make a White”.Bien qu’il ait plus tard justifié cette pointe en se référant à un membre du parlement T.W. White.
Migrants were expected to assimilate, which meant coming to terms with”the Australian way of life” with minimum fuss.
227: Australia had decided that it wqanted immigration, but it did not particularly want immigrants .
The grat popular success of John O’Grady’s 1957 novel, They’re a Weird Mob, purportedly written by one « Nino Culotta » sdemonstrated the assimilationist expections.(…) As late as 1969 the then minister for immigation, Billy Snedden, was still insistent that « we should have a monoculture, with everyone living in the same way, understanding each other, and choosing the same aspirations….Grown, not diversity, was the preoccupation.
234: The accumulating migrant presence began to change society without many Australians noticing it.
235: Political parties assumed that dipspersal was desirable, and resisted moves to create ethnic branches: the Scout momvment waw few ethnic troops on the American model. And although migrant communities formed urban clusters, there did not develop the clearly defined ghettoes which characterised American cities.
Migrangs, in the early years, understandably failed to penetrate the instituins of the host society, they were creating, or re-creating, their own institutions. Fro Greeks, for example, the Orthodox Czhurch was of viatal importance, while the family, such a pivotal instition in the immigrant expreince, carried the essential Greek culture with it. The children of Greek migrants, in attempting to adapt to the wys of school and playground, became aware of their own “Greekness”.
Because they tended to be preoccupied with immediate survival, and because they were fragmented by language and cultrue, migrants could not easily make themselves heard.
235-236: As migrants arrived the policy of immigration itself underwent subtle changes. The modest programme of aid to the undeveloped countries of south and sout-east asia which external affaris minster Spender helped launch as the Colombo Plan of 1950 brought large numbers of Asian studebnts to study in Australia. They were only visitors, but the gesture of racial goodwill involved, even if patronizing, seemed to make a symbolic dent in the white australia policy.
in 1958 the arbitrary dictation test was abolished. In 1866 the racial bar was relaxed to the extent that application for entry by “well qualified people” would be considered “on the basis of their suitablity as settlers”. Thus technically tzhe White Ausralia policy had been discarded. At the same time the difficulty in keeping up the supply of immigangs in the 1960s forced the immigration department to recuit in countries non considered before, such as Trukey. So the first significant numbers of non-Christians since the Chinese of the goldrushes began to arrive.
238: The opening of Monash University in 1961 heralded a spate of new universites designed to cater for the expanded expectations of a post-war baby boom generation. Students were suddely more numerous, and provided fertile ground for political dissent in the wake of Vietnam.
244: “It’s time” was the simple solgan of the Labor campaign in 1972: you were feft to complete the message to your own taste. Gough Whitlma convincingly played the part of a man of destiny.(…) He also carefully recognized the demands of the vocal miniroties, such as the young, women, migrants and Aborigines. Labor won.
245-: In 1975, the Governor-General dismissed Whitlam and installed Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister. (…) Althouth some of Labor’s policies, such as the Medibank health scheme, were dimantled, many of the cultural assumpions of Whitlma’s programme were maintained, DCiversity was recognized, Australia had become a “multicultural” society, though what “multiculturalism” meant remained vage. In 1976 Fraser legislated for Aboriginal land rights in the Northern Territoiry, but had less success in persuading the States to cooperatioe in making their Crown land available.
Thus although 1975 spelled the end of the optimism associated with the experimentation of the counter-culture and the reformist programme of the Whitlam goverment, it was not until the 1980s that the new cultural issues crystallised. Labor’s success in 1§983 in ousting Fraser reapired some of the psychological damage caused by the events of 1975.
Perhaps Aborigines had the most cause for disillusion. Dependent politically on white conscience and goodwill, they saw the promise of land rights being eroded.
Migrants too were to discover that the short- Migrants, B,o, were todjscover th~l the short-lived recognitaln
which had been accorded them was not undisputed. ImmigratWn policy since the war had been regarded as bipartisan. and White Australia had heen abandoned with minimal intrusion of party politics Now muliiculturalism became a subjed ior controversv.
and the political accord which hjd sustained the immigration policy was threatened In 1′)84 the weliknown historian and writer, Professor Gcofirey Blainey, launched .1 campaign to reduce the immlgration intake, and in particular its Asian component. Blainey was not proposing a return to White Australia, but his argument that the intake of non Europeans was testing communitv tolerance became confused with alarmist claims that the gurernment had replaced White Australia with a ‘sulrender Australia~ policy Bainey and his supporters claimed that immigwtion had been treated as a taboo topic. his irifics warned of the racism which his
campaign was unmlentionally stimillating For a time some Liberals nirted with taking up Biaincy~s crusade, but in the end caution I”cvailed: the government made some minor adjustments to the intake. and the controversy died down almost as suddenlv as it had hared up I ~uwevcr. the questloninfi oi multiculturalism continued In his curiously titledapulo~a A(i fur Aiicll?iiin” Blainev described. with
a,me nostalgia, what Australia was like before the war. Lrowmg up In a country town. he could not recilllhearing a foreign language before he was ten. or seeing a Tew Ulltil he was thirteen (how, one wonders, could he be sure!); he tst met an Aborigine when hitch-hiking around Australia at eighteen. .1 prefer our present rvorld~ but Idonotdendethatvanished world,~ he wrote.” The implication was that, although une could nut so back~ pursuit of the multicultural palh would sever us fn,m this Anglu-Crltic heritage. Blainey has also emphasised his ou·n colonial roots. his eighi F~nglish and C.eltic greatB8″dp~rmts ail li~ing in Victonaal the time of tl~e guldrushes.
255: of most significance was the growth of the universities, which increasingly were able to provide the intellectual apparatus for the study of Australian society and culture.
Before WWII both had been nlargely ignored by the universities.

Rickford, John R. 1998. The Creole Origins of African-American Vernacular English: Evidence from Copula Absence. In African-American English: Structure, History and Use, edited by S. S. Mufwene, J. R. Rickford, G. Bailey and B. John. London: Rootledge.

cf. Rickford, J. R. and J. McWhorter (1997). Language Contact and Language Generation: Pidgins and Creoles. The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. F. Coulmas. Oxford, Blackwell: 238-256.
Pidgins and creoles are new varieties of language generated in situations of language contacts. A pidgin is sharply restricted in social role, used for limited communication between speakers or two or languages who have repeated, extended contacts with each other, for instance through trade, enslavement, or migration. A pidgin usually combines elements of the native languages of its users and is typically simpler than those native languages insofar as it has fewer words, less morphology and a more restricted range of phonological and syntactic options (…). A creole, in the classic sense of Hall (1966), is a pidgin that has acquired native speakers, usually, the descendants of pidgin speakers who grow up using the pidgin as their first language. In keeping with their extended social role, creoles typically have a larger vocabulary and more complicated grammatical resources than pidgins. However, some extended pidgins which serve as the primary language of their speakers (…) are already quite complex, and seem relatively unaffected by the acquisition of native speakers.
Although it was assumed for a long time that croles evolved from pidgins, Thomason and Kaufman (Thomason, S. G. and T. Kaufman (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic LInguistics. Berkeley, University of California Press.) and others have argued that many creoles, particularly those in the Caribbean and in the Indian Ocean, represent “abrupt creolization”, having come into use as primary or native contact languages before a fully crystallized pidgin had had time to establish itself.
From the point of view of the creolist/dialectologist debate, the fundamental question is whether a significant number of Africans wo came to the United States between the 17th and 19th centuries went through processes of pidginization, creolization, and (maybe) decreolization in acquiring English (creolists’ position), or whether they learned the English of Britihs and other immigrants fairly rapidly and directly, without an intervening pidgin or crole state (the dialectologist’s position) Stewart, W. A. (1967). Sociolinguistic factors in the history of American Negro dialects. Florida FL Reporter: 11.) Dillard (Dillard, J. L. (1972). Black English: its History and Usage in the United States. New York, Random House) and Hancock (1986) favor the hypothesis that many slaves arrived in the American colonies and the Caribbean already speaking some variety of West African Pidgin English (WAPE) or Guinea Coast Creole English (GCCE). Rickford and Schneider (Schneider, E. W. (1982). “On the history of Black English in the USA: Some new evidence”.” English World Wide(3): 18-46.), among others, feel that such slaves were probably not very numerous Recordings with descendants of African Americans who left the United States for other countires int he late 18th or early 19th centry, and who, because of their relative isolation in their new countires, are thought to represent an approximation to the African-American speech of their emigrating foreparents. (cf. Dominican Republic Samana region and Liberian Settler English) It is impossible to conclude with a balance sheet of pluses and minuses which would add up to a final decision on the creole origins issue. To my mind, there is enough persuasive evidence in these data to suggest that AAVE did have some creole roots. The very fact that copula absence is widespread both in AAVE and mesolectal creoles, b ut not in white Englishes outside of American South strongly suggests htat at least some of the predecesors of modern AAVE arose from a restructuring pricess similar to that which produced the English based creoles.

Rickford, John R. 1998. The Ebonics controversy in my backyard: A sociolinguist’s experiences and reflections. Language in Society.

(To appear in a collection of essays in Language in Society 1998/99 on the theme “What do sociolinguists have to say about
the Great Language Debates of our Times?” compiled by Monica Heller)

1. Introduction. The phrase “Not in my backyard”–abbreviated to NIMBY–is commonly used to refer to the stiff opposition
which local citizens mount to prevent individuals or institutions that they consider undesirable from moving into their
communities. Linguists sometimes seem to have a NIMBY attitude towards Applied Linguistics issues and the Great Language
Debates of our Times, motivated perhaps by the fear that they will distract us from the theoretical and descriptive research we
consider our bread and butter (if not our fame and fortune), that they will devour our time and dilute our expertise, or that they
will lead us into uncharted waters for which our training and experience provide little preparation.

In December 1996 the Ebonics controversy landed plumb in my backyard, however, before I could say or even think “NIMBY!” The controversy which erupted from the Oakland School Board’s December 18 resolution to recognize Ebonics as the “primary language of African American children” and take it into account in their Language Arts lessons fell in my backyard for two reasons: (1) Geography, since Oakland was one hour away from Stanford; and (2) Specialization, since I was one of a relatively small group of linguists who had been studying African American Vernacular English (or AAVE, as sociolinguists preferred to call it) for some time, and one of only a handful of such people near Oakland, California, where the media were beginning to converge. Mary Hoover, the longtime AAVE and Education specialist from Howard University, was working in the Oakland School District at the time, and she arranged for Carolyn Getridge, the Superintendent of the Oakland School Board, to contact me for linguistic references and information which she could use in dealing with a sceptical if not hostile press.

Of course, to echo LaForest’s point with respect to the debates about Quebec French, linguists were not at first considered to have any special expertise to contribute to this issue, and the people initially quoted in the media were either policy makers (like
Delaine Eastin, California Superintendent of Education, and Richard Riley, US Secretary of Education) or African American
celebrities (like Maya Angelou, poet and author, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, political activist). Within a few days, however, the
media began turning to linguists to provide examples and descriptions of Ebonics and opinions about the Oakland decision, and,
like other specialists in AAVE, my phone began ringing off the hook.

For the next four months–until April 1997, when the Oakland School Board dropped the word “Ebonics” from its
implementation proposals and the media mistakenly assumed it had reversed its plans–I fielded scores and scores of calls from
newspapers and magazines, did several TV interviews, and participated in radio talk show discussions from all over the US and
from overseas stations in Canada and Australia. After that, I continued to get occasional overtures from the media, but my main
involvement since then has been responding to requests from conference organizers, universities, church and community groups
to talk about the Ebonics controversy or participate in panel discussions on the topic, replying to email and other requests for
information from high school and college students doing papers on Ebonics, and trying to expand my own reading, research and
writing on the subject. All in all, this Ebonics controversy in my backyard has been the most intense, all-encompassing,
exhilarating, exhausting, thought-provoking and emotion-stirring experience I have ever had as a sociolinguist, and I would not
have NIMBYed it for the world. In what follows, I will delineate my involvement in it in a little more detail and reflect on what I
learned–and continue to learn–from the experience.

2. The LSA Resolution(s). Perhaps the first thing I learned from this experience is that there is a greater consensus among
linguists (especially vis-a-vis non-linguists) on this and other language policy issues than I would have imagined, and LESS of a
“NIMBY” attitude about taking a stance on them than I might have expected. Take, for instance, the resolution of the Linguistic
Society of America [LSA] on the Ebonics issue, approved at their January 1997 business meeting. The idea of a resolution on
this issue was first suggested to me on December 30, 1996 by Geoffrey Nunberg, who’d been asked by Dick Oehrle and
Susan Steele whether the LSA was planning to frame any public response to the Ebonics issue at its upcoming annual meeting.
Since I was a member of the LSA executive committee at the time, Geoff and some other LSA movers and shakers thought I
would be in a good position to sponsor a resolution, Building on some concrete suggestions from Nunberg, I drafted a
resolution on my flight to Chicago January 1, 1997; this was approved with minor modifications by the LSA executive
committee the next day.

This resolution had to be approved by the membership at the LSA’s business meeting on January 3, however, and I was
nervous about it for two reasons: (1) Linguists are known for their divisions and divisiveness; as someone once quipped, people
get ahead in other disciplines by standing on each other’s shoulders, but linguists get ahead by standing on each other’s necks!
(2) The media, including cameramen from the major TV networks, were going to be there, partly because the Stanford public
relations department, knowing that this resolution was going to be discussed, had contacted them in advance. (In passing, I
cannot overemphasize how important it is to solicit the expertise and advice of your university’s press or public relations
department when dealing with the media; they were invaluable to me in numerous ways in responding to the Ebonics issue.)

As it turns out, I need not have worried. To my amazement, syntacticians, semanticists, sociolinguists and linguists of other
stripes and persuasions rose to speak in support of the proposals–if anything they wanted to make them even more
radical–and a four-point resolution was unanimously approved. Among other things, it affirmed the “systematic and rule
governed and systematic nature of Ebonics,” and pronounced the Oakland school board’s decision to take it into account in
teaching Standard English “linguistically and pedagogically sound.” This resolution, in turn, was used by Oakland to defend itself
against its many critics, and was widely reported on and cited in the media. (The full text of the resolution can be found at
http://www.stanford.edu/~rickford/ebonics/ and in the popular Fall 1997 Ebonics issue of Rethinking Schools, an education
periodical.)

Moreover, the LSA has overwhelmingly approved other strong proposals on public policy issues involving language over the
past twelve years. Its resolutions over this period include opposition to English Only legislation (1986/87), endorsement of
Language Rights and the need to respect both the speakers of immigrant and endangered languages (1996), and opposition to
the Unz/Tucher ballot initiative in California (1998), which is ostensibly about “English Language Education for Immigrant
Children” but which would severely limit and perhaps effectively eliminate bilingual education in California. The text of these
resolutions can be found on the web at http://www.lsadc.org/state.html.

Nor did the involvement of linguists end with the drafting of resolutions. Linguists all over the country responded to reporters’
questions, penned letters to the editor, wrote newspaper and magazine articles, gave talks, and took part in TV and radio
discussions on the Ebonics controversy. I’ll discuss below the lessons I learned from this involvement, and I’ll also indicate how
much more research we need to do to maximize the quality of the expertise we have to offer schools and decision-makers on
the Ebonics issue. But first I need to say a little about the involvement of linguists in the US Senate Hearing on Ebonics.

3. The US Senate Hearing on Ebonics. A number of linguists and educators (William Labov, Orlando Taylor, Robert Williams
and Michael Casserly) joined educators from Oakland (including Superintendent Carolyn Getridge) in providing pro-Ebonics
testimony at the US Senate Hearing on Ebonics on January 23, 1997. Several other linguists who could not be present
(including myself) submitted letters to be read into the Senate record. This Hearing was a crucial event, since it was chaired by
Senator Arlen Specter, Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and
Education, which oversees the Title I education funds that support the Standard English Proficiency [SEP] program, in use in
over 300 California Schools. Oakland’s Ebonics resolutions were essentially a proposal to expand the SEP program–which
involves contrastive analysis of Ebonics and Standard English–within its school district. Many of us feared that in the
anti-Ebonics firestorm which was sparked by Oakland’s proposals, Specter’s subcommittee would yank title I funding from the
SEP.

However, Senator Arlen Specter seemed to be impressed with the testimony. (A videotape of the hearing is available from
C-SPAN, which provided TV coverage of it in its entirety.) Not only did he NOT withdraw funding for SEP, but he later
supported a line item in the 1997 appropriations budget providing $1 million for research on the relation between the home
language of African American students and their success in learning to read and write in Standard English. The research will be
jointly conducted in Oakland (under the direction of Etta Hollins), and in Philadelphia (under the direction of William Labov).
An attempt to curtail SEP funding at the State level, through California Senate Bill 205 introduced by California State Senator
Raymond Haynes, was also defeated, in April 1997.

4. Reaching and reacting to the media and the public. In the many months that have passed since the Ebonics controversy
broke, I have learned many lessons about dealing with the media and the public, and since they may be of interest to linguists
who get involved in other language policy discussions, it might be useful to pass them on.

One of the lessons that struck me early on is the extent to which the media really do “manufacture consent” (Herman and
Chomsky 1988), serving to promote mainstream “facts” and interpretations, and to prevent dissenting information and
viewpoints from reaching the public. In the case at hand, the mainstream view was that Ebonics itself was street slang, and that
Oakland teachers were going to teach in it, or allow students to talk or write in it instead of in English. It was in response to
THIS misrepresentation of Ebonics and the Oakland resolutions that editorials, Op-Ed pieces, letters to the editor, cartoons,
and agitated calls to radio talk shows were directed, and attempts to get alternative viewpoints aired were often very difficult,
especially in the most prestigious media.

For instance, although the New York Times published several editorials and Op-Ed pieces critical either of Ebonics or the
Oakland resolutions, linguists’ attempts to get them to present a different viewpoint were all unsuccessful. I know of at least four
Op-Ed submissions which they summarily rejected (by Salikoko Mufwene, by Geoffrey Pullum, by Gene Searchinger, and
myself), and there were undoubedtedly others. Similarly, other linguists (like Geneva Smitherman) had experiences similar to
mine, in which leading television stations would do one and two hour interviews with us on the Ebonics issue, but never use any
of it in their broadcasts. Linguists should not avoid these leading media sources, but be aware that breaking into them can be
difficult if the views you represent do not correspond to the mainstream view. In matters of language, they often do not.

Surprisingly for me, the branch of the media that I found most receptive and most conducive to getting my point of view across
was RADIO. Radio talk shows (like National Public Radio, but also the commercial radio stations) gave me the opportunity to
state my own views directly and without editorial curtailment. Even when talk show hosts and callers clearly had different
opinions from mine, I had the opportunity to respond to them live, and I always came away from these shows feeling that my
views had been better represented than by newspaper reporters who used only a fraction of what you told them. Incidentally,
although I have not heard them myself, I understand that Steven Pinker’s radio show appearances–in which he responds to
caller’s questions about language–have been a smashing success. This is a medium and method we should increasingly exploit.

When the Ebonics controversy broke, many linguists expressed frustration at the extent to which the public still appeared to
have misconceptions about this and other vernaculars which we thought we had long ago dissipated–that it was simply the
product of laziness or cussedness, for instance, or that it had no history or structure or regularity, or that it was a loose collection
of slang words in which you could do or say pretty much what you please. (See, for instance, William Raspberry’s December
26, 1996 Washington Post column.) However, in harboring this frustration, we seem to have forgotten what advertisers of
Colgate toothpaste and other products never forget: that the message has to be repeated over and over, anew for each
generation and each different audience type, and preferably in simple, direct and arresting language which the public can
understand and appreciate.

