France sees itself as blind to race. After a teen is killed by police, how does one discuss racism?

France’s legacy of colonialism, largely in Africa and the Caribbean, plays out in some attitudes that continue generations later. More recently, migration has caused debate and division. The result is a government that openly addresses certain issues around race, but not necessarily in relation to its citizens’ daily lives.

On Wednesday, for example, a court in France is scheduled to review a request for reparations for the descendants of enslaved people. And on a notice board in Nanterre, now scrawled with graffiti saying “Cops, get out of our lives,” a city hall announcement from May advertised a ceremony commemorating the abolition of slavery.

Ahmed Djamai, 58, the president of an organisation in Nanterre that connects youth with work opportunities, recalled being stopped by police recently and asked for his residence permit. He was born in France.

“Our second-, third- and fourth-generation children face the same problem when they go out to get a job,” he said. “People lump them together with things that happen in the suburbs. They’re not accepted. So, to date, the problem is social, but it’s also one of identity.”

The stunning procession of hundreds of men who walked from a mosque in Nanterre to the cemetery for Nahel’s burial stood out in France not only because many were Black or Arab, but because even the demonstration of religious identity can be sensitive. In addition to being officially colorblind, France is officially secular, too.

Some people with immigrant roots fear that France’s success stories of generations of assimilation under that policy are being lost amid the rioting and criticism.

Gilles Djeyaramane is a municipal councilor in Poissy, a town west of Paris. His French-born wife is of Madagascan origin. He was born in French Guiana, of parents from India, and moved to France when he was 18.

“I’m always saying to my children, ‘Your mom and dad would never have met if France didn’t exist’,” he said. “I’m not at all utopian. I know there’s work to do in some areas. But we are on the right path.”

Those who knew Nahel, and some who identify with him, said it’s not fair to pretend that differences, and discrimination, don’t exist. With anger, some pointed out