It was with this in mind that I accepted an invitation from Discover, the popular science magazine, to produce an expository
piece on Ebonics. Although I labored long and hard at it, my first submission was rejected by the editor, who said that it was
too technical. I asked for a chance to revise and resubmit it, however, and studied previous Discover articles to see how writers
managed to cover complex subjects in simple and lively ways. Eventually, my revised article was accepted, appearing in the
December 1997 issue. Geoffrey Pullum also wrote a good general interest piece on Ebonics in the April 1997 issue of Nature
magazine. Our university training provides NO preparation for writing for the popular or semi-popular press (quite the
opposite–we are sometimes rewarded for technical or obfuscatory writing rather than clarity), but it should if we are to
contribute to the Great Language Debates of our Times.

One thing that I naively did not expect was the subtle and not-so-subtle nastiness that issues of language can elicit from the
public. I encountered this in the occasionally severe distortions of information which I had shared with reporters in good faith,
and in the “hate mail” which my quoted remarks in the press elicited. One example of distortive reporting was Jacob Heilbrum’s
Ebonics article in the January 20, 1997 issue of The New Republic, to which I responded with a letter in the March 3, 1997
issue. One example of the hate mail was a postcard I received addressed to “John Rickford, Linguistics Professor (God Help
Us All)” which included, alongside a newspaper report of my remarks at the 1997 LSA meeting, the comment: “It’s just amazing
how much crap you so-called ‘scholars’ can pour and get away with. Can you wonder, John Boy, why the general public does
not trust either educators, judges or politicians? As a brother might say, ‘Ee Bonic be a bunch a booshit man, but it get de muny
offa de White man. He be a sucka.’ ” Geoff Pullum also got hatemail for his Nature piece, as did Rosina Lippi-Green for her
New York Times letter to the editor in December 1996. It comes with the territory.

More insidious than hate mail were the vicious Ebonics jokes and parodies which proliferated on web sites across the country
and around the world. (See Rickford and Rickford 1997 and Ronkin and Karn 1998 for examples and discussion.) The worst
example of this was the “Ebonics Olympics Games” web-page, which included such events as “100-yard dash chased by police
dog,” and “Bitch slapping (number of bruises inflicted on wife or girlfriend).” In cases like these, language was no longer at issue;
“Ebonics” had become a proxy for African Americans, and the most racist stereotypes were being promulgated. This cruel
humor might remind us, however, that behind people’s expressed attitudes to vernacular varieties, there are often deep-seated
social and political fears and prejudices about their speakers. If we don’t take the “socio” part of sociolinguistics seriously, we
won’t be prepared to understand or respond to such attitudes effectively.

5. Ebonics and education: The need to know more. Explaining to legislators, the media and the public the systematicity of
Ebonics and all language varieties is a good and worthy thing, but it is not enough. The Oakland School Board did not turn to
Ebonics because of linguistic interests, but because of the acute educational problems affecting African American students in
their district, and the sense that taking the children’s vernacular into account might help to alleviate such problems. In Rickford
(1997) I had documented the fact that working class African American students in East Palo Alto and Philadelphia do poorly in
reading and writing at the elementary level and fall increasingly behind their White counterparts in middle and high school.
Michael Casserly’s testimony at the US Senate Hearing on Ebonics–summarizing data from fifty urban school districts across
the US–indicated that this was a nationwide pattern. For instance, in 1992-93, 60.7% of White elementary students in his
50-school sample scored above the norm in reading; by high school, that percentage had increased to 65.4%; by contrast, only
31.3% of African American elementary students scored above the norm that year in reading; and by high school, that
percentage had slipped to 26.6%. Data like these made me angry, both because of their obviously dire consequences for the
future of the students and the society into which they would “graduate,” and because the media refused to focus on this massive
evidence of how schools fail to teach African American students with existing methods.

While admitting that other factors (differences in facilities and teachers, for instance) undoubtedly contribute to the widening gap between African American and White reading scores, my strategy in responding to the educational problem, as a sociolinguist, was to point to the evidence of several studies that, with other factors held constant, a positive response to the vernacular by schools actually IMPROVED students’ performance in reading and writing. This evidence was of three kinds: (1) Piestrup’s (1973) study in Oakland itself which showed that teachers who constantly interrupted Ebonics-speaking children to correct them produced the lowest-scoring and most apathetic readers, while teachers who built artfully on the children’s language produced the highest-scoring and most enthusiastic readers; (2) Evidence from the Bidialectal program in 5th and 6th grades in DeKalb county, Georgia and at Aurora University outside Chicago that Contrastive Analysis similar to that employed in the SEP and in Oakland yields greater progress in reading and writing for Ebonics speakers than conventional methods; (3) Evidence that teaching children to read first in their vernacular, and then transitioning to the standard variety, has led to better reading results, both among African American students (Simpkins and Simpkins 1981), and in Europe. These data are quite striking (see Rickford in press for the details), but to maximize our potential to contribute to this Great Debate of our Time, we need to know more, through research, in relation to all three kinds of evidence.

With respect to the teaching of reading, sociolinguists need to reach a deeper understanding of different approaches used by educators (Whole Language versus Phonics and Phonemic Awareness, for instance), and the extent to which a nuanced
knowledge of the system of Ebonics speakers might enhance their use. With respect to Contrastive Analysis [CA], we need
more empirical validation of its effectiveness vis-a-vis other methods , and we need “Error Analysis” studies to determine if the predictions of the interference model which underlie CA correspond accurately to what happens when Ebonics speakers
attempt to use Standard English. Interference predictions are often not borne out for people learning a second language (Ellis 1994:302), and while CA may be more useful with second dialect speakers precisely because the differences between native and target dialect are subtler and need highlighting, there is some evidence (from an unpublished study by Labov) that the predictions of the interference model are not always accurate with Ebonics speakers either. Finally, with respect to the issue of dialect readers, McWhorter (1997:3) has pointed to nine studies from the early 1970s in which “dialect readers were shown to have no effect whatsoever on African American students’ reading scores.” Having looked at most of those studies myself, I believe that the difference between their negative results and the positive results of Simpkins and Simpkins (1981) may lie in the element of TIME. The latter study was conducted over a four month period, in which the effects of the dialect readers on increased motivation and intelligibility could be more clearly discerned; the former studies were all one-shot studies, in which researchers compared the effects of reading Ebonics and Standard English words or texts at one point in time. Nevertheless, the differences in methodology and results need further consideration, and we need more replication and new research to be surer of our recommendations.

6. Summary and conclusion. In sum, sociolinguistis SHOULD be involved in the Great Language Debates of our Times. In the
case of Ebonics, many linguists did get involved, in myriad ways, from passing resolutions, to helping to influence legislators, to speaking to the press and the public about the systematicity of all language varieties and the structure of Ebonics. In the process, we learned some lessons about the plusses and minuses of this kind of involvement which we can pass on to our colleagues and students for the future. But the fundamental educational problems of African American speakers with which the linguistic issues interface are staggering, and although we have some evidence that linguistically sensitive approaches are helpful, there are gaps in and questions about these approaches which require new research. Ultimately, the quality of our contributions will depend on the depth of our knowledge and understanding.

References

Ellis, Rod. 1994. The study of second language acquistion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Herman, Edward, and Noam
Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing consent : the political economy of the mass media. New York : Pantheon Books.
Piestrup, A. McCormick. 1973. Black dialect interference and accommodation of reading instruction in first grade.
Monographs of the Language Behavior Research Laboratory no. 4, University of California, Berkeley.
Rickford, John R. 1997. Unequal partnership: Sociolinguistics and the African American Speech Community. Language in
Society 26:161-197.
_______. In press. Ebonics and Education: Lessons from the Caribbean, Europe, and the USA. In The Vernacular of African
Americans: Essays on its Features and Use, Evolution, and Educational Implications. Oxford: Blackwell (1998).
Rickford, John R. and Russell J. Rickford. 1997. Ebonics Humor. Chapter to appear in a book on Ebonics written by us, to be
published by John Wiley, New York, 1999.
Ronkin, Maggie, and Helen E. Karn. 1998. Mock Ebonics: Linguistic racism in parodies of Ebonics on the internet. Paper
presented at the American Dialect Society meeting, New York, January 10.
Simpkins, Gary, and Charlesetta Simpkins. 1991. Cross-cultural approach to cirriculum development. In Black English and the
Education of Black Children and Youth, ed. by Geneva Smitherman, 221-40. Detroit: Center for Black Studies, Wayne State University.

___and John McWhorter. 1997. Language Contact and Language Generation: Pidgins and Creoles. In The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, edited by F. Coulmas. Oxford: Blackwell.

Rickford, John R., and A. Rickford. 1995. Dialect Readers Revisited. Linguistics in Education (7):107-128.

cf. Rickford, J. R. and J. McWhorter (1997). Language Contact and Language Generation: Pidgins and Creoles. The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. F. Coulmas. Oxford, Blackwell: 238-256.
Pidgins and creoles are new varieties of language generated in situations of language contacts. A pidgin is sharply restricted in social role, used for limited communication between speakers or two or langauges who have repeated, extended contacts with each other, for instance through trade, enslavement, or migration. A pidgin usually combines elements of the native languages of its users and is typically simpler than those native languages insofar as it has fewer words, less morphology and a more restricted range of phonological and syntactic options (…). A creole, in the classic sense of Hall (1966), is a pidgin that has acquired native speakers, usually, the descendants of pidgin speakers who grow up using the pidgin as their first language. In keeping with their extended social role, creoles typically have a larger vicabulary and more complicated grammatical resources than pidgins. However, some extended pidgins which serve as the primary language of their speakers (…) are already quite complex, and seem relatively unaffected by the acquisition of native speakers.
Although it was assumed for a long time that croles evolved from pidgins, Thomason and Kaufman (Thomason, S. G. and T. Kaufman (1988). Language Contact, Creolization, and Genetic LInguistics. Berkeley, University of California Press.) and others have argued that many croles, particularly those in the Caribean and in the Indian Ocean, represent “abrupt creolization”, having come into use as primary or native contact languages before a fully crystallized pidgin had had time to establish itself.
From the point of view of the creolist/dialectologist debate, the fundamental question is whether a significan number of Africans wo came to the United States between the 17th and 19th centuries wnet through processes of pidginization, creolization, and (maybe) decreolization in acquiring English (creolists’ position), or whether they learned the English of Britihs and other immigrants fairly rapidly and directly, without an intervening pidgin or crole state (the dialectologist’s position)
Stewart (Stewart, W. A. (1967). Sociolinguistic factors in the history of American Negro dialects. Florida FL Reporter: 11.) Dillard (Dillard, J. L. (1972). Black English: its History and Usage in the United States. New York, Random House) and Hancock (1986) favor the hypothesis that many slaves arrived in the American colonies and the Caribbean already speaking some variety of West African Pidgin English (WAPE) or Guinea Coast Creole English (GCCE). Rickford and Schneider (Schneider, E. W. (1982). “On the history of Black English in the USA: Some new evidence”.” English World Wide(3): 18-46.), among others, feel that such slaves were probably not very numerous.
Recordings with descendants of African Americans who left the United States for other countires int he late 18th or early 19th century, and who, because of their relative isolation in their new countires, are thought to represent an approximation to the African-American speech of their emigrating foreparents. (cf. Dominican Republic Samana region and Liberian Settler English)

159-160:
The second kind of evidence one might consider is textual attestations of AAVE form earlier times, or “historical attestations” for short. The known evidence of this type can be divided into two broad categories:
a) literary texts, including examples from fiction, drama, and poetry as well as those from traveller’s accounts, records of court trials, and other non fictional works ([Brash (1981). Black English and the Mass Media. Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press.]) and
b) by interviews with former slaves and other African Americans -many born in the mid-nineteenth century- from 1930 onward, including the two subcategories distinguished by Schneider (Schneider, E. W. (1993). Africanisms in the Grammar of Afro-American English: Weighing the evidence”. Africanisms in Afro-American Language Varieties. S. S. Mufwene, C. Bernstein, N. Thomas and R. Sabino. Athens, University of Georgia Press: 192-208.): “the so-called ex-slave narratives” published by Rawick (Rawick, G. P., Ed. (1977). The American Slave: A Composite Autobiography. Westport, CT, Greenwood Press.), and the tape recordings made for the Archive of Folk Songs (AFS), published and analysed by Bailey, G., N. Maynor, et al., Eds. (1991). The emergence of Black English : Text and Commentary. African-American English: Structure, History and Use. Amsterdam and Philadelphia, John Benjamins..
A third source of early 20th century data can be found in the interviews with 1,605 African Americans concerning “hoodoo” which were recorded by Harry Hyatt between 1936and 42 on Ediphone and Telediphone dylinders and subsequently published (Hyatt, H., Ed. (1970-78). Hoodoo-Conjuraton-Witchcraft-Rootwork. Hannibal, MO, Western Publishing Inc.) and analysed (Viereck, W. (1988). “Invariant be in an unnoticed source of American Early Black English.” American Speech(63): 291-301, Ewers, T. (1996). The Origin of American Black English: Be-Forms in the HOODOO Texts. Berlin and New York, Mouton.).

The third and most recent source of diaspora data is African Nova Scotian English, the English spoken by the descendants of African Americans who migrated to Nova Scotia, Canada, in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (cf. Poplak, S. and S. Tagliamonte (1991). “African American English in the diaspora: Evidence from old-lkine Nova Scotians.” Language Variation and Change(3): 301-339.). Attractive though these diaspora vaireties are as source of extensive tape-recorded data on whihc quantitative analysis of selected variables can be performed, the significan question which they leave unanswered is whether they can be taken as reflecting late 18th or early 19th centruy English, unaffected or only minimally affectied by internally or externally motivated change (e.g. from contact with neighbouring varieties of English or Spanish) and also unaffectec by the Observer’s Paradox (Cf.Labov, W. (1972). Sociolinguistic Patterns. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press.)

It is impossible to conclude with a balance sheet of pluses and minuses which would add up to a final decision on the creole origins issue. To my mind, there is enough persuasive evidence in these data to suggest that AAVE did have some creole roots. The very fact that copula absence is widespread both in AAVE and mesolectal creoles, but not in white Englishes outside of American South strongly suggests that at least some of the predecessors of modern AAVE arose from a restructuring process similar to that which produced the English based creoles.

Rinawie-Zoabi, Ghaida (2013), ‘The new Political Palestinian Israeli leadership’, paper given at JCall trip to Israel and Palestinian Territories, Tel Aviv.

Palestinian Arabs situation.
Current situation of the PA Community and future anticipations regarding our community and our relations with the Israeli
Indigenous population. 20% of total population. Mostly living in small town and villages. Most of us are educated in a separate educational system. Most of the arab schools are run by Israeli minitry of Education. All the arab communities are in the bottom of the social ladder. 40% between the age of 1 to 25. Average of 3 to 4 kids. In the Negev 5-6. Our community has a majority of Muslems, but we have christian and druze minorites. Most Palestinians became refugees after 1948 and 20% of the total palestinian population remained in their home. 48-60s, we were run by Military rule and passes. after 1967, a new era started for Palestinians in Israel till the Oslo agreement. The political leadership made two claims: 2STATE SOLUTION and Civil rights within our own community.
Lots of people wanted us to be a bridge for peace…but it didn’t happen. 2nd Intifada, young people in our community protested and 13 were killed. 2006, second war on Lebanon. Hezbollah missiles were shooting at Gallil in general and us as weell. All the casulties were from our community. This absurd situation made us think that we don’t have any back up from the PLO, international community, arab world and our state. New voices became strong within us. We need to be proactive. We need to come up with activist initiative to talk with the State about our citizenship. I’m naturally palestinian. I don’t know how to organize my community to affect the decision making in the satate. We need to professionalize our institution more and more. Lots of changes: 3 major groups: youth (20-35) is the majority, very affected by globalization and social media, Women (get more and more into public sphere, for example 52% of BA, more and more in academia, NGOs, business at management level, in culture and art, a similar way as in the Arab world.and final group, the Leadership (two major voices: a traditional voice, people from old school combatting on the prejudice and racism ground, an approach which I respect but also new leadership: reality is something you as a community can change if you professionalize yourself and get a collectiv agenda on what you want . I will participate in the next elections. I don’t represent anybody but myself.
Employers should be subsidized to employ more arabs. Educational system in arab communities is very low. Good people come from private schools…Goverment budget is very low for Palestinian schools. My nationality is Palestinian. my mothertongue is arabic, we were forced to sing the tikva, it bothered me. My culture is moslem.
Arab community is very divided, one state solution, two state solution, communist political school, pragmatic approach, islamic movement divided into two: israel is our state and we need to have a dialogue with them and one is more fundamentalist waiting for the Islamic Califate.In the last couple of years, pressure from Israeli institution to enroll in the army to get better life opportunity. But we look at the Druze. Now, for a civil service, I agree but I claim that the State has to give me my citizens rights.
I’m a secular moslem, I need to be free to do what I want. Regarding the islamization in the arab world, In general it’s a world trend to getting back to tradition and conservatism. but in the long run, things will change. Look at women in Saudi Kingdom.

Rishika (2009), ‘Youth summit of IDDay’, Art, Religion, and the City in the Developing World of Interdependence (Istanbul).

When men are oppressed, it’s a tragedy, when women are oppressed, it’s a convention.
Women are more stable.
We had to change ourselves to meet the male paradigm.
Hypocrisy. We are supposed to be equal, but we are biologically and culturally are different. The conflict between urban and rural areas.
Women in the middle east, india, and the western world: prevalent hypocrisy. Even in the West, women are paid less…In the eastern part of the world, no equal opportunity as such.
Development is a superfluous and complex word. A state of being when we can realize our full potential is a definition we all agreed upon.
What exactly are we development….we need to look to development of the mind. UNDP well being development. Cannot be defined internationally but locally!

Ritchie, Harry English for the Natives: Discover the Grammar You Don’t Know You Know
(London: John Murray.).

cf. Ritchie, Harry (2013), ‘It’s time to challenge the notion that there is only one way to speak English: Why do we persist in thinking that standard English is right, when it is spoken by only 15% of the British population? Linguistics-loving Harry Ritchie blames Noam Chomsky’, The Guardian, December 31st, 2013.

— (2013), ‘It’s time to challenge the notion that there is only one way to speak English: Why do we persist in thinking that standard English is right, when it is spoken by only 15% of the British population? Linguistics-loving Harry Ritchie blames Noam Chomsky’, The Guardian, December 31st, 2013.

Did you see that great documentary on linguistics the other night? What about that terrific series on Radio 4 about the Indo-European language family tree? Or that news report on language extinction? It is strange that none of those programmes happened, or has ever happened: it’s not as if language is an arcane subject. Just as puzzling is the conspicuous lack of a properly informed book about language – either our own or language in general.

There is, of course, Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct – a bestseller that seems to have ticked the box for publishers and public alike as the book on linguistics. But The Language Instinct has a very specific agenda – to support Noam Chomsky’s theories about our language skills being innate; other areas of linguistics are glimpsed, if at all, fuzzily in the background.

I’m not blaming Pinker. He ultimately failed to justify his title, but he did reach a keen, large audience with a well-written book fizzing with ideas and examples. I’m blaming someone else, the person who, inexplicably, doesn’t exist – who should have written the book revealing how Pinker was so wrong and had a ding-dong with him on Newsnight; the ambitious, good-looking academic, who possibly had a spell in an indie band, with his or her own 13-part series about language on BBC2.

I began to appreciate how little we know about our own language when I studied grammar to teach English as a foreign language. I looked for a linguistically informed grammar guide, but couldn’t find one. Finally, I gave up on waiting and decided to have a go myself. As a layman with an amateur’s adoration for his subject, I find it astonishing that hardly anyone outside university linguistics departments knows the slightest thing about it. Whether it is the new discoveries of neurolinguistics or the 150-year-old revelations of the scholars who traced the Indo-European language family tree, linguistics can offer zap-kapow findings that trump those of archaeology and even astronomy.

Take the Proto-Indo-Europeans, that mysterious tribe whose homeland was recently located north of the Caspian Sea in about 3,300 BC. Their language somehow obliterated the hundreds of others then spoken in Europe and northern India, so that almost every language currently spoken, from Iceland to the Himalayas, is descended from one tongue. Dramatic enough, but, even more sensationally, much of that language has been reconstructed, so that we know, for example, their words for sky (dyeu) and father (pihter), and their chief god the Sky Father (Dyeu Pihter). Thanks to language, we know a great deal about the tribe – its kinship system, its beliefs, the feasts it held at which bards declaimed the long praise-poems that may well be the forerunners of the Sanskrit Vedic epics and The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer. We even know that the tribe had two words for different sorts of farting.

That few people have heard of the Proto-Indo-Europeans, or know about language evolution, children’s language acquisition or the current process of language extinction, seems to me to be a crying shame. But the insights of linguistics are of social and political as well as intellectual importance.

The modern study of language has shown that all native speakers are experts in their language. Almost all judgments about someone’s language – the laziness of a glottal stop, the slowness of rural speech, the supposed ugliness of a particular urban accent – have no linguistic justification and reflect only the prejudice of the judger. However, very few people are aware of these basic findings.

Linguistics has discovered that a language is created by a democratic collective of magnificently gifted experts – but has told nobody else about it. Frustrating as it is to hear discussions about the heinous abuse of “hopefully” or “disinterested”, this public ignorance about language gets properly serious with the continuing discrimination against non-standard English.

Non-standard English is linguistically the equal of the standard version – in fact, dialects tend to be more sophisticated grammatically than standard (as in the plural “youse” of many non-standard dialects where standard has just one confusing form). Yet standard continues – even now – to be prized as the “correct” form, and any deviation is considered to be wrong, lazy, corrupt or ignorant.

This is most obviously the case in the education system. If a non-standard-speaking child persists in using non‑standard English, particularly non-standard grammar, that child will rarely progress. This is, of course, a class issue, standard English being the only dialect defined by socioeconomics rather than geography, and spoken by only 15% of the British population (the richest 15%). It is working-class children whose language is still marked as incorrect and who have to intuit the need to switch dialects – or fail..

In any formal, written context, only standard English is accepted. And in any informal, middle-class context, from office email to pub chat, non-standard usage will be noticed by standard speakers, who will judge that non-standard user to be at least unsophisticated, probably uneducated and very possibly a bit thick.

Let me quote a letter-writer to the Scotsman newspaper last year, complaining about declining linguistic standards. “I remember one candidate in a job interview,” the letter-writer reminisced, “saying, ‘Oh, we done that in media studies.’ End of interview,” he finished, approvingly.

Why has linguistics failed to counteract this discrimination? I put it down to the strange way that the discipline developed under the aegis of the man who has dominated and defined it since the late 50s, the father of modern linguistics, Chomsky.

Chomsky’s theories were based on his ingenious explanation for the phenomenon that is children’s language acquisition. Toddlers, who are surrounded by the broken babble of ordinary speech and who can do little else for themselves, somehow master many, or even most, grammatical constructions – because, Chomsky reasoned, there has to be innate software providing babies and toddlers with the equipment to get them up and talking. This means, he concluded, that human languages have to be organised according to universal constraints and rules, “principles and parameters”. These constitute a “deep structure”, converted into the individual operations of a particular language by a series of “transformations”. Chomsky first outlined this idea in 1967 and has spent his non-political career since hunting for the universal features provided by our innate programming.

Brilliant – but wrong. Recent evidence from neurology, genetics and linguistics all points to there being no innate programming. Children learn language just as they learn all their other skills, by experience. The case against Chomsky is conclusive. The new empirical “connectionist” school and the various branches of cognitive linguistics have brought the subject back to scientific principles. Linguistics has undergone a revolution in the last 20 years, and Chomsky has been dethroned.

However, the wholesale acceptance of Chomsky’s rationalist assumptions has meant that the discipline has been hunting for unicorns while neglecting many key areas of language. There is still little research being carried out on, for example, environmental influences on children’s language acquisition.

Most pressingly of all, too little work is being done to record the languages currently facing extinction. By one estimate, 95% of the 7,000 languages now spoken in the world are in danger of dying out. Recording these should have been a priority.

Chomksy also played a significant part in creating a subject that managed to avoid engagement with culture and society. He turned grammar into an technical subject full of jargon and algebra studied on whiteboards by men with beards, leaving everyone prey to the pernicious drivel of the traditional grammar guardians, who belong to the 15%. It is crazy that such an unfair social-exclusion system should go on operating, and still without censure.

Linguistics has taught me many wonderful things, but it has also neglected many tasks, including telling the world about its discoveries. So if there is an academic linguist out there with good bone structure and a past career as a rhythm guitarist, please, for the love of God, get yourself a decent agent.

• Harry Ritchie’s English for the Natives: Discover the Grammar You Don’t Know You Know is published by John Murray.

Rivero, Jean (1982), ‘Les droits de l’homme: droits individuels ou droits collectifs?’ in Alain Fenet (ed.), Les droits de l’homme: droits collectifs ou droits individuels? (Paris: PUF).

23: Lorsqu’il s’agit de collectivités qui ne reposent pas sur l’adhésion volontaire, le danger augmente, à la mesure de leur puissance et de leurs ambitions. Face aux intérêts du groupe, les droits de l’homme pèsent peu (…) Que le groupe cherche son unité dans une idéologie, et le goulag s’ouvre pour ceux qui la refusent. Que cette idéologie soit la supréiorité de la race, et le droit de l’ethnie aryenne à imposer au monde sa juste domination légitime Dachau, Auschwitz et Maydanek. Sur les droits des collectivités, la mumée des fours crématoires projett la plus grande des menaces, car leur reconnaissance risque de donner le sceau de la justice à la domination du fort sur le faible.
24: “les droits des groupes ne sont pas autre chose que les droits de l’homme à recevoir des groupes les moyens nécessaire à son épanouissement”

Rivlin, Ruben (2013), ‘Contribution of the Likoud MP’, paper given at JCall trip to Israel and Palestinian Territories, Tel Aviv.

Former Knesset Speaker. There are kits if aspects of our party. We believe in the central axioma of the return to the Jewish Homeland. The land belongs to the people of Israel.
Running the Jewish State can be fulfilled only if it remains democratic.
I have differences of opinion about keeping Issraeli state as a full democracy. I know we have differences of opinion but in Israel, we don’t have the right and the left, we have the right and the wrong!
I’ve been here since 1809 (sic) from a Vilna family, the “tav kouf ayin year” (These are hebrew letters but I have no idea what Rivlin refered to, 1948?)) and a Knesset member since 1988. We are here because 150 years before Zionism, we already understood. I have Friends of all confessions. We need shelter and equal citizenship.
Jews and Arabs won’t live together. Borders bring enemies, not friends. Jerusalem is a microcosm of Jews and Arabs living together.

I respect your ideas. You are welcome to become citizens. We have a problem with Islam and the Arab world. There are 8 million citizens in Israël and 6 million jews . Sometimes you shiver when you realize this number (corresponds to Shoah Jews decimated, drm note). We have to find a way to convince the Psalestinians. The Palestinian Israeli citizens are insulted when we tell them they are a demographic problem. Conflict has to come to an end.
Dividing Jerusalem? God Forbid!
We can fulfill the dream of living together. With 12 million jews, no one would put the two State-Solution on the table! The two state solution will worsen the conflict.
I accept that they don’t sing the national anthem. We can manage to live together with full citizenship, there’s no other way.

Note from David Chemla: His position is quite original in the Likoud which classically advocates for a Great Israel. He’s totally minoritarian within the right and he fought for his position.

Moreover, he respected his engagements despite the meeting of the Finance Committee (contrary to Stav Shafir, but we were a bit late too!)

Robert, Arnaud. 2002. Des Griots, des Marabouts et une histoire millénaire. Un seul Monde (Le magazine de la DDC sur le développement et la coopération (4):16.

Classé parmil les pays les plus pauvres du monde, le Mali peine à sortir de sa dépendance face aux institutions internationales. Sa culture ancienne, sa relaive stabilité démocratique et quelques personnalités pionnières constituent pourtant des atouts majeurs.
(…) A quelques pas de la voie ferrée qui relie la capitale malienne à Kayes et Dakar en une quarantaine d’heures (si tout va bien), le chant des griots électrique rassemble les mélomanes invétérés et les notables accompagnés de leur maitresse. Au Mali, la musique est un domaine où tous les enjeux nationaux semblent convergés. Avant d’être battu aux élections présidentielles de mai 2002, Alpha Oumar Knoaré aimait à convoquer ses griots de prédilection au Palais de Koulouba, Elysée noir qui surplombe la capital. Historien de formation, l’ancien chef de l’Etat restait imprégné de cette culture de la chronique chantée, du conte légendaire que les djélis mandingues transmettent depuis au moins dix siècles.
les armes se sont tues
La culture impériale -celle de Soundjata Keita, fondateur de l’Empire du Mali au 13ème siècle- reste la richesse majeure de ce pays enclavé où seul le fleuve Niger offre une voie d’accès naturelle aux régions limitrophes. Dans les années soixante déjà, lorsque le patriarche Modibo Keita instaurait l’un des premierrs régimes socialistes d’Afrique il exigeait des artistes qu’ils inventent une variante mandingue aux musiques pop d’importation, au rock’n’roll et au rythm & Blues américains.

Robespierre (de), Claire. 1996. La renaissance du Mythe d’ANZAC dans l’Australie Contemporaine, UFR d’Etudes Anglaises et Nord-Américaines, Sorbonne, Paris 4.

Robillard (de), Didier, and Michel Beniamino, eds. 1993. Le Français dans l’Espace Francophone: Description linguistique et sociolinguistique de la francophonie. 1ère ed. 2 vols. Vol. 1. Paris: Honoré Champion.

Rodby, Judith. 1992. A Polyphony of Voices: The Dialectics of Linguistic Diversity and Unity in the Tewntieth-Century United States. In English in its Social Contexts: Essays in Historical Sociolinguistics, edited by T. W. Machan and S. Ch.T. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rodger, J. (2003 ), ‘Social Solidarity, Welfare and Post-emotionalism’, Journal of Social Policy (32), 403-21. .

quoted by Morris, Lydia (2012 ), ‘Citizenship and Human Rights’, The British Journal of Sociology 2, 63 (1).

Rollin, Roger, ed. 1989. The Americanization of the Global Village: Essays in Comparative popular Culture. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

Romaine, Suzanne. 1991. Language in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Préface
vii. Modern linguistics has generally taken for granted that grammars are unrelated to the social lives of their speakers.
Sociologists, for their part, have tended to treat society as if it could be constituted without language.
The term “sociolinguistics” was coined inthe 1950x to try to bring together the perspectives of linguists and sociologists to bear on the issues concerning the place of language in society, and to address, in particular, the social context of diversity.
Sociolinguistics has colse connections with the social sciences, in particular sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and educatioN. It encompasses the study of multilingualism, social dialects, conversational interaction, attitueds to language, language changes etc.
viii. Some distinguish, for instance, between theoretical and applied sociolinguistics.
The former is concerned with models and methods for analysing the sutructure of speech communities and speech varietes, and providing a general account of communicative competence.
Applied sociolinguistics deals with tehsocial and political implicatins of fundamental inequalities in language use in various areas of public life, for example schools, courts etc.
The filed is subdivided into two brad headings: macro- and micro-sociolinguistics, with the macro domain sometimes also referred to as the “sociology of language”. Macro-sociolinguistics begins with language and treats social forces as essential factors infoluencing the structure of languages.
ix.There are crucial connections between the large-scale socio-political issues typically addressed by the sociology of language on the one hand, and the forms and uses of language on a small scale dealt with by sociolinguistics on the other.
1. Chomsky, the leading figure in theoretical linguistics, observed that sociolinguistics was not concerned with “gramar”, but with concepts of a different sort, among them perhaps “language”. He added that questions of language are basically questions of power, but these are not the sorts of issues which linguists should address. The latter is matter of opinion. The narrowing of modern linguistics to the sutdy of grammar has ruled out investigation of many interesting questions about how language should fonction in society.
2. language vs dialect.
The term “dialect” has generally been used to refer to a subordinate variety of a language. A “regional dialect” is a variety associated with a place. Dialects of a language tend to differ more from one another the more remote they are from one another geographically. In this respect, the study of dialects, or dialectology has to do with boundaries, which often coincide with geographical features such as rivers and montains.
Boundaries are, however, often of a social nature. In this case, we spak of “social dialects”.Social dialects say who we are, and regional dialects where we come from.
The term”dialect” also has historical connotations. Historical linguists, for instance, speak of the Germanic dialects, by shich they mean the ancestors of language varieties now recognized as modern Germanic languages, such as English, Dutch and German.
3. Let’s use the term “variety as a neutral term which does not commit us to any decision about whether the varieties concerned have the statusof language or dialect
12. Arbitrariness of linguistic criteria.
The Wmest Romance continuum stretches trhough rural communities from the Atlantic coast of France through Italy, Spain and Portugal. Mutual interlligibility exits between adjacent villages although speakers of the standard varieties of French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese find one another mutually un-intelligible to varying degrees. Similarly, the Germanic dicalect ontinuum connects a series of historiacallx related varieties that differ from one another with respects to one or more features.
Degree of mutual intelligibility is gretly affected by the extent of social and other contact between the goups concerned as well as their attitudes to one another and does not necessarily have much to do with lexicostatistical relationships. In Scandinavia, for instance, if a traveller knows Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian, it is possible to communicate across language boundaries.Certainly, the languages are very close from a linguistic point of view, in fact close enough to be considered dialects of one language.
The modern languages are derived historiacally from a common Nordic ancestor and their increasing fragmentation reflects political history. It is largely for political reasons that they are regarded as separate languages.When these languages were standardized, differences between them were consciously exaggerated. Thus, orthographic differences now disguise what is a similar pronunciation and make the languages look more different in their written from than they are when spoken.
14. Max Weinreich:”language is a dialect with an army and a navy”

___1994. Language in Society: An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Préface
vii. Modern linguistics has generally taken for granted that grammars are unrelated to the social lives of their speakers.
Sociologists, for their part, have tended to treat society as if it could be constituted without language.
The term “sociolinguistics” was coined inthe 1950x to try to bring together the perspectives of linguists and sociologists to bear on the issues concerning the place of language in society, and to address, in particular, the social context of diversity.
Sociolinguistics has colse connections with the social sciences, in particular sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and educatioN. It encompasses the study of multilingualism, social dialects, conversational interaction, attitueds to language, language changes etc.
viii. Some distinguish, for instance, between theoretical and applied sociolinguistics.
The former is concerned with models and methods for analysing the sutructure of speech communities and speech varietes, and providing a general account of communicative competence.
Applied sociolinguistics deals with tehsocial and political implicatins of fundamental inequalities in language use in various areas of public life, for example schools, courts etc.
The filed is subdivided into two brad headings: macro- and micro-sociolinguistics, with the macro domain sometimes also referred to as the “sociology of language”. Macro-sociolinguistics begins with language and treats social forces as essential factors infoluencing the structure of languages.
ix.There are crucial connections between the large-scale socio-political issues typically addressed by the sociology of language on the one hand, and the forms and uses of language on a small scale dealt with by sociolinguistics on the other.
1. Chomsky, the leading figure in theoretical linguistics, observed that sociolinguistics was not concerned with “gramar”, but with concepts of a different sort, among them perhaps “language”. He added that questions of language are basically questions of power, but these are not the sorts of issues which linguists should address. The latter is matter of opinion. The narrowing of modern linguistics to the sutdy of grammar has ruled out investigation of many interesting questions about how language should fonction in society.
2. language vs dialect.
The term “dialect” has generally been used to refer to a subordinate variety of a language. A “regional dialect” is a variety associated with a place. Dialects of a language tend to differ more from one another the more remote they are from one another geographically. In this respect, the study of dialects, or dialectology has to do with boundaries, which often coincide with geographical features such as rivers and montains.
Boundaries are, however, often of a social nature. In this case, we spak of “social dialects”.Social dialects say who we are, and regional dialects where we come from.
The term”dialect” also has historical connotations. Historical linguists, for instance, speak of the Germanic dialects, by shich they mean the ancestors of language varieties now recognized as modern Germanic languages, such as English, Dutch and German.
3. Let’s use the term “variety as a neutral term which does not commit us to any decision about whether the varieties concerned have the statusof language or dialect
12. Arbitrariness of linguistic criteria.
The West Romance continuum stretches trhough rural communities from the Atlantic coast of France through Italy, Spain and Portugal. Mutual interlligibility exits between adjacent villages although speakers of the standard varieties of French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese find one another mutually un-intelligible to varying degrees. Similarly, the Germanic dicalect ontinuum connects a series of historiacallx related varieties that differ from one another with respects to one or more features.
Degree of mutual intelligibility is gretly affected by the extent of social and other contact between the goups concerned as well as their attitudes to one another and does not necessarily have much to do with lexicostatistical relationships. In Scandinavia, for instance, if a traveller knows Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian, it is possible to communicate across language boundaries.Certainly, the languages are very close from a linguistic point of view, in fact close enough to be considered dialects of one language.
The modern languages are derived historiacally from a common Nordic ancestor and their increasing fragmentation reflects political history. It is largely for political reasons that they are regarded as separate languages.When these languages were standardized, differences between them were consciously exaggerated. Thus, orthographic differences now disguise what is a similar pronunciation and make the languages look more different in their written from than they are when spoken.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné L.. 1986. Majorités et Minorités Officielles: Politique Linguistique au Canada. Paper read at Colloque international de l’Association Française d’Etudes Canadiennes (A.F.E.C.), at Bordeaux.
___1994. Plurilinguisme et Multiculturalisme en Europe: La Belgique, l’Espagne et la France (Etude comparative). Mémoire de maîtrise, Institut européen, Université de Genève, Genève.
___1995. La Mobilité des Enseignants. Le Nouveau Quotidien, 15 juin 1995, 32.
___1998. L’Anglais et les Cultures: Analyse Sociolinguistique des Situations Plurilingues et Multiculturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis. Doctorat, UFR d’Anglais, Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), Paris.
___1998. Plurilinguisme et multiculturalisme: les points de vue australiens et canadiens à travers ceux de leurs Premiers Ministres. Paper read at Colloque international de l’Association Française d’Etudes Canadiennes (A.F.E.C.), at Avignon.
Romy-Masliah, Daphné. 1998. Summary of Ph.D. Dissertation. Crossings 3 (2).

This thesis is inscribed in a French context of constant feud against the English language and American culture interpreted as attacks against the “francophonia”. In order to prove that English does not kill other cultures but is simply a precious tool of international communication, the thesis describes the relationship between predominantly anglophone societies and the different cultures and languages vividly present in three former colonies of the British Empire, Canada, Australia and the USA. It also emphasises the conception that, in a civilisation which has reached a maximum level of ” communicability ” transcending the physical borders, some invisible cultural and linguistic ones are re-designing infinitely more subtle communities. Therefore, while recognising the obvious predominance of English as an international language, this thesis insists on the fact that even on its own ground, it is challenged by the presence of other languages and cultures to such an extent that some lobbies are seeking means to protect or officialise it.
The dissertation is divided in three subsections:
A theoretical section is devoted to the description of concepts related to plurilingualism and multiculturalism, the methodological frame of the research and the typologies of linguistic and multicultural policies.
The second part describes the plurilingual and multicultural policies of these three countries of recently immigrated population, which have English (slightly different from each others) as their national or official language and have had three different ways of tackling the question of language and culture, two fundamental references in their daily political, economic and social life.
The third part is a consequence of the two previous ones and describes the phenomenon of multiculturalism and its contemporary consequence, the ” political correctness “.
In these three countries, the immigrants have been able to assert a right to maintain to language and culture of their country of origin in their new environment in order to face the dangers represented in their view by assimilation.
This is a very new and contemporary phenomenon, particularly vivid in Australia – a discovery for the vast majority of the French public- gives birth to a new category of minorities which do not assert their legitimacy on historical links with their new territory, but on an ” extraterritorial right to the preservation of the cultural identity “, thus affecting the specific rights of indigenous peoples.
Furthermore, the economic and political changes have particularly affected these three states and forced them to reconsider their traditional alliances and replace them with new ties with the emerging economic blocks.
Sociolinguistics, a newcomer in the human sciences, allowed to cut across the disciplines and describe the phenomenon it its totality.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné. 1999. Ebonics: a language, a sub-cultural dialect or a culture. Paper read at AILA99 Conference, at Tokyo.

The ” founding fathers ” of Sociolinguistics had primarily focused on Black English Vernacular, opening a debate which 30 years later remains unresolved: should we consider Ebonics as a language, as an educating tool for African American children or as an element of one of the major American cultures and as such a potential official language of the United States?

These are some of the questions which we intend to examine in this paper which will assert itself as a multicultural approach of the Black American Society. Examining the positions of Labov, Hymes, Mufwene, Rickford, Baugh or Bailey which are the core of the issues developed by the Berkeley’s Center for Applied linguistics, we will assert that bringing the African American Culture into the mainstream multicultural issue is of crucial interest both in regards with the American Society per se and with the Sociolinguistics field where it had tended to be lost in the multiplicity of issues and causes.

___ 1999. From socialisation to communication times: a client’s side of the story. Paper read at ICCA Workshop, Oct. 9, 1999, at Vancouver.

___1999. Multiculturalism and the Media: some diverging perspectives. Paper read at ISS International Conference, 1999.

___ 1999. Multiculturalism in Melbourne. Paper read at Conférence sur L’Asie Pacifique, at Le Havre.

___ 1999. Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Australia: the case of Melbourne. In Multilingual Cities and Language Policies, edited by K. Herberts and J. G. Turi. Vaasa: Abo Akademi University, Social Science Research Unit.

___1999. Politiques linguistiques et Culturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis: entre législation et jurisprudence. In Langues et Droit: Langues du droit, droit des langues, edited by H. Guillorel and G. Kouby. Bruxelles: Bruylant.

___2000. L’Anglais et les Cultures: Analyse Sociolinguistique des Situations Plurilingues et Multiculturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis. Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.

___2002. The Ebonics Controversy: an unsolved dilemma and a challenge for multicultural america. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Libreria-Editorial-Ateneo Puertorriqueno.

___ 2002. Les terminologies du multiculturalisme. Droit et Culture (44):73-84.

____2005. English and Cultures: Crossroad or frontier? Paper read at L3 Conference, at Fribourg and Neuchâtel.

La place de l’anglais dans le monde est devenue un sujet de controverse qui laisse peu d’espace à une évocation moins polémique des aspects positifs d’une langue internationale démocratiquement répandue.
Cette langue parfois appelée l’américain pour affirmer son caractère politiquement hégémonique, devrait tout au succès d’un empire économique et militaire qui se taille au profit de la vitalité des cultures du monde essoufflées par la comparaison.
Dans un tel contexte il semble opportun de rappeler que dans les pays dans lesquels l’anglais est la langue nationale ou officielle, de facto ou de jure, s’est développé un concept que l’on nomme multiculturalisme et que l’on décline en pluriculturalisme, plurilinguisme ou multilinguisme, alterculturalité et interculturalité.
Il paraît également utile d’explorer la possible appropriation de l’anglais par des cultures dont il devient l’”autre langue”.
Quelle est, dès lors, la relation entre l’anglais et les cultures sur le territoire “naturel” de cette langue et au plan “international”? Quelles sont ces cultures menacées? Quel danger, à part une ignorance des langues étrangères aux Etats-Unis, faut-il craindre pour les cultures de cette mainmise de l’anglais comme langue de la communication à l’échelon planétaire? Les moyens de communication internationale sont-ils un frein ou un accélérateur à cette expansion linguistique et à ses conséquences culturelles? L’anglais constitue-t-il un creuset ou un clivage?
Partant des pays où est née la prise de conscience de la réalité du multiculturalisme nous examinerons l’ampleur et la portée de cette opposition entre une langue et un concept qui l’englobe et la dépasse.
Nous nous pencherons également sur la transposition de ce débat dans des pays en voie de développement à travers le cas de l’Algérie.
En fait il pourra être établi que la confrontation de l’anglais et des cultures reste profondément ancrée dans les idéologies et les tendances de fond d’”un autre monde possible”.

The international role of English has become a controversial issue and offers limited opportunities to explore in a moderate tone the positive aspects of an international and democratically widespread language.
The outcome of this language, often referred to as American to confirm its political and hegemonic character, is supposed to stem from the success of a military and economic empire emerging at the expense of the world cultures exhausted by comparison.
In such an environment, it might be useful to recall that the concept referred to as multiculturalism with its derivatives (pluriculturalism, plurilingualism, multilingualism, interculturality) emerged in countries where English held an official or national, de facto or de jure status.
It seems also timely to explore the potential appropriation of English by the cultures for which it has become the other tongue.
What is, thus, the connection between English and cultures on its “natural” territory and at the “international” level? What are these endangered cultures? What other menace – apart from a lack in foreign languages education in the USA – should one fear for the world cultures regarding this stronghold of English as the international language of communication? Are the Tools of International Communication a factor contributing to this linguistic expansion and its cultural consequences or not? Is English at the crossroads of cultures or is it a frontier?
Using countries from which the reality of multiculturalism stems out as a starting point, we will question the magnitude and extent of this opposition between a language and a concept that includes and goes beyond it.
We will also study the evolution of this debate in developing countries through an Algerian case study.
Indeed, the underpinning of a confrontation between English and culture seems to be deeply rooted in ideologies and trends related to the hope that “another world is possible”.

____and Charles Ricq. 1994. Manuel de Coopération Transfrontalière à l’Usage des Collectivités Locales et Régionales en Europe. 3 ed. Strasbourg: Conseil de l’Europe.

___ 1998. Médias Australiens et Multiculturalisme: l’ABC de la politique de la diversité culturelle Australienne. Paper read at 14th World Congress of Sociology, at Montreal.

Multiculturalism and the Media: some diverging perspectives By Daphné L. Romy-Masliah, Ph.D., DRM and CER-FDP, Geneva, Switzerland.

Our civilisation has now reached a maximum level of ” communicability ” transcending the physical borders. However, some invisible cultural and linguistic frontiers are re-designing infinitely more subtle communities. We feel, therefore, that the concepts related to plurilingualism and multiculturalism in the countries of large immigration should be re-visited.

This communication will be focusing on Israel, Australia, Canada and the USA which constitute the main recipients of recent migrations, with different ways of tackling the question of language and culture, two fundamental references in their daily political, economic and social life. In these countries, the immigrants have been able to assert a right to maintain to language and culture of their country of origin in their new environment in order to face the dangers represented in their view by assimilation.

This is a very new and contemporary phenomenon which gaves birth to a new category of minorities which do not assert their legitimacy on historical links with their new territory, but on an ” extraterritorial right to the preservation of the cultural identity “, thus affecting the specific rights of autochtonous peoples which another common element of these countries. In the specific case of Israel, this will allow to ponder as well on the druze identity as a symbol of integration and identity preservation.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné L. 1999. The Greek Diaspora of Montreal and Melbourne: An exploration into new immigration patterns. Paper read at Fifth Conference of the EASA, at Toulouse.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné L. 1999. Multiculturalisme Contemporain: les diaspora grecques en Australie. Paper read at Keynote Speech, at Geneva.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné L. 1999. Politiques linguistiques et culturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis. In Langues et Droits, edited by H. G. Geneviève Koubi. Bruxelles: Bruylant.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné L. 2000. Politiques linguistiques et culturelles au Canada, en Australie et aux Etats-Unis. In Langues et Droits, edited by H. G. Geneviève Koubi. Bruxelles: Bruylant.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné. 2007, Ed. L’Anglais et les Cultures, Carrefour ou Frontière. . Droit et Culture (54:2).

Romy-Masliah, Daphné and Aronin, Larissa. 2007, in L’Anglais et les Cultures, Carrefour ou Frontière. Droit et Culture (54:2):25-41.

Romy-Masliah, Daphné. 2002. Les terminologies du multiculturalisme. Droit et Culture (44):73-84.

Romy-Masliah, D. S. A.-H. (2010). Indigenous Languages: a revival or a survival? . “Language, Law and the Multilingual State” 12th International Conference of the International Academy of Linguistic Law Bloemfontein, Free State University.

Romy-Masliah, D. S. A.-H. (2010). Teaching English in Geneva and Sidi Bel Abbès, A baroque Assessment. “Language, Law and the Multilingual State” 12th International Conference of the International Academy of Linguistic Law Bloemfontein, Free State University.

___ and Aronin, Larissa (eds.) (2007), L’anglais et les cultures: carrefour ou frontière? (Droit et Cultures, 54; Paris: L’Harmattan).

Romy-Masliah, D. & S. Abid-Houcine (2010), ‘Indigenous Languages: a revival or a survival? ‘ paper given at “Language, Law and the Multilingual State” 12th International Conference of the International Academy of Linguistic Law Bloemfontein, 1-3 november 2010.
— (2010), ‘Teaching English in Geneva and Sidi Bel Abbès, A baroque Assessment.’ paper given at “Language, Law and the Multilingual State” 12th International Conference of the International Academy of Linguistic Law Bloemfontein, 1-3 november 2010.

___ (2011), ‘Languages in the Maghreb and in the Arab World in the light of the 2011 Spring Revolution’, paper given at Langues en contact: le français à travers le monde, Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg, 16-18 septembre 2011.
— (2011), ‘Contemporary Minorities and Indigenous Languages issues : how do they differ and /or relate?’ paper given at World Indigenous Peoples Conference on Education, Cusco, Peru, 14-18 august 2011.
Romy-Masliah, Daphné and Koubi, Geneviève (eds.) (2012), S’entendre sur la langue (Droit et Cultures, 63; Paris: L’Harmattan) 200.
— (2012), ‘Présentation’, Droit et Cultures, 63 (S’entendre sur la langue), 11-22.
___ (2012), ‘Tamahaq, a Vulnerable Indigenous Language in the City’, paper given at Languages in the City, Berlin, 21-24 August, 2012.
—and Ballester, Teresa (2014), ‘Materialized cultures: considerations on cultural minorities and indigenous populations around the world’s educational institutions’, paper given at Sociolinguistics Symposium 20, Jyväskyl!a, Finland, June 15-18 2014.
— Hornsby, Michael (eds.) (2016), Les langues autochtones dans la cité (Droit et Cultures, 72; Paris: L’Harmattan).

Rosane, Catherine. 2020. “Leonardo da Vinci, la Vierge, l’Enfant Jésus et Ste Anne.” In.

Tableau peint entre 1500 et 1519, est au Louvre. Le tableau n’a pas été terminé et son authenticité est sujette à controverse. C’est l’époque de l’héliocentrisme et de Copernic, des cartographies du monde. Foi en l’homme et plus seulement en Dieu, cf. l’Homme de Vitruve. LDV a étudié l’anatomie, le corps devient une mécanique diminuant l’oeuvre de Dieu.
LDV est un enfant illégitime mais son père est issu d’une grande famille. Il rejoint l’atelier de Verocchio où il est tenu pour un enfant prodigue. Il apprend tout, architecture, géologie, ordonateur de fêtes, musicien, il invente un instrument de musique. Beau, très grand, homosexuel avoué et végétarien.
Son autoportrait est un faux du XIXe siècle. Il a une obsession pour les mathématiques. Il a peint 22 toiles dont 11 seulement sont incontestées. Ses CODEX sont une mine. Il n’achevait que très rarement car c’est la recherche qui l’intéressait. On peut le considérer comme l’un des derniers grands encyclopédistes.
Son écriture en miroir s’explique par le fait que, gaucher, il ne voulait pas étaler l’encre. On n’est pas sûr du commanditaire mais Anne de Bretagne, femme de Louis XII est citée. Peut-être s’agit-il d’une institution de Florence ou de la Basilique de la Sainte annonciation. Une autre hypothèse est que ce soit un projet libre de l’artiste. Ce qui est sûr c’est que l’oeuvre rentre au Louvre en 1797 sans être attribuée à Léonard de Vinci, d’où la controverse.
Il avait son atelier au Clos-Lucé (Amboise) et Salai, amant de Léonard, a posé pour le St Jean Baptiste qui se trouve au Louvre. En 2005, la bibliothèque de Heidelberg possède un incunable d’Agostino Vespucci (cousin d’Amérigo) atteste que LDV s’était attelé à une Ste Anne en 1503 alors qu’il était en train de peindre la Joconde. (rappel incunable, lange de bébé, balbutiements de l’imprimerie).
La Joconde s’émiette et ne peut être restaurée. Sfumato, technique picturale vaporeuse: “veille à ce que tes traits se fondent” couches très fines superposées, c’est la signature de LDV par excellence, sa maitrise technique de la temporalité.
Anne est la mère de Marie, à l’origine du lignage humain de Marie.
Immaculée conception: conception sans péché originel de Marie. Par les femmes, Jésus détient son humanité, par les hommes sa divinité. Le thème de Ste Anne est récurrent et codifié. Dans un premier carton préparatoire trouvé en Angleterre, la composition est plus classique. L’agneau vient remplacer St Jean Baptiste. C’est une invention de LDV . Par le nombre désormais impair de protagonistes, le tableau devient plus intense.
Simplicité de la scène: Jésus est dépeint en petit garnement qui tire les oreilles de l’agneau. La grand-mère est complice, la mère est aimante mais fatiguée. Les plis et replis des vêtements traduisent le mouvement infini de la vie. On a découvert un message subtil et complexe lors de sa restauration sur son cadre. Ce n’est pas un paysage mais un monde en soi, orignie du monde, perspective atmosphérique. Au premier plan, il crée un vertige, on bascule vers l’avant, le rocher instable s’ouvre sur un gouffre où nous sommes, nous les spectateurs. Nous sommes dans les limbes, dans l’abîme du purgatoire. Le groupe lui-même est prêt à glisser. Il s’agit d’une représentation littérale d’un arbre généalogique par la simple organisation spatiale. Enchevêtrement de Jésus et de l’agneau, des bras d’Anne et Marie, de l’agneau et des pieds de Marie. Jésus est prêt à enfourcher son destin (l’agneau). Sourire de Marie ambivalent, regard méditatif. Le Bleu est la couleur du deuil à l’époque. Il y a deux scènes: une scène familiale et un drame sacrificiel. Jésus est Dieu fait chair, donc la peinture traduit sa matérialité et sa spiritualité.
Cf. Raphael et surtout Quentin Metzer sur le même thème.
Lente exécution qui est une méditation spirituelle de près de 20 ans: Ce que j’ai cherché toute ma vie, c’est comprendre le mystère du monde. Anne c’est Dieu.

Roosevelt, Theodore. 1917. The Chidren of the Crucible: One Flag, One Language. Wartime appeal.

We must have but one flag. We must also have but one languae. That must be the languagte of the Declaration of Independence, of Washington’s Farewell adress, of Lincol’s Gettysburg speech and second inaugural. We cannot toterate any attempt to oppose or surplant the language and culture that has come down to us from the bulders of this replublic with the language and culture of any European country. The greatness of this nation depends on the swift assimiation of the aliens she welcomes to her shores. Any force which attemps to retard that assimilative process is a force hostile to the highest interests of our country…Roosevelt, T. (1917). “The Chidren of the Crucible: One Flag, One Language.” Wartime appeal.

Rosen, Barbara. 1994. Is English Really a Family of Languages? International Herald Tribune, 15 octobre.

In common sense terms, there is only one English language…(Tok Pisin) could indeed become a separate language, but it wouldn’t be English. It’s not Enlgish now. I suppose it would be a dialect of Enlgish, you could say. It’s broken English.
People have been so silly ab out these things…Every language on Earth has recongizable dialects. (McArthur) says the difference may be only that “a langauge is a dialect with an army and a flag and a defense poicly and an airline” but calling a dialect a language doesn’t make it so. “Nobody in Mexico” could say “I’m speaking Mexican”. And very, very few Americans would describe themselves as speaking American.

Roseneau, James. 1997. Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier, Exploring Governance in a Troubled World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

cité par Sassen, Saskia. “Le travail Mondialisé: Mais pourquoi émigrent-ils?” Le Monde Diplomatique .560 (2000): 4-5.

Rosove, John (2012), ‘Plenary Session on the Future of Pro-Israel: Address’, paper given at JStreet Conference, Washington D.C., March 2012.

Senior Rabbi, Temple Israel of Hollywood
Serious engagement in Jewish life. Passion for Israel started in the 6th days war. My heart lives in the East. As a progressive reformed zionist, I feel that jews should be a light to the goyim. Minority rights. We should support these progressive forces in Israel. Rabbis for HR, khidouch for separation between state and religion in Israel. We should devote more to Israel even more when we are frustrated. We need Israel and Israel needs us. ‘Even more than the calf need to suck, the mother needs to suckle’, We are in fact a majority. Our solution is the future because any other solution is what endangers Israel’s integrity and future as a Jewish state

Rothstein, R. 1993. The Myth of Public School Failure. The American Prospect 13 (Spring).

cité par Casey, John W. “The Ebonics Controversy: Critical Perspectives on African-American Vernacular English.” The Keiai Journal of International Studies 1.1 (1998): 179-214., p. 180.

Rouart, Jean-Marie. 1999. Décolonisation. Le Figaro Littéraire, 12 aout, 15.

Titre p. 15 du Dossier sur Abd El-Krim, Le Mythe du Rebelle
L’émir de la guerre du Rif, qui a combattu les Espagnols et les Français, est devenu un symbole de la lutte contre le colonialisme. Retour sur une figure légendaire du tiers-monde, comme Mustapha Kémal, Gandhi ou Hò Chi Minh.
Edito: Jean-Marie Rouard, de l’Académie Française
Decolonisation:
La décolonisation aura été l’un des fruits sanglants du XXe siècle. A peine quarnte ans nous séparent de la guerre d’Algérie. Comment imaginer aujourd’hui que cette décolonisation est entrée dans les fait, qu’ele a été l’objet de tant de pasions, de discussions, de crimes réciproques, de massacres et de promesses non tenues.
Précédant les conflits de la décolonisation, ceux d’Algérie, la guerre du Rif apparaît comme une extraordianire répétition générale. L’Histoire semb le l’avoir occultée. Sans doute parce que cette guerre qui a mis en brale 500’000 Européens face à 75’000 Marocains, intervenait après la grande saignée de 14-18. La mort était démonétisée. Pourtant dans cette guerre du Rif, on a déjà tous les ingrédients que l’on retrouvera dans les futurs conflits: les rendez-vous manqués entre le colonisé de bonne volonté et le colonisatuer, ce mélange d’idéalisme républicain et de gros intréêts financiers, de courage militaire et de lâcheté politique. Enfin, un homme d’action et un théoricien d’exception: Abd el-Krim.
La paterminté politique d’Abd el-Krim est innomb rable: c’est l’ancêtre de Ferhat Abbas, d’Hô Chi Minh, de Maao Zedong, de Nasser. D’une intelligence produgieuse et d’un grand flair politique, il est l’une des gloires des guerres de libération. Isalmiste modéré, influencé par l’expérience d’Atatürk, il souhaitait obtenir l’indépendance du Rif en maintenant des liens étroits avec l’Espagne et avec la France. Guerrier redoutable, il a été contraint de faire la guerre sans l’aimer. Par sa tolérance, son intelligence, la justesse de ses vues, c’est l’une des plus belles et des plus intéressantes figures des combats pour l’idépendance du Maghreb.

Rougé, R., ed. 1986. Les Immigrations européennes aux Etats-Un is, 1880-1910. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris-Sorbonne.

Rougier, Bernard (2016), ‘Israel entre chaos régional et défis intérieurs’, paper given at Israel entre chaos régional et défis intérieurs, Théatre Adyar, 10 avril 2016.

Directeur du Centre d’Études et de Documentation Économiques, Juridiques et Sociales (CEDEJ), spécialiste du Moyen-Orient arabe, maître de conférences en sciences

La Turquie a été prise dans les conflits du Moyen Orient et en est maintenant la victime. L’AKP a formé les insurgés égyptiens et pendant la présidence malheureuse de Mohamed Morsi. Cette implication frères musulmans régionale des turcs l’éloigne d’Israel.
Sur la question palestinienne, on assiste à un décrochage des élites politiques palestiniennes avec leurs propres causes. Il y a une responsabilité d’une hypothétique communauté internationale qui aurait pu exister sur la question israélo-palestinienne ce qui ne s’est jamais produit.
Tendances lourdes depuis une dizaine d’année des cadres nationaux. Quand le totem durkheimien politique disparaît, il n’y a plus de représentation nationale symbolique.
Role et position de l’Egypte dans ce maelstrom: les habitants du Sinai ont l’impression d’être colonisés par “La Vallée du Nil” et d’être ignorés par l’État central égyptien et sont exploités par les groupes djihadistes. Al Sissi a exclu les frères musulmans en raison de son réseau transnational notamment avec la Turquie et réussi à être identifié aux intérêts nationaux. Le groupe djihadiste tente de faire la même chose. Le Sinai est en réalité géré par les Israéliens et les Egyptiens. Ces djihadistes d’Azedin Alqassam font sauter les oléoducs vers Israel et récupèrent le sentiment d’aliénation des bédouins. Configuration extrêmement compliquée géré de manière plus ou moins coordonnée et des tunnels permettant aux islamistes de regagner Gaza en cas de représaille égyptienne. L’armée égyptien bénéficie d’un énorme prestige national . Tant qu’elle incarne l’intérêt national et est assimilée au pouvoir d’Etat or elle dépend des subsides des Saoudiens qui, en raison des de la chute des prix du pétrole,

Rouland, Norbert (ed.), (1996), Droit des Minorités et des Peuples Autochtones (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France) 581.

Introduction: l’archipel planétaire (N. Rouland)
9-10: Mais la croyance en un Dieu unique peut tout autant exclure qu’universaliser: les Juifs étaient le “peuple élu”; longtemps l’Eglise catholique enseigna qu’hors d’elle le salut était impossible; l’islam hiérarchise les hommes en fonction de leurs croyances religieuses.
Aujourd’hui, les droits de l’Homme font figure de nouvel universalisme: certains droits se retrouvent en tout homme, ce qui fonde partout l’obligation des Etats à les respecter et permettre leur épanouissement. Cette auto-limitation de la puissance souveraine caractérisait particulièrement les Etas de droit. Nourrie par la tradition française, cette aspiration se heurte à plusieurs obstacles (…) constat d’une autre universalité: celle du mal que l’homme peut infliger à ses semblables.(…)Ensuite cette idéologie universaliste n’est pas universelle (cite Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1982), Race et Histoire (Paris: Denoël). p. 23 :
“Les grandes déclarations des droits de l’homme ont, elles aussi, cette force et cette faiblesse d’annoncer un idéal trop souvent oublieux du fait que l’homme ne réalise pas sa nature dans une humanité abstraite, mais dans des cultures traditionnelles où les changements les plus révolutionnaires laissent subsister des pans entiers et s’expliquent eux-mêmes en fonction d’une situation strictement définie dans le temps et dans l’espace”.
L’unité de l’homme en laquelle croira volontiers tout anthropologie (…) ne peut apparaître qu’au prix d’une navigation difficile entre deux écueils. Celui de l’uniformité reconnaître que tous les hommes sont égaux ne postule pas qu’ils soient partout identiques.(…) Celui de l’hétérogénéité: l’autonomie reconnue aux spécificités culturelles ne peut être que relative, surtout dans un monde vibrant des flux migratoires. Exacerbée, elle conduit aux conflits et réintroduit l’inégalité et l’oppression sous le masque du droit à la différence.
11: Le monde n’est pas devenu le village global cher à Mac Luhan. A sa place apparaît un archipel planétaire: qui veut y naviguer doit en suivre les détroits.
13: Mais la France n’est pas l’ONU, et la tradition républicaine se refuse à accorder aux minorités et autochtones le visa d’entrée dans la cité du droit. Les mots célèbres du comte de Clermont Tonnerre (…) devant la Constituante résonnent encore: “Il faut tout refuser aux juifs comme nation et tout accorder aux juifs comme individus (…)”
14: Si l’on se réfère à un ouvrage récent sur les peuples autochtones, l’Afrique compterait 14 300 000 autochtones (…). La plupart sont des pasteurs nomades. Mais nombre d’entre eux sont devenus des réfugiés en but à la politique aggressive d’Etats désireux de les fixer pour mieux pouvoir les contrôler et les sédentariser, condition jugée nécessaire au développement économique.(…). La Charte africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples (1981) ne souffle mot des minorités, et encore moins des autochtones (…). Même silence lors de la préparation de la Convention 169 de l’OIT (1989) sur les discriminations à l’encontre des populations autochtones dans le monde.
15-16: Parler d’un droit des minorités et des peuples autochtones constitue une gageure. Car les foyers normatifs d’où émanent les réglementations qui les concernent sont multiples et situés à divers niveaux de la hiérarchie des normes.
16: (…) les définitions des minorités et des autochtones sont soit inexistantes, soit trop nombreuses, suivant le rang des institutions qui s’y intéressent: aucun accord n’existe sur le plan international, et les Etats font leur gré au niveau interne.
(…) Première entrée:une conception matérielle du droit. Nous pensons que, juste ou injuste, le droit correspond aux normes produites par les institutions étatiques ou non détenant le pouvoir de le dire et de le sanctionner.
17: Seconde entrée: une conception anthropologique du droit. (…) les modèles juridiques deviennent ce que les hommes en font.Nous nous demanderons si la justiciabilité des droits reconnus aux minorités et autochtones correspond bien à la longueur de leur énumération dans les Déclarations et autres instruments.
18: Si les autochtones se distinguent des minorités par un lien privilégié au territoire et à l’histoire, ils revendiquent tout comme elles la reconnaissance de leur identité.
(…)Deux approches sont possibles, qui reflètent le débat sur la nature de l’identité.
19: Soit l’identité est substantielle et primordiale (…) correspond à un legs historiques de certains traits culturels objectifs qui servent de référents obligés: c’est l’identité telle que la vivent les militants.
Soit l’identité est instrumentale et subjective (…) réinterprétation du passé, (…) sélections chronologiques opérées à l’époque présente en vue d’objectifs futurs. {Cf Barth, Frederick (1995), ‘Les groupes ethniques et leurs frontières’, in Jocelyne Streiff-Fénart and Philippe Poutignat (eds.), Théories de l’ethnicité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France) et Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1977), L’identité (Paris: Grasset).}. Nous retiendrons pour notre part cette définition. Ce choix a d’importantes conséquences. Il signifie que les cultures sont mortelles, et que leur survie dépend des croisements et intermariages qu’elles sont capables d’opérer. Il éclaire aussi ce qu’est pour nous Non pas (…) une justification juridique du repli sur soi (…) Mais au contraire la recherche de solutions juridiques permettant à des groupes que l’histoire a déchirés et placés en situation d’infériorité de se redéfinir en fonction des nécessités du présent et de trouver les moyens d’une coexistence pacifique (…).
20: la colonisation et la conquête ont fait d’un certain nombre de peuples des autochtones.
21: (…) constat que d’autres cultures ont su prendre le relais des pires heures de l’Occident, qui accorde aujourd’hui aux autochtones des garanties que ceux-ci jugent souvent insuffisantes, mais qui constituent un statut que leur envieraient beaucoup d’autres autochtones dans le monde.
Mais les pays occidentaux eux-mêmes ne partagent pas la même attitude vis-à-vis de leurs minorités et autochtones. Parmi eux, la France a opéré un choix qui paraît de plus en plus singulier.
L’EXCEPTION FRANÇAISE-Tendue vers l’universalisme, la tradition française n’est pas universelle (…) des composantes essentielles du monde occidental -Amérique du Nord et Allemagne sont différentialistes. cf. Todd, Emmanuel (1994), Le destin des immigrés. Assimilation et ségrégation dans les démocraties occidentales (Paris: Le Seuil).
22: Le ius soli n’est pas le faire-valoir chtonien d’une conception génétique de la nationalité. Il veut seulement dire que la socialisation d’un individu ne s’effectue pas seulement par l’éducation parentale mais aussi au contact des éléments humains environnants (…). Le ius sanguinis ne signifie pas que l’appartenance culturelle se transmet par les globules sanguins, mais qu’elle se forme principalement au sein de la famille.
23: Par ailleurs, il est étrange de constater que, soucieux de l’universel, les Français sont volontiers ethnocentristes. cf. Durkheim, E (1974), L’éducation morale (Paris: PUF): Durkheim l’avait déjà noté: “Nous (les Français) faisons abstraction de toute différence nationale, nous nous montrons souvent d’un amour propre collectif ombrageux à l’excès, nous nous fermons volontiers aux idées étrangères et aux étrangers eux-mêmes”. On sait par ailleurs les difficultés qu’éprouvent les Français à l’égard des langues étrangères et de la géographie; on connaît le peu d’intérêt de leurs juristes vis-à-vis du droit comparé. La propension à l’universalisme ne serait-elle pas d’autant plus facile lorsqu’elle s’accompagne de la volontaire ignorance des différences?
L’ethnie apparaît surtout en droit positif sous des qualifications négatives. (…). En fait, l’ethnie ne serait qu’un euphémisme de la race.
24: Dans la Grèce ancienne, le terme ethnos est dépourvu de connotation raciale et désigne les peuples qui n’ont pas adopté le modèle politique et social de la cité-Etat. L’ethnie n’apparaît qu’à la fin du xixe siècle dans la langue française, à une époque où domine l’évolutionnisme, et où la France légitime la colonisation par sa “mission civilisatrice”.
(…)Parallèlement, l’ethnologie s’est désignée comme la science des sociétés “primitives” la sociologie s’alignant celle de la modernité.
(…) Dans les sciences sociales, l’ethnicity apparaît au XXe siècle dans la littérature anglophone, vers les années quarante, pour désigner les groupes non anglo-américains. (…)l’ethnie est en revanche très tardive en France, où elle n’apparaît qu’au cours des années quatre-vingt (…).
24-25(…) Max Weber distinguait déjà la race de l’ethnie en fondant cette dernière sur la croyance subjective à une communauté d’origine.(…)Par ailleurs, la plupart des définitions de l’ethnie insistent davantage sur les éléments culturels (notamment la langue et la religion) que biologiques. (…) la majorité des auteurs admet aujourd’hui que l’ethnicité ((…)) se définit (…) par la construction politique et sociale des différences.
(…)le communautarisme n’est pas nécessairement l’antithèse de l’intégration: une communauté n’est pas toujours fermée par rapport à la société englobante et peut au contraire faire office d’instrument médiateur.
26: tout individu possède des appartenances multiples et les combine de façon changeante en fonction de ses intérêts. (…) caractère excessivement négatif de l’ethnie dans la culture française, à la fois intellectuelle et populaire: l’ethnie, c’est le autres.
27; (…) parmi les ensembles politiques les plus vastes et les plus durables, beaucoup étaient fondés sur la reconnaissance des particularismes. Rome édifia un empire pluriculturel
(…)Une des raisons de l’extraordinaire expansion de l’islam après la mort du Prophète tient sans doute au fait qu’il sut se plier aux conditions locales quand c’était nécessaire.
30: (…) les théories du pluralisme juridique (…) s’accordent sur le fait que ‘Etat n’est pas la seule source du droit. Certains groupes sociaux peuvent engendrer d’authentiques systèmes juridiques.
(…) L’affirmation éventuelle par les Etats des particularismes des minorités et autochtones a un effet recognitif beaucoup plus que déclaratoire: leurs droits existaient avant même d’être officiellement constatés.
31: Enfin, le pluralisme juridique permet aux minorités et autochtones de revendiquer plus facilement une double appartenance: à leur système juridique propre, et à celui de l’Etat. Cette inscription duale est pour eux vitale. Elle leur permet à la fois de réinterpréter et d’inventer leur identité, de participer à l’élaboration des décisions les concernant, et de s’inscrire dans l’ensemble plus vaste de l’Etat au sein duquel l’histoire les a placés.
Citant Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Secondat (1758), De l’Esprit des Lois. Livre XXIX. – De la manière de composer les lois.
Il y a de certaines idées d’uniformité qui saisissent quelquefois les grands esprits (…) mais qui frappent infailliblement les pettits. Ils y trouvent un genre de perfection qu’ils reconnaissent, parce qu’il est impossible de ne pas découvrir les mêmes poids dans la police, les mêmes mesures dans le commerce, les même lois dans l’État, la même religion dans toutes ses parties. Mais cela est-il toujours à propos sans exception? Le mal de changer est-il toujours moins grand que le mal de souffrir? Et la grandeur du génie ne consisterait-elle pas à savoir dans quels cas il faut l’uniformité et dans quels cas il faut des différences?(…) Lorsque les citoyens suivent les lois, qu’importe qu’ils suivent la même?

Deuxième partie: Le Droit des Minorités (Rouland, Norbert)
Chap. 1/ la question des minorités en droit international
section I- La constitution des minorités par le droit des gens
section II- Le temps des nationalités
section III- La Société des Nations et la protection internationale des minorités
section IV- les Nations Unies et le phénomène minoritaire: la mémoire occultée.
Chapitre 2/ Vers un droit européen des minorités
section I- les organisations européennes et les minorités
section II- Un objet volontairement indéterminé: le problème de définition de la notion de minorité
section III- Le contenu du droit européen des minorités
Chapitre 3/ Les politiques juridiques des Etats
section I- La reconnaissance juridique des minorités
Section II- Le statut juridique des minorités: les droits reconnus
Chapitre 3/ La France et les minorités
section I- L’interprétation pluraliste de l’unité de l’Etat
section II- L’émergence d’un statut privatif des libertés publiques minoritaires
Troisième partie
Le Droit des Peuples Autochtones (N. Rouland)
Chapitre 1/ l’émergence historique des peuples autochtones
section I- La conquête: génocides et ethnocides
section II- La captation juridique des autochtones
Chapitre 2/ les progrès normatifs
section I- Le droit européen
section II- Le droit international
Chapitre 3/ les énigmes du droit positif
section I- La qualification du sujet de droit
section II- Les spécificités juridiques des peuples autochtones
Chapitre 4: les règles du jeu
section I- Acteurs et stratégie
section II- La justiciabilité du droit international des autochtones
Chapitre 5/ le statut juridique des autochtones de l’outre-mer français
section I- L’encadrement des particularismes
section II- La construction des particularismes coutumiers
Conclusion de la Troisième partie- la démocratie et les autochtones
Conclusion Générale.(Pierré-Caps, Stéphane)

— (1996), ‘Troisième partie: le Droit des Peuples Autochtones’, in Norbert Rouland (ed.), Droits des Minorités et des Peuples Autochtones (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France), 347-553.

347: Les médias nous habituent à classer (les peuples autochtones) parmi les groupes humains en voie de disparition (cf.Linden, Eugene (1991), ‘Lost Tribes, Lost Knowledge’, Time International, 138 (12), 38-46.). Pourtant, ils comptent aujourd’hui environ trois cents millions d’individus (dont la moitié en Asie) répartis en approximativement quatre mille peuples et sont globalement en progression démographique.
(…) magie de l’interprétation juridique qui transforme la spoliation en rédemption.
347-348: (…) les autochtones sont nés de la conquête: l’afflux des colons, l’exploitation des richesses naturelles, l’asservissement accessoire les ont transformés en cette catégorie souvent résiduelle. La conjonction de ces menaces aurait pu les anéantir. Ils échappèrent à ce sort, mais jusqu’à une époque récente, le droit international en faisait surtout des objets. A l’heure actuelle, nous les voyons en devenir des sujets constitués par divers progrès normatifs.
348: Le nouveau droit autochtone (…) procède aussi des luttes menées par les autochtones eux-mêmes à l’intérieur des souverainetés internes qui les contraignent, et dans les forums internationaux qu’ils investissent. Ils bénéficient aussi d’un effet de mode.(…)
En Amérique du Nord, une fraction croissante de l’opinion publique est hostile aux “avantages” reconnus aux Amérindiens (la Crise d’Oka, survenue au Québec en 1990, qui a vu l’affrontement violent entre les Mohawks et les forces de l’ordre en est un symptôme (pour en savoir plus cf. Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec, XXI, 1-2 (1991), p. 3-138.).
D’autre part, même si les autochtones deviennent des sujets du droit international, celui-ci ne les définit point (…) parce que cette qualification vise des groupes humains dont les statuts concrets et juridiques sont extrêmement variables.
349: Là où existe la liberté d’expression, c’est en tous cas en ces termes qu’ils formulent leurs souhaits. Etre reconnus et autonomes. Etre distingués -et non nécessairement séparés- des sociétés dominantes et même d’autres groupes avec lesquels ils étaient autrefois confondus, tels les minorités.
C’est dans les pays occidentaux (Continent Américain et Scandinavie) et grâce aux succès obtenus par les autochtones qui y demeurent que sont élaborés les statuts juridiques qui tranchent le plus avec les expériences passées.
351: Les autochtones naissent avec la conquête, dans la mesure où ce terme fait référence à des situations historiques où ils se trouvent mis en présence de populations autochtones.
En 1492, on estime que la population de l’Amérique latine comptait entre 70 et 80 millions d’habitants: il n’en reste plus que trois et demi cent cinquante ans plus tard. (Du aux) maladies, suicides collectifs, guerres sans merci, travail dans les mines. (…) En 1537, le pape avait bien décrété leur humanité (sunt vero homines).
353: les Indiens sauront jouer avec les rivalités qui opposent les colonisateurs, notamment au Canada
354: L’emploi du terme de génocide pour qualifier ces événements issus de la conquête n’est donc pas exagéré. On doit toutefois le combier à celui d’ethnocide. Non seulement les hommes sont détruits dans leur existence physique, mais aussi leurs productions culturelles.
360-361: doctrine classique chez les internationalistes qu’intéresse le statut des populations du nouveau monde. Trois principes la dominent, a priori très favorables aux Amérindiens.
1) égalité juridique des autochtones avec tous les hommes
2) principe d’universalité
3) autodétermination: même lorsque des peuples autochtones ont été conquis, ils conservent le droit de continuer à être régis par leurs propres lois.
citation de Montesquieu dans l’Esprit des Lois, Livre 5 chap. XI: “un peuple connait, aime et défend toujours plus ses moeurs que ses lois”.
Que s’est-il donc passé pour que théorie et pratiquent divergent de façon si manifeste?
362: A partir du XIXe, la plupart des juristes occidentaux soutiennent que les seuls droits territoriaux valides sont ceux en vigueur au sein de l’Etat.
(…) Aujourd’hui, les traités anciennement passés entre Européens et nations autochtones sont scrutés avec attention: les droits alors garantis pourraient bien resservir.
364 (ces) traités passés avec les autochtones. Ils posent une question essentielle: ceux-ci constituaient-ils des “nations” souveraines, des peuples avec lesquels les Etats européens s’engageaient par des actes juridiques liant respectivement les parties qui y concourraient?
le canada a(…) modifié en 1982 sa constitution en y incluant la disposition suivante: “Les droits existants – ancestraux ou issus de traités- des peuples autochtones du Canada sont reconnus et confirmés ” (art. 35 par. 1). Le par. 2 précise qu’il faut entendre par autochtones les Indiens, Inuit et métis.
366: (…) diversité des situations (…) nette différence entre l’hémisphère occidental et le monde afro-asiatique en raison du processus de décolonisation.
Comme l’ont montré certains auteurs (Berman, Howard R. (1992), ‘Perspectives on American Indian Sovereignty and International Law, 1600 to 1776’, in Oren R. Lyons and Mohawk J. (eds.), Exile in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nation and the US Constitution (Santa Fe).
Jones, Dorothy V. (1982), License for Empire: Colonialism by Treaty in Early America (Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press). ), plusieurs solutions héritées de l’époque médiévale ont été avancées pour organiser les relations avec les autochtones d’Amérique: la découverte, la conquête, la “donation” papale, et les accords et cessions.,
370: (1830), ‘Removal Act’, (US Congress).
371: En droit interne, la jurisprudence américaine met en oeuvre un grand luxe de distinctions pour parvenir à la mise sous tutelle des Indiens. En 1823, un arrêt célèbre de la Cour suprême (Johnson vs. McIntosh) premet au Chief Justice Marshall d’exposer des analyses par la suite très commentées. Il rattache au concept de découverte les droits des colonisateurs. Ceux-ci visent à exclure des territoires abordés les puissances européennes rivales, et non à fixer les relations des “inventeurs” avec les autochtones.
L’emploi du concept de découverte n’est pas innocent. Il postule que le territoire qui en est l’objet est quasiment vacant.
note de bas de page: “depuis la découverte de l’Amérique, les tribus indiennes ont été traistées comme étant sous la protection exclusive de la puissance qui, par conquête ou cession, détenait la terre que ces tribus occupaient (…)Une tribu indienne n’existe, en tant qu’entité juridique, que parce qu’elle est reconnue comme telle par le droit interne de l’Etat sur le territoire duquel cette tribu est installée, et dans la mesure où ce droit lui reconnaît un tel statut” (Indiens Cayuga (Canada vs US), 6R. Int.’l Arb. Awards 173, 306, 1926.
389: Depuis une vingtaine d’années se forme progressivement un droit spécifique des peuples autochtones, distinc de celui des minorités, même si ces deux domaines juridiques se recoupent fréquemment. En Europe, berceau des minorités, ce droit est d’apparition récente et d’un volume encore réduit. Een revanche, le phénomène est moins neuf en droit international.
(…) L ‘Europe n’est pas considérée dans le monde actuel comme une zone de peuplement autochtone, alors qu’elle compte de nombreuses minorités.
390: Les Basques, les Bretons, les Gallois et Ecossais sont-ils des autochtones, des minorités, ou les éléments indivis d’un même peuple (sans parler des Tziganes, que le groupe de travail de l’ONU sur les populations autochtones inclurait volonters parmi les autochtones)?
Certaines populations (européennes sont) indéniablement autochtones (…) Saame (autrefois appelés Lapons) du Nord de l’Europe, (…) 45000 inuit du Groenland (…) divers autochtones de l’outremer français (note de bas de page sur ce point: Cette qualification d’autochtones n’est pas officiellement reconnue par l’Etat français qui, par principe, ne reconnaît aucune minorité ou autochtones sur son sol. L’ONU cependant qualifie ainsi les Amérindiens de Guyage française, ainsi que les Canaques de Nouvelle-Calédonie: E/CN.4/Sub.2/476/Add.1 du 16 juillet 1981); résolution 47/29 du 29 novembre 1992 de l’Assemblée générale. Pour notre part, nous comptons comme autochtones de l’outre-mer français les Canaques, Amérindiens, Polynésiens, Wallisiens, Mahorais.(…)
391: la spécificité du statut des autochtones est prise en compte par les institutions européennes(…) le Parlement, le Conseil des Ministres de l’Union européenne, la Commision européenne.
LE PARLEMENT: Il joue un rôle plus politique que juridique: il n’a pas de pouvoir d’initiative sur le plan législatif et ne peut qu’amender la législation euroéenne, qui est essentiellement l’oeuvre de la Commission. Ses recommandations et résolutions n’ont pas de force contraignante.(…)Il comprend 19 commissions, dont certaines sont plus spécifiquement concernées par les questions autochtones (Commission aux affaires étrangères, au développement, à l’environnement). Mais les organes les plus impliqués sont la Sous-Commission des droits de l’homme et l’Intergroupe parlementaire pour les peuples autochtones. Celuis-ci a été créé en 1993.
Les initiatives du Parlement ont pris trois formes: rapports, résolutions, questions écrites et orales.
392: Les résolutions prises par le Parlement concernant les autochtones se montent, entre 1988 et 1993, à 28 textes. La plupart d’entres eux concernent des groupes autochtones situés hors d’Europe.(…)le Parlement semble surtout préoccupé par les zones du monde où les autochtones se trouvent particulièrment en danger.(…) trois thèmes: la violation des droits de l’homme; les programmes de développement (une attention particulière est consacrée à la déforestation de certaines zones, comme en Amazonie et en Malaisie). (…) en 1994, une résolution (prise à l’initiative des écologistes) reconnaît aux autochtones “le droit de déterminer leur destin en choisissant leurs institutions, leur statut politique et le statut de leur territoire” (Union Européenne (1994), ‘Résolution sur les mesures internationales nécessaires à une protection effective des peuples indigènes’, (Parlement Européen).
393: Le Parlement est à l’origine des textes européens les plus nombreux concernant les autochtones.
Le Conseil des Ministres de l’Union européenne est le principal organe législatif européen.(…) En réponse aux résolutions du Parlement et aux propositions de la Commission, il a adopté depuis 1990 plusieurs textes concernant les autochtones, essentiellement dans les domaines des Droits de l’homme et de l’environnement (déforestation).(…)
La Commission européenne est la structure administrative de la Communauté. (…)
394: Elle propose au Conseil des Ministres et au Parlement des mesures d’appliction des politiques communautaires, étrablit ces politiques sur la base des décisions du Conseil des ministres, administre des budgets et négocie les accords entre la Communauté et les Etats-tiers. L’organe de la Commission qui traite le plus souvent des questions concernant les autochtones est le Département des droits de l’homme, dépendant de la Direction générale des relations politiques étrangères.
(…)L’Europe parle peu des autochtones…européensm concentrant son attention sur ceux du Tiers Monde, là où, dans bien des cas le danger est le plus grave. D’autre part, les diverses institutions européennes coordonnent leurs actions dans trois champs bien définis: les droits de l’homme (ce qui confirme la complémentarité que nous constaterons en droit international entre ceux-ci et les droits des peuples autochtones); le développement durable dans la ligne du Sommet de Rio et des théories de l’ethno-développement; la ptrotection de l’environnement (notamment la limitation de la déforestation). Enfin, on notera que le coefficient de juridicité de la plupart de ces textes est en général assez faible.
395: En 1991, le Canada suggère que la Confoérence sur la sécurité et la coopération eun Europe (CSCE, devenue en 1995 Organisation OSCE) traite spécifiqueement du sort des autochtones des Etats-Membres. En 1992, le Groupe de travail de l’ONU sur les populations autochtones effectue la même recommandation. La même année, l’article 12 de la Déclaration du Sommet d’Helsinki les concerne indirectement(…) L’article 29 des Décisions les vise explicitement: “(Les Etats participants) Notant que les personnes appartenant à des populations autochtones peuvent rencontrer des problèmes particuliers dans l’exercice de leurs droits, conviennent que les engagements auxquels ils ont souscrit dans le cadre de la CSCE s’agissant des droits de l’homme et des libertés fondamentales s’appliquenet pleinement et sans discrimination à ces personnes”.
396: Enfin les textes émanant de la CSCE ne constituent pas pour les Etats des engagements juridiques conventionnels et échappent au droit des traités, même si leur oids politique n’est nullement négligeable.
399: Le rapport Cobo (Martinez-Cobo (1984), ‘Study of the Problem of Discrimination against Indigenous Populations’, (Geneva: International Labour Organization) ) contient par ailleurs une partie doctrinale où sont abordées des questions qui sont aujourd’hui au coeur de la problématique des drois autochtones: définition des populations autochtones, droit à l’autodétermination, droits linguistiques et territoiraux etc. Le rapport distingue notamment six types de politiques suivies par les Etats vis-à-vis des autochtones: la ségrégation (…) L’assimilation, (…)
l’intégration, (…) la fusion (…) , le pluralisme (…) , l’autonomie.
405: l’OIT et le BIT portent depuis longtemps une attnetion particulière aux peuples autochtones.
406: en 1953, le BIT publie un ouvrage (Les populations aborigènes: conditions de vie et de travail des populations autochtones des pays indépendants) qui est le premier document de référence sur les conditions de vie des autochtones sur le plan mondial.
412: 1988 Déclaration universelle des droits des peuples autochtones.
415: note de bas de page (à propos de l’attitude de la France qui n’est constituée que de citoyens et n’a donc pas de populations autochtones) Plusieurs témoignages peuvent être cités en ce sens:
-“Le peuple français (…) n’adment aucune distinction établie sur des caractères ethniques et écarte par là même toute notion de minorité ” (Lettre de la mission permanente de la France au directeur de la division des droits de l’homme de l’ONU le 16 septembre 1976, cité par Deschênes, Jules (1986), ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une minorité’, Les Cahiers de droit, 286.
– “(La France) ne peut connaître l’existence de groupes ethniques, qu’il s’agisse ou non de minorités. En ce qui concerne les religions et les langues -autres que la langue nationale- le gouvenement français estime que ces deux domaines relèvent non du droit public, mais de l’exercice privé des libertés publiques reconnues aux citoyens. Le rôle du gouvenement se limite à garantir aux citoyens l’exercice libre et complet de ces libertés dans le cadre défini par la loi et le respect des droits de l’individu” cité dans Capotorti, Francesco (1979), ‘Etude des droits des personnes appartenant aux minorités ethniques, religieuses et linguistiques.’ Centre pour les Droits de l’Homme (Genève: Sous-commission de la lutte contre les mesures discriminatoires et de la protection des minorités des Nations Unies ) p. 13
– A l’occasion des débats parlementaires relatifs à la ratification par la France de la Conventionrelative aux droits de l’enfant, (la France refusait de se voir appliquer l’article 30 de cette Convention, prévoyant une protection spécifique des droits des enfants appartenant à des minorités ethniques ou d’origine autochtone), H. Dorlhac déclarait au nom du grouvenrement français : “notre constitution, très complète, reconnait les droits individuels, bien sûr, mais ne fait pas de notre pays un état fédéral, et nous ne souhaitons pas qu’il le devienne” (Sénat, 21 juin 1990, JO débats, p. 2152)
– “Conformément à son ordre constitutionnel, la France a été amenée à préciser, chaque fois que de besoin, qu’il n’existait pas de minorités juridiquement reconnues sur son territoire (…). La France intervient en outre toujours fermement pour faire préciser que seuls les individus sont détenteurs de droits et d’obligations et non les groupes de personnes (…) D’une manière général, il conviendrait d’écarter toute référence aux droits collectifs des minorités” (France, Ministère des Affaires étrangères (1991), ‘La lutte contre le racisme et la xénophobie’, Commission nationale consultative des droits de l’homme(La Documentation Française, Paris: ), 208-09, 346.)
418: La Déclaration de Rio sur l’environnement et le développement recommande aux Etats de promouvoir l’identité et les cultures des peuples autochtones afin de mieux les associer au développement durable (Principe 22).
419: En juin 1993 se tient à Mataatua, en Nouvelle Zélande, la première Conférence sur les droits de propriété intellectuels et culturels des peuples autochtones.(…) Déclaration de Mataatua. Elle relie ces droits au droit à l’autodétermination, les qualifie de droits collectifs et individuels (art. 2.5), les attribue en priorité aux descendants directs de ceux qui ont su assurer la transmission des savoirs traditionnels. Elle précise en outre qu’ils sont inséparables des revendications des autochtones touchant à leurs droits territoriaux (art.2.6), ainsi que les restes humains et les objets funéraires que détiennent les musées doivent leur être restitués (art. 2.12) ainsi que les objets à caractère culturel; appel à un arrêt immédiat du programme de recherche sur le génome humain tant que les peuples autochtones ne l’auront pas discuté et approuvé (art 3.5).
421-422: la Banque mondiale (…) est une des agences spécialisées de l’ONU dans le domaine financier.(…)En 1991, elle a donné sa propre définition des peuples autochtones: “Les peuples autochtones (indigenous peoples) sont identifiés dans des hzones géographiques particulières par l’existence à des degrés variables des caractéristiques suivantes: a) le ferme attachement aux territoires ancestraux et aux ressources naturelles de ces zones; b) l’auto-identification et l’identification par les autres comme des membres d’un groupe culturellement distinc; c) une langue autochtone (indigenous language), souvent différente de la langue nationale; d) l’existence d’institutions sociales et politiques coutumières; et e) un mode de production principalement orienté vers la subsistance”
427: Les reconnaissances et déclarations de droits auxquelles nous assistons ne figent pas le statut des autochtones. Elles posent plutôt les jalons normatifs d’un processus en cours, dont l’issue ne sera pas perceptible avant longtemps.
(…)La détermination sociologique d’un groupe humain et sa qualification juridique sont deux processus de nature différente. L’une procède de son identification à parti d’un certain nombre de données. L’autre conduit lui attribuer, reconnaître, nier ou retirer un certain nombre d’attributs- des doits et des devoirs- à partir d’hypothèses faites sur sa nature.
428: Depuis la conquête, les autochtones ont surtout été des objets de droit(…). Depuis une vingtaine d’années ils tendent à devenir des sujets.
(…) nommer un être ou une chose coïncide avec l’affirmation d’un certain type de pouvoir sur eux. (…) Or nous allons constater qu’il n’existe pas de terme scientifique unique ni de définition juridique globale servant à qualifier les autochtones.
Le vocabulaire employé est la plupart du temps dp’origine anglophone
natif (Native) vise la naissance (…)dans un lieu territorialisé.
(…)Le terme autochtone est issu de la géologie(…)Les peuples autochtones sont donc eux installés sur un territoire depuis des temps immémoriaux ou (la restriction est importante) considérés comme tels. Le formant principal du mot signifie en effet en grec “la terre”. Il est entré dans notre langue vers 1560, peu après la colonisation des amériques.
429: Dans le monde anglo-saxon, on emploie plus fréquemment le terme Indigènes (indigenous). Il possède en français (…)une connotation péjorative. (…)Il n’en va pas de même en anglais où il donne une dimmension collective au qualificatif de natif. Cependant sa portée juridique et revendicative est faible.(…)C’est pourquoi, dans le monde anglophone, les autochtones lui préfèrent l’emploi du terme Aboriginal(…)Le terme aborigène qualifie (en France) la situation d’un peuple indigène dont les revendications identitaires se basent sur le fait qu’il est en situation de dépendance de type colonial vis-à-vis d’un Etat.(…) En Amérique du Nord, le terme de Premières Nations (First Nations) est souvent employé de façon synonymle. On remarquera que la Convention 169 de l’OIT (adoptée en 1989) vise les peuples indigènes et tribaux dans les pays indépendants, mais n’emploie pas le terme d’autochtone.
En France (le terme d’ethnie ou le qualificatif ethnique) possède une coloration négative, car on a tendance à l’employer comme substitut du terme de race, par ailleurs plus facilement admis chez les Anglo-Saxons. Pourtant, dans les sciences humaines, le terme d’ethnie vise surtout des éléments culturels, plutôt que biologiques. C’est pourquoi il est fréquent dans le vocabulaire des revendications autochtones. La polyséme des termes et de leurs emplois corrspond donc très souvent à des stratégie des actuers. Il en va de même des définitions.
cite Burger, Julian (1987), Reports from the Frontier. The State of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. (London: Zed Books).p. 9: “Un peuple autochtone peut réunir toutes les caractéristiques suivantes ou seulement certaines d’entre elles. Les peuples autochtones sont:
1/ les descendants des premiers habitants d’un terriroire acquis pas la conquête;
2/ des peuples nomades ou semi-nomades, tels que des agricultures itinérants, des pasteurs, chasseurs et collecteurs qui pratiquent une agriculture à forte intensité de travail produisant peu de surprlus et requérant peu de ressources énergétiques;
3/ ils n’ont pas d’institutions politiques centralisées, ont une forme communautaire d’organisation et prennent les décisions sur une base consensuelle;
4/ ils ont tous les caractères d’une minorité nationale; ils partagent les mêmes langues, religion, culture et autres traits caractéristiques ainsi qu’un lien à un territoire spécifique mais sont infériorités par une culture et une société dominantes;
5/ ils ont une vision globale du monde différente, consistant dans une attitude non matérialiste et protectrice vis-à-vis de la terre et des ressources matérielles et veulent continuer à se développer suivant des processus différents de ceux proposés par les sociétés domainantes;
6/ ils sont formés par des individus qui se considèrent subjectivement comme autochtones, et sont acceptés comme tels par le groupe.”
L’écologisme “naturel” des autochtones peut procéder d’une idéalisation occidentale (cf. Ellen, Roy F (1986), ‘What Black Elf Left Unsaid: On the Illusory Images of Green Primitivism’, Anthropology Today, 2-6, 8-12.). (…) Plus grave, plusieurs despoints énumérés pourraient conduire à enfermer les autochtones dans des modes de vie disparus ou leur rendant plus difficiles la maîtrise de leur destin. Ceux d’entre eux qui ne les pratiqueraient plus (…) ne seraient-ils plus autochtones? (…) les autochtones qui ont obtenu les statut juridiques les plus avantageux sont ceux qui ont su maîtriser le langage et les institutions de la modernité.
432: l’autochtone d’aujourd’hui peut être aussi le conquérant d’autre fois. (…)
La Convention 169 de l’OIT distingue le cas des peuples tribaux et celui des “indigènes”. En fait, il s’agirait là du résultat de pression par certains Etats nouvellement indépendant (Inde, Indonésie, Pakistan, Bangladesh). Craignant pour leur unité nationale relativement jeune, ils auraient imposé le qualificatif de “tribal” afin de récuser celui d’”indigène”.
critère subjectif: l’autodéfinition.
433: Le rapport Cobo a insisté sur ce principe dans ses deux acceptions, même s’il n’en fait pas le criètre unique de définition des autochtones:
“Par communautés, populations et nations autochtones, il faut entendre celles qui (…) se jugent distinctes des autres éléments des sociétés qui dominent à présent sur leurs territoires.”
– “il faut utiliser dans toute la mesure du possible les critères taxinomiques acceptés par les populations autochtones elles-mêmes…”
-“Du point de vue de l’individu, l’autochtone est la personne qui appartient à une population autochtone par auto-identification (conscience de groupe) et qui est reconnue et acceptée par cette population en tant que l’un de ses membres (acceptation par le groupe). Cela laisse aux communautés autochtones le droit et le pouvoir souverain de décider quels sont leurs membres, sans ingérence extérieure”
435: Un jugement rendu par le tribunal de Waitangi (Nouvelle Zélande) se réfère à cette position: “Nous refusons que les Maori ne soient rien d’autre qu’une des minorités ethniques de notre communauté. On doit se ssouvenir que, parmi tous les groupes minoritaires, seuls les Maori sont été parties à un traité passé solennellement avec la Couronne (…) . Le traité passé avec les Maori de Nouvelle-Zélande occupe une place particulière et souligne (…) leur place historique en tant qu’habitants originels.
De plus, l’assimilation aux minorités comporte un autre danger pour les autochtones, dans lea mesure où les droits reconnus aux minorités sont essentiellement des droit individuels.
436: On parle au Canada d’un droit “inhérent” – c’est à dire prééexistant- des autochtones à l’autonomie gouvernementale.
443: La qualification de peuple est un des motifs principaux qui pousent les autochtones à sse distinguer des minorités: s’ils sont des peuples, ils jouiessent d’un droit à l’autodétermination.
444: LA BATAILLE DU S entre people et peoples (cf. Indigenous People)
ces variations sémantiques ont une signification plus politique que juridique: stricto sensu, l’emploi ou lenon-emploi d’un terme ne suffit pas à créer ou dénier des droits. Il a seulement valeur indicative. D’autre part, on sait qu’il n’existe pas à l’heure actuelle en droit international de définition du terme “peuple” même si les instruments internationaux citent souvent des droits des peuples.
353: Les spécificités juridiques des peuples autochtones.
Plutôt que de les décliner, il nous a paru plus opportun de les traiter sous le concept englobant de droit à la différence.
(et d’en évoquer p. 454 les principes: unité et uniformité, mesures discriminatoires, le caractère collectif des droits autochtones.
458: Cite Taguieff, Pierre-André (1987), ‘Le nouveau racisme de la différence’, in Mario Bettati and Bernard Kouchner (eds.), Le Devoir d’ingérence (Paris: Denoël), p. 261.261: (…) il est légitime d’affirmer le droit à la différence, mais des limites doivent être assignées aux prétentions différentialiste, c’est à dire aux droits que s’accordent les identités différentielles (…) Le droit à la différence ne doit pas être compris comme undroit collectif, un “droit des communautés” mais comme un “droit du sujet à l’intertion communautaire”: chaque sujet a droit à sa culture, aucune culture n’a de droit sur le sujet (…) il faut penser les droits culturels comme des droits individuels”
Et lui oppose Rivero, Jean (1982), ‘Les droits de l’homme: droits individuels ou droits collectifs?’ in Alain Fenet (ed.), Les droits de l’homme: droits collectifs ou droits individuels? (Paris: PUF).: 23: Lorsqu’il s’agit de collectivités qui ne reposent pas sur l’adhésion volontaire, le danger augmente, à la mesure de leur puissance et de leurs ambitions. Face aux intérêts du groupe, les droits de l’homme pèsent peu (…) Que le groupe cherche son unité dans une idéologie, et le goulag s’ouvre pour ceux qui la refusent. Que cette idéologie soit la supréiorité de la race, et le droit de l’ethnie aryenne à imposer au monde sa juste domination légitime Dachau, Auschwitz et Maydanek. Sur les droits des collectivités, la fumée des fours crématoires projette la plus grande des menaces, car leur reconnaissance risque de donner le sceau de la justice à la domination du fort sur le faible.
459 pour conclure ainsi: Nous souscrivons ainsi volontiers à la formule de J. Rivero: “les droits des groupes ne sont pas autre chose que les droits de l’homme à recevoir des groupes les moyens nécessaire à son épanouissement”Rivero, Jean (1982), ‘Les droits de l’homme: droits individuels ou droits collectifs?’ in Alain Fenet (ed.), Les droits de l’homme: droits collectifs ou droits individuels? (Paris: PUF) p. 24
(…) Pour notre part, nous pensons indispensables au moins trois conditons:
– les droits collectifs doivent reposer sur la participation volontaire des membres du groupe à celui-ci et ses valeurs; l’individu doit avoir le droit de choisir (ou ne pas choisir) ses grupes d’appartenance, et éventuellement de s’en retirer;
– les droits collectifs doivent s’insérer dans une hiérarchie des normes juridiques; leur contenu ne doit pas être controiare aux énoncés des libertés et droits fondamentaux. Aucun droit collectif, fût-il culturel ne peut légitimer l’infanticide, l’esclavage etc.
– le processus d’élaboration des droits collectifs est aussi important que les détermination de leur contenu. un groupe a certaienemnt des droits collectifs, mais on doit s’assurer de la représentativité de ceux qui s’en présentent comme les véhicules ou les interprètes. La question “Qui parle au nom de qui?” doit demeurer toujours posée, de même que l’interrogation : “qui a le pouvoir de nommer qui?”
461: (…) une notion parait particulièrement importante, celle des droits culturels, dans la mesure où les autochtones revendiquent prioritairement le respect de leurs cultures, au sens anthropologique du terme (précision en nbp: soit la définition canonique donnée en 1871 par E.B. Tylor: “ensemble complexe incluant les savoirs, les croyances, l’art, les moeurs, le droit, les coutumes, ainsi que toute disposition ou usage acquis, par l’homme vivant en société”. Cette conception large a été (…) critiquée par (Harouel, Jean-Louis (1994), Culture et Contre-Culture (Paris: PUF).)
Les droits culturels sont restés les moins définis dans les démocraties occidentales, alors que le droit à la culture est un droit foncièrement démocratique.(…)
Il a fallu attendre les années 80 pour que les références s’y multiplient et qu’ils soient assimilés à des droits à l’identité. (en note: Déclaration sur le droit au développement (art I)(1989), Convention sur les droits de l’enfant (art. 31) (1989), Protocole de San Salvaddor, Protocole additionnel à la convention américaine relative aux drois de l’homme, charte africaine des droits de l’homme et des peuples, déclaration des devoirs fondamentaux des peuples et des Etats aisatiques, déclaration de Mexico sur les politiques culturelles (UNESCO, 1982), Nnouvelles réflexions sur le concept des droits des peuples (Unesco 1989), On trouvera des extraits de tous ces textes dans(1991), ‘Les Droits Cutlurels: une catégorie sous-développée des droits de l’homme’, Cahiers du Centre Interdisciplinaire d’éthique et des droits de l’homme, Fribourg, (7-1), 54-74.
462: La Commission interaméricaine des droits de l’homme a insisté dès 1980 sur la protection des droits culturels en relation avec celle des peuples autochtones (cf.(1991), ‘Les Droits Culturels dans le système interaméricain’, Cahiers du Centre Interdisciplinaire d’éthique et des droits de l’homme, (Fribourg), 28-29.
(…) La Convention 169 de l’OIT prévoit que les gouvenrmeents doivent faciliter les contacts transfrontaliers entre peuples indigènes et tribaux dans le domaine culturel (art. 32). Les articles 26 à 30 insistent sur l’éducation des enfants et l’usage des langues indigène; l’article 31 explicite le devoir des gouvernements de donner aux non-autochtones une information objective sur les peuples tribaux et indigènes “…afin d’éliminer les préjugés qu’ils pourraient nourrir à l’égard de ces peuples”
483: L’INTERNATIONALISATION DE LA QUESTION AUTOCHTONE.
Cette tendance a des précédents. En 1923, une partie des Iroquois (Canada) et leur chef Deskaheh s’étaient déjà adressés à la SDN et à la Cour internationale de Justice pour faire reconnaître qu’ils constituaient bien un Etat: la requête fut déclarée irrecevable. (…) (changement de) tactique: ils ne se présentaient plus comme Etats ou Nations mais minorités ou groupes ethniques ou autochtones (…) front commun des Indiens du Canada et des Etats-Unis (…) North American Indian Brotherhood (NAIB). (…) En 1974, le NAIB obtint le statut d’ONG, qui lui donnait un rôle consultatif auprès du Conseil économique et social; en 1977 ce fut le tour de l’Indian Treaty Council puis en 1981 des juristes de l’Indian Law Resource Center.
497: LA JUSTICIABILITE RESTREINTE DES DROITS DE L’HOMME ET DES MINORITES- Les textes protégeant spécifiquement les droits des minorités ou des autochtones sont souvent purement déclaratoires, sans effet juridique contraignant. (cf. De Zayas, Alfred (1993), ‘The International Judicial Protectio of Peoples and Minorities’, in Catherine Brölmann, R Lefeber, and M Zieck (eds.), Peoples and Minorities in International Law (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff).
514: L’ETHNIE, SIGNIFIANT FLOTTANT- Le terme ethnie a en France mauvaise presse. On le soupçonne fortement de n’être que le maquillage culturel de la discrimination raciale. Pour l’anthropologie (Bonte, Pierre and Izard, Michel (1991), Dictionnaire de l’ethnologie et de l’anthropologie (Paris: PUF). et Poutignat, Philippe and Streiff-Fenart, Jocelyne (1995), Théories de l’ethnicité (1ère edn., Le sociologue, 1; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France) 270.) “le terme ethnie désigne un ensemble linguistique, culturel et territorial d’une certaine taille. Le terme de tribu étant généralement réservé à des groupes de plus faible dimension”.

— (1996), ‘Conclusion générale’, in Norbert Rouland (ed.), Droits des Minorités et des Peuples Autochtones (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France), 555-65.

Pendant longtemps, l’Europe connaitra (des) bouleversements. Etats dissociés et remembrés (…) peuples égrenés sur leurs frontières, sans compter ceux qu’en son seil l’Empire soviétique déporta en masse: les minorités sont les enfants de ces tumultes.
556: LES INCERTITUDES- (…) sont celles d’un droit naissant (dans le cas des autochtones) ou profondément transformé après une longue éclipse (dans celui des minorités).(…)
les controverses sur le droit à l’autodétermination, choix entre la sécession et l’autonomie interne pour la doctrine anglo-saxonne, ou droit à l’identité des minorités à l’intérieur d’un Etat, (…)
“…de principe de constitution de l’Etat au titre du droit d’un peuple à devenir un Etat, il devient un principe d’organisation de l’Etat au titre du droit d’un peuple à ne pas devenir un Etat” Pierré-Caps, Stéphane (1995), La Multination (Paris: Odile Jacob).
557: Il faut le reconnaître, nous ne disposons pas aujourd’hui d’une théorie générale des minorités qui permettrait de situer chaque cas concret dans une typologie idéale (…)
La quasi-universalité de la minoration du statut des étrangers montrent que l’ouverture à l’Autre et son respect ne sont jamais acquis.
559: En fait, la théorie des minorités et des autochtones obéit aux contingences de la complexité.
560: Le pluralisme peut labelliser des sociétés en voie d’homogénéisation: l’Amérique du Nord n’est sans doute pas la marqueterie ethnique qu’on croit apercevoir de ce côté de l’Atlantique (la progression des mariages mixtes en témoigne). A l’inverse, comme nous l’avons montré, l’obstination de la France ne la transforme pas en enfer des minorités et des autochtones.

Roussel, Eric. 2007. Pierre Mendès France: Gallimard.

Abstract dans site France Culture du 24 février 2007
Pierre Mendès France (1907-1982) a laissé le souvenir d’une sorte de sage, de «conscience morale» de la gauche socialiste… et aussi d’un inlassable pourfendeur de l’alcoolisme et promoteur de la consommation de lait.
Au-delà de ces images d’Épinal, Éric Roussel s’est intéressé au « vrai » Pierre Mendès France. D’abord en lui restituant toute sa dimension, car il fut, avec de Gaulle, l’un des deux seuls acteurs de la vie publique au XXe siècle à avoir suscité un mythe. Ensuite en retraçant l’ensemble de sa carrière politique, trop souvent limitée à son unique et brève présidence du Conseil, de juin 1954 à février 1955.

À partir d’archives inédites, pour une part confiées par sa famille, et pour une autre retrouvées à la mairie de Louviers dans l’Eure, département où il avait été élu pour la première fois en 1932, c’est un Pierre Mendès France inconnu qui se révèle. Un homme fait pour l’action, un homme de terrain, habile et efficace, bien loin des habits d’intellectuel dont on l’a revêtu. Un homme, aussi, dont les envies de retour aux affaires au cours des années 1960 seront contrecarrées par de sérieux problèmes de santé, le contraignant au retrait. Un homme, encore, d’une parfaite probité, dont le parcours politique n’est entaché d’aucune affaire louche.
De cet homme méconnu, complexe, attachant et paradoxal, on pourrait dire que si de Gaulle incarnait une certaine idée de la France, il incarnait une certaine idée de la République.

Cette biographie est publiée à l’occasion du centenaire de la naissance de Pierre Mendès France.
Cet anniversaire sera marqué par de nombreuses manifestations et colloques (en particulier au Sénat), dont le programme est en cours d’élaboration.

Journaliste et écrivain, Éric Roussel est docteur en droit et spécialiste de l’histoire politique. Biographe, il s’est successivement intéressé à Georges Pompidou, Jean Monnet et Charles de Gaulle (NRF biographie, 2002).

Rousso, Henry (2011), ‘Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte’, in David Chemla (ed.), JCall: les raisons d’un appel (Paris: Liana Levi ), 91-96.

91: J’ai signé l’Appel à la raison parce que en quelques lignes concises il exprime mon sentiment profond comme Juif, comme historien, comme simple citoyen à l’égard du conflit entre Palestiniens et Israéliens.
Comme Juif, j’ai des liens avec Israël (..)familiaux, amicaux et professionnels, des liens biographique également puisque je fus chassé d’Egypte, mon pays natal et celui de mes parents, en janvier 1957, en représailles après la guerre de Suez. Cela ne me confère pas de légitimité pour donner mon point de vue sur le conflit du Proche-Orient, mais pas moins qu’à d’autres juifs qui, inconditionnels de la politique israélienne, y compris dans ce qu’elle a de pire, se sont arrogé un droit quasi exclusif de parler au nom de la “Diaspora”. J’emploie ce terme, utilisé dans l’Appel, faute de mieux, même si je ne crois pas que le judaïsme contemporain puisse se résumer à la distinction entre, d’un côté un Etat juif (qui ne l’est d’ailleurs pas complètement, c’est bien l’un des aspects du problème), et de l’autre des communautés ou des individus “dispersés” de par le monde et loin de “leur” centre naturel. Mon attachement à Israël est différent (…).
92: J’ai même eu un moment d’hésitation à signer un texte qui ne sollicitait que les Juifs de la Diaspora(…).C’est pourtant bien en tant que tel que je le fais, car quelle que soit la manière de se penser Juif aujourd’hui, le sort d’Israël – et de ses voisins- nous concerne.
93: Comme historien, je sais que le XXe siècle a été non seulement le siècle des guerres totales, des génocides et des massacres de masse, mais aussi celui des grands mouvements volontaires ou forcés de population. Il a été le siècle des exilés, des réfugiés, des immigrés, des apatrides, des sans-papiers, des déplacés qui, tous, à des degrés divers, ont souffert de l’incapacité à penser le monde autrement qu’en terme de territoires “ethniquement homogènes” et de frontières surveillées, sinon fermées, voire murée. Le Proche-Orient connaît depuis près d’un siècle maintenant ce refus d’accepter le voisin, cette passion fanatique, partagée des deux côtés, de la terre à soi, soit le prix à payer pour les garder ou les acquérir. Alors que depuis la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en dépit de l’irréparable commis par le nazisme et ses alliés, les nations européennes sont parvenues à camer, voire éteindre, presque tous les conflits nationaux multiséculaires, à réconcilier des ennemis supposés irréconciliables -la France et l’Allemagne, l’Allemagne et la Pologne-, Palestiniens et Israéliens se sont enlisés dans une séquence guerrière dont on ne voit pas la in et qui semble connaître un tournant inquiétant.
94:Jamais Israël n’a été autant détesté, mamais ses soutiens ne se sont autant réduits, et même les alliés de toujours, comme les Etats-Unis, commencent à montrer des signes de lassitude.

Rowley, Chris and Lewis, Mark (1997), ‘Introduction: Greater China at the Crossroads: Convergence, Culture and Competitiveness’, Asia Pacific Business Review, ( 2.3, Special Issue – Greater China: Political Economy, Inward Investment and Business Culture).

Rubin, J., Jernudd B.H., Das Gupta J., Fishman J.A., and Ch.A Ferguson, eds. 1977. Language Planning Processes. The Hague: Mouton.

Ruf, Isabelle. 2000. Allié des nationalismes, le “génie des langues” joue un rôle ambigu: les langues organisent chacune le monde à lsuer naière propre et peuvent tout dire en dépit des discours nationalistes qui les récupèret. LeTemps, Samedi 5 aout 2000, 7.

peut-on dissocier langue et peuple? C’est la question que posent ces quatre voix (Jean Améri, Théodor Adorno, Hanna Arendt et Nelly Sachs) au terme d’une longue interrogation sur “le génie de la langue” que Marc Crépon ( Crépon, M. (2000). Le Malin Génie des langues. Paris, J. Vrin.) fait remonter à Niettzsche et à sa critique de la culture allemande: “prenez votre langue au sérieux”. La sacralisation d’un idiome donné comporte le risque d’un repli sur un “nous” qio se définiarit aussi par le “ang”, la “race”, dessinant les contour d’une philosophie, d’une littérature nationlae avec tous les dangers d’exclusion.

Ruiz, R. 1994. Language policy and planning in the US. In Annual Revew of Applied Linguistics, edited by G. W. e. al. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rupesinghe, Kumar, and Valery A. Tishkov, eds. 1997. Ethnicity and power in the Contemporary world. Tokyo-New York-Paris: United Nations University Press.

Rushdie, Salman (1982), ‘Imaginary Homelands’, London Review of Books, 18 (4), 18-19.

An old photograph in a cheap frame hangs on a wall of the room where I work. It’s a picture, dating from 1946, of a house into which, at the time of its taking, I had not yet been born. The house is rather peculiar – a three-storied gabled affair with tiled roofs and round towers in two corners, each wearing a pointy tile hat. ‘The past is a foreign country,’ goes the famous opening sentence of L.P. Hartley’s novel The Go-Between, ‘they do things differently there.’ But the photograph tells me to invert this idea: it reminds me that it’s my present that is foreign, and that the past is home, albeit a lost home in a lost city in the mists of lost time.

A few years ago I revisited Bombay, which is my lost city, after an absence of something like half my life. Shortly after arriving, acting on an impulse, I opened the telephone directory and looked for my father’s name. And, amazingly, there it was: his name, our old address, the unchanged telephone number, as if we had never gone away to the unmentionable country across the border. It was an eerie discovery. I felt as if I were being claimed, or informed that the facts of my faraway life were illusions: that this – this continuity – was the reality. Then I went to visit the house in the photograph and stood outside it, neither daring nor wishing to announce myself to its new owners. (I didn’t want to see how they’d ruined the interior.) I was overwhelmed. The photograph had naturally been taken in black and white; and my memory, feeding on such images as this, had begun to see my childhood in the same way, monochromatically. The colours of my history had seeped out of my mind’s eye; now my other two eyes were assaulted by colours, by the vividness of the red tiles, the yellow-edged green of cactus-leaves, the brilliance of bougainvillaea creeper. It is probably not too romantic to say that that was when my novel Midnight’s Children was really born: when I realised how much I wanted to restore the past to myself, not in the faded greys of old family-album snapshots, but whole, in Cinemascope and glorious Technicolor. Bombay is a city built by foreigners upon reclaimed land; I, who had been away so long that I almost qualified for the title of farangi, was gripped by the conviction that I, too, had a city and a history to reclaim.

Writers in my position, exiles or emigrants or expatriates, are haunted by an urge to look back, even at the risk of being mutated into pillars of salt. But if we do look back, we must also do so in the knowledge – which gives rise to profound uncertainties – that our physical alienation from India almost inevitably means that we will not be capable of reclaiming precisely the thing that was lost: that we will, in short, create fictions, not actual cities or villages, but invisible ones, imaginary homelands, lndias of the mind. Writing my book in North London, looking out through my window on to a city scene totally unlike the ones I was imagining on to paper, I was constantly plagued by this problem, until I felt obliged to face it in the text, to make clear that (in spite of my original and, I suppose, somewhat Proustian ambition to unlock the gates of lost time so that the past reappeared as it actually had been, unaffected by the distortions of memory) what I was actually writing was a novel of memory and about memory, so that my India was just that: ‘my’ India, a version and no more than one version of all the hundreds of millions of possible versions. I tried to make it as imaginatively true as I could, but imaginative truth is simultaneously honourable and suspect, and I knew that my India may only have been one to which I (who am no longer what I was, and who by quitting Bombay never became what perhaps I was meant to be) was willing to admit I belonged.

This is why I made my narrator, Saleem, suspect in his narration: his mistakes are the mistakes of a fallible memory compounded by quirks of character and of circumstance, and his vision is fragmentary. It may be that when the Indian writer who writes from outside India tries to reflect that world, he is obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of whose fragments have been irretrievably lost. But there is a paradox here. The broken mirror may actually be as valuable as the one which is supposedly unflawed. Before beginning Midnight’s Children, I spent many months trying simply to recall as much of the Bombay of the 1950s and 1960s as I could; and not only Bombay – Kashmir, too, and Delhi and Aligarh which, in my book, I’ve moved to Agra to heighten a certain joke about the Taj Mahal. I was genuinely amazed by how much came back to me. I found myself remembering what clothes people had worn on certain days, and school scenes, and whole passages of Bombay dialogue verbatim, or so it seemed; I even remembered advertisements, film-posters, the neon Jeep sign on Marine Drive, toothpaste ads for Binaca and for Kolynos, and a footbridge over the local railway line which bore, on one side, the legend ‘Esso puts a tiger in your tank’ and, on the other, ‘Drive like Hell and you will get there.’ Old songs came back:

O my shoes are Japanese,
The trousers English, if you please,
On my head’s a Russian hat,
But I’m Indian for all that.

I knew that I had tapped a rich seam: but I’m not gifted with total recall, and it was precisely the partial nature of these memories, their fragmentation, that made them so evocative for me. The shards of memory acquired greater status, greater resonance because they were remains: fragmentation made trivial things seem like symbols, and the mundane acquired numinous qualities.

It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to me self-evidently true: but the writer who is out-of-country, even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by the physical fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being ‘elsewhere’. This may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal.

The broken glass is not merely a mirror of nostalgia. It is also a useful tool with which to work in the present. John Fowles begins Daniel Martin with the words: ‘Whole sight: or all the rest is desolation.’ But human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capable only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death. The Fowles position seems to me a way of succumbing to the guru-illusion. Writers are no longer sages, dispensing the wisdom of the centuries. And those of us who have been forced by cultural displacement to accept the provisional nature of all truths, all certainties, have perhaps had modernism forced upon us. We can’t lay claim to Olympus, and are thus released to describe our worlds in the way in which all of us, whether writers or not, perceive them from day to day.

In Midnight’s Children, my narrator introduces, at one point, the metaphor of a cinema screen to discuss this business of perception: ‘Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually moving up … until your nose is almost pressed against the screen. Gradually the stars’ faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions … it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality.’ The movement towards the cinema screen is a metaphor for the narrative’s movement through time towards the present, and the book itself, as it nears contemporary events, quite deliberately loses deep perspective, becomes more ‘partial’. I wasn’t trying to write about (for instance) the Emergency in the same way as I wrote about events half a century earlier. I felt it would be dishonest to pretend, when writing about the day before yesterday, that it was possible to see the whole picture. I showed certain blobs and slabs of the scene.

A few months ago I took part in a conference. Various novelists, myself included, were talking earnestly of such matters as the need for new ways of describing the world. Then the playwright Howard Brenton suggested that this might be a somewhat limited aim: does literature seek to do no more than to describe? Flustered, all the novelists at once began talking about politics. Let me apply Brenton’s question to the specific case of Indian writers, in England, writing about India. Can they do no more than describe, from a distance, the world that they have left?

This is, of course, a political question, and must be answered at least partly in political terms. It should be said, first of all, that description is itself a political act. The black American writer Richard Wright once wrote that black and white Americans were engaged in a war over the nature of reality. Their descriptions were incompatible. So it is clear that redescribing a world is the necessary first step towards changing it. And it is particularly at times when the state takes reality into its own hands, and sets about distorting it, altering the past to fit its present needs, that the making of the alternative realities of art, including the novel of memory, becomes politicised. ‘The struggle of man against power,’ Milan Kundera has written, ‘is the struggle of memory against forgetting.’ Writers and politicians are natural rivals. Both groups try to make the world in their own images; they fight for the same territory. And the novel is one way of denying the official, politicians’ version of truth. The ‘state truth’ about the war in Bangladesh, for instance, is that no atrocities were committed by the Pakistani Army in what was then the East Wing. This version is sanctified by many people who would describe themselves as intellectuals. And the official version of the Emergency in India was well expressed by Mrs Gandhi in a recent BBC interview. She said that there were some people around who claimed that bad things had happened during the Emergency, forced sterilisations, things like that: but, she stated, this was all false. Nothing of this type had ever occurred. The interviewer, Robert Kee, did not probe this statement at all. Instead he told Mrs Gandhi that she had proved many times over her right to be called a democrat.

So literature can, and perhaps must, give the lie to official facts. But is this a proper function of those of us who write from outside India? Or are we just dilettantes in such affairs, because we are not involved in their day-to-day unfolding, because by speaking out we take no risks, because our personal safety is not threatened? What right do we have to speak at all? My answer is very simple. Literature is self-validating. That is to say, a book is not justified by its author’s worthiness to write it, but by the quality of what has been done. There are terrible books that arise directly out of experience, and extraordinary imaginative feats dealing with themes which the author has been obliged to approach from the outside. (Just one example of this latter category: Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron, a book which seems wholly to justify its use of Auschwitz, even though Styron is not a Jew, let alone a survivor of the Holocaust.) Literature is not in the business of copyrighting certain themes for certain groups. And as for risk: the real risks for any artist are taken in the work, in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it – when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.

The Paris Review and the London Review of Books
So if I am to speak for Indian writers in England I would say this, paraphrasing G.V. Desani’s H. Hatterr: the migrations of the 1950s and 1960s happened. ‘We are. We are here.’ And we are not willing to be excluded from any part of our heritage: which heritage includes both a British-born Indian kid’s right to be treated as a full member of this society, and also the right of any member of this post-diaspora community to draw on its roots for its art, just as all the world’s community of displaced writers has always done. (I’m thinking, for instance, of Grass’s Danzig-become-Gdansk, of Joyce’s abandoned Dublin, of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Maxine Hong Kingston and Milan Kundera and many others. It’s a long list.) On the other hand, the Indian writer, looking back at India, does so through guilt-tinted spectacles. (I am, of course, once more, talking about myself.) I am speaking now of those of us who emigrated … and I suspect that there are times when the move seems wrong to us all, when we seem, to ourselves, postlapsarian men and women. We are Hindus who have crossed the black water; we are Muslims who eat pork. And as a result – as my use of the Christian notion of the Fall indicates – we are now partly of the West. Our identity is at once plural and partial. Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools … but however ambiguous and shifting this ground may be, it is not an infertile territory for a writer to occupy. If literature is in part the business of finding new angles at which to enter reality, then once again our distance, our long geographical perspective, may provide us with such angles. Or it may be that that is what we must think in order to do our work.

Midnight’s Children enters its subject from the point of view of a secular man. I am a member of that generation of Indians who were sold the secular ideal. One of the things I liked, and still like, about India is that it is based on a non-sectarian philosophy. I was not raised in a narrowly Muslim environment; I do not consider Hindu culture to be either alien from me or more important than the Islamic heritage. I believe this has something to do with the nature of Bombay, a metropolis in which the multiplicity of commingled faiths and cultures creates a remarkably secular ambience. Saleem Sinai makes use of whatever elements from whatever sources he chooses.

I want to make one last point about the description of India that Midnight’s Children attempts. It is a point about pessimism. The book has been criticised in India for its ultimately despairing tone. And the despair of the writer-from-outside may indeed look a little easy, a little too pat. But I do not see the book as despairing or nihilistic. The point of view of the narrator is not entirely that of the author. What I tried to do was to set up a tension in the text, a paradoxical opposition between the form and the content of the narrative. The story of Saleem does indeed lead him to despair. But the story is told in a manner designed to echo, as closely as my abilities allowed, the Indian talent for non-stop self-regeneration. This is why the narrative constantly throws up new stories, why it ‘teems’. The form – multitudinous, hinting at the infinite possibilities of the country – is the optimistic counterweight to Saleem’s personal tragedy. I do not think that a book written in such a manner can really be called a despairing work.

England’s Indian writers are, of course, by no means all the same type of animal. Some of us, for instance, are Pakistani. Others Bangladeshi. Others West, or East, or even South African. And V.S. Naipaul, by now, is something else entirely. This word ‘Indian’ is getting to be a pretty scattered concept. Indian writers in England include political exiles, first-generation migrants, affluent expatriates whose residence here is frequently temporary, naturalised Britons, and people born here who may never have laid eyes on the subcontinent. Clearly, nothing that I say can apply across all these categories. But one of the interesting things about this diverse community is that, as far as Indo-British fiction is concerned, its existence changes the ball-game, because that fiction is in future going to come as much from addresses in London, Birmingham and Yorkshire as from Delhi or Bombay. One of the changes has to do with attitudes towards the use of English. We can’t simply use the language in the way the British did: it needs remaking for our own purposes. Those of us who use English do so in spite of our ambiguity towards it, or perhaps because of that, perhaps because we find in that linguistic struggle a reflection of other struggles taking place in the real world, struggles between the cultures within ourselves and the influences at work upon our societies. To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free. But the British Indian writer simply does not have the option of rejecting English, anyway. His children, her children, will grow up speaking it, probably as a first language; and in the forging of a British Indian identity the English language is of central importance. It must, in spite of everything, be embraced. (The word ‘translation’ comes, etymologically, from the Latin for ‘bearing across’. Having been borne across the world, we are translated men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation: I cling, obstinately, to the notion that something can also be gained.)

To be an Indian writer in this society is to face, every day, problems of definition. What does it mean to be ‘Indian’ outside India? How can culture be preserved without becoming ossified? How should we discuss the need for change within ourselves and our community without seeming to play into the hands of our racial enemies? What are the consequences, both spiritual and practical, of refusing to make any concessions to Western ideas and practices? What are the consequences of embracing those ideas and practices?

In common with many Bombay-raised middle-class children of my generation, I grew up with an intimate knowledge of, and even sense of friendship with, a certain kind of England: a dream-England composed of Test Matches at Lord’s presided over by the voice of John Arlott, at which Freddie Trueman bowled unceasingly and without success at Polly Umrigar; of Enid Blyton and Billy Bunter, in which we were even prepared to smile indulgently at portraits such as ‘Hurree Jamset Ram Singh’, the ‘dusky nabob of Bhanipur’. I wanted to come to England. I couldn’t wait. And to be fair, England has done all right by me: but I find it a little difficult to be properly grateful. I can’t escape the view that my relatively easy ride is not the result of the dream-England’s famous sense of tolerance and fair play, but of my social class, my freak fair skin and my ‘English’ English accent. Take away any of these, and the story would have been very different. Because of course the dream-England is no more than a dream.

Sadly, it’s a dream from which too many white Britons refuse to awake. Recently, on a live radio programme, a professional humorist asked me, in all seriousness, why I objected to being called a ‘Wog’. He said he had always thought it a rather charming word, a term of endearment. ‘I was at the zoo the other day,’ he revealed, ‘and a zoo keeper told me that the Wogs were best with the animals; they stuck their fingers in their ears and wiggled them about and the animals felt at home.’ The ghost of Hurree Jamset Ram Singh walks among us still. But it’s easy to be anecdotal. The point is that the British are deluded about themselves and their society. They still, for the most part, think it the fairest, most just, most decent society ever created: an attitude which has created, in Britain, what might be termed a gulf or rift in reality. As Richard Wright found long ago in America, black descriptions of society, and white, are no longer compatible. Fantasy, or the mingling of fantasy and naturalism, is one way of dealing with these problems. It offers a way of echoing in the form of our work the issues faced by all of us: how to build a new, ‘modern’ world out of an old, legend-haunted civilisation, an old culture which we have brought into the heart of a newer one. But whatever technical solutions we may find, Indian writers in these islands, like others who have migrated to the north from the south, are capable of writing from a kind of double perspective: because they – we – are at one and the same time insiders and outsiders in this society. This stereoscopic vision is perhaps what we can offer in place of ‘whole sight’.

Of all the many elephant traps lying ahead of us, the largest and most dangerous pitfall would be the adoption of a ghetto mentality. To forget that there is a world beyond the community to which we belong, to confine ourselves within narrowly defined cultural frontiers would be to go voluntarily into that form of internal exile which in South Africa is called the ‘homeland’. We must guard against creating, for the most virtuous of reasons, British-Indian literary equivalents of Bophuthatswana or the Transkei. This raises immediately the question of whom one is writing ‘for’. My own, short answer is that I have never had a reader in mind. I have ideas, people, events, shapes, and I write ‘for’ those things, and hope that the completed work will be of interest to others. But which others? In the case of Midnight’s Children I certainly felt that if its subcontinental readers had rejected the work, I should have thought it a failure, no matter what the reaction in the West. So I would say that I write ‘for’ people who feel part of the things I write ‘about’: but also for everyone else whom I can reach. I am of the same opinion as Ralph Ellison, who says that he finds something precious in being black in America: but that he is also reaching for more than that. ‘I was taken very early,’ he writes, ‘with a passion to link together all I loved within the Negro community and all those things I felt in the world which lay beyond.’ Western writers have felt free to be eclectic in their selection of theme, setting, form: I am sure we must grant ourselves an equal freedom.

Indian writers in England have access to a second tradition, however, quite apart from their own racial history. It is the cultural and political history of the phenomenon of migration, displacement, life in a minority group. We can quite legitimately claim, as our ancestors, the Huguenots, the Irish, the Jews; the past to which we belong is an English past, the history of immigrant Britain. Swift, Conrad, Marx are as much our literary forebears as Tagore or Ram Mohan Roy. America, a nation of immigrants, has created great literature out of the phenomenon of cultural transplantation, out of examining the ways in which people cope with a new world: it may be that by discovering what we have in common with those who preceded us into this country, we can begin to do the same. I stress that this is only one of many possible strategies. But we are inescapably international writers at a time when the novel has never been a more international form (a writer like Borges speaks of the influence of Robert Louis Stevenson on his work, Heinrich Böll acknowledges the influence of Irish literature, cross-pollination is everywhere); and it is perhaps one of the more pleasant freedoms of the literary migrant to be able to choose his parents. My own – selected half-consciously, half-not – include Gogol, Cervantes, Kafka, Melville, Machado de Assis: a polyglot family tree, against which I measure myself, and to which I would be honoured to belong. There’s a beautiful image in Saul Bellow’s latest novel, The Dean’s December. The central character, the Dean, Corde, hears a dog barking wildly somewhere. He imagines that the barking is the dog’s protest against the limits of dog experience: ‘For God’s sake,’ the dog is saying, ‘open the universe a little more!’ Bellow is not really talking about dogs, or not only about dogs, and I have the feeling that the dog’s rage, and its desire, is also mine, ours, everyone’s. ‘For God’s sake, open the universe a little more!’

en français—1993. Patries imaginaires. Translated by A. Chatelin. Paris: Bourgois.

Ruttenberg, Roee ‘A reminder to Israel from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’ accessed Sunday, January 15, 2012|. 3d October 2020

As Americans remember civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., his messages ring true for many Israelis looking for this sort of inspiration that their own leaders are simply not providing.
There are few times in which journalists get to say “the politicians done good.” This is one of them.
First, in the past year, the US Federal Government unveiled the long overdue national memorial honoring the slain American civil rights leader, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK, as he is often called, would have turned 83 years old this past weekend, had he not been gunned down before he celebrated even half of those years. He preached that the rule of law (as defined by government) is not always right and is not always moral. And in both cases, it must be challenged and challenged tirelessly.
His weapon was civil disobedience. Decades later, the same capital city upon which he marched has given his memory a permanent home amidst the memorials of the country’s greatest names, including Jefferson and Lincoln, and just meters away from the national memorial honoring the fallen soldiers of the war in Vietnam which Dr. King so vocally opposed. This inclusion of King’s legacy into the ranks of America’s most revered icons serves as a rare reminder that this country should applaud those who stand-up, as its pledge of allegiance boasts, to defend “liberty and justice for all.”
Second, an error in the engraved quote at the side of MLK’s bust, will now be corrected. After the memorial opened, there was a great deal of controversy surrounding the truncation of an MLK quote. The chosen text was meant to convey King’s humility but in the end actually conveyed a sense of arrogance, and many among his family and supporters were outraged. Determined to get it right, the federal government has just announced that it will fix the stone etching to better reflect King’s legacy. Again, the message here is that not only should King be honored, but that he should be honored in a way that is fitting. And for anyone who follows the US government, such a humble admission of error, much less a willingness to correct it, is rare.
Americans annually celebrate Dr. King’s birthday around this time of year. The 2012 calendar calls for a bank holiday on Monday. And because the memorial is so new, the day this year is getting lots of extra attention. And it has once again highlighted King’s messages. I, an Israeli-American splitting my time between both countries, went to see the memorial first-hand. It was touching and challenging.

MLK: “It is not enough to say, ‘We must not wage war.’ It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “We are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs ‘down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream’.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “Make a career of humanity, commit yourself to the noble struggle for equal rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country, and a finer world to live in.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

MLK: “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for the their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.” (photo: Roee Ruttenberg)

A few things came to mind as I walked through the memorial. First, I immediately wondered, as the lyrics of a Hebrew song ask, “Eifoh yeshnam od anashim k’mo ha’ish hahu? (“Where are there more people like that man?”) This tune was sung more than fifteen years ago for the slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But most Israelis would find it difficult to equate Rabin to Dr. King. So I ask, where is Israel’s MLK? And would Israeli society and the system currently in place provide for (and maybe one day applaud) the rising-up of a man or woman who’d say that the rule of law is unjust and immoral and must be challenged with the weapon of civil disobedience?
Second, I found myself noticing that some of King’s texts, etched into the walls of the memorial, directly resonated with the situation in Israel vis-a-vis the country’s own agenda and its agenda with the Palestinians. And some – allowing for a slight word change here and there – became rather haunting. Here are a few that immediately popped into my head:
True peace is not merely the absence of violence; it is the presence of justice.

I oppose the occupation in Palestine because I love Israel. I speak out against it not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world.

Injustice in Palestine is a threat to justice in Israel. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.

I have the chutzpah to believe that Palestinians everywhere can have three meals a day for the their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.

5 responses to “Bibliography (R) like…Romy-Masliah, from Radio Canada to Rushdie”

On Yom Hashoah and Labour Day 2011 a voice from the past « cosmopolitanism

May 1, 2011 at 11:43 am

[…] will find it also under my Bibliography R page of course, as all of my 1011 […]

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pre-Cusco from Amsterdam « cosmopolitanism

August 9, 2011 at 7:45 am

[…] I’m preparing my presentation on Contemporary Minorities and Indigenous Languages issues : how do they differ and /or relate? in which I will deal with the European language legislations, the Common European Framework of Reference on Languages mostly, though briefly refering to other language education models in other parts of the world as per my language research (see details by clicking on this link). […]

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California, Hong Kong and multicultural perspectives « cosmopolitanism

October 8, 2012 at 8:51 pm

[…] I beg Reese for a sequal…in Europe?Here are some exerpts from his book, also to be found in my bibliography under R: Dédicace: “In the Spirit of Michael Jackson: “Make this World a Better Place” […]

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Sur les bords de la Vistule – Along Vistula Riverbanks – COSMOPOLITIQUE

September 27, 2017 at 2:52 pm

[…] Bibliography (R) like…Romy-Masliah, from Radio Canada to Rushdie […]

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Chroniques Covid Chronicles Day 51 – COSMOPOLITIQUE

May 2, 2020 at 8:58 pm

[…] already entered the two talks about da Vinci and Michaela Angela. You’ll find the former under R (Rosane) and the latter under M […]

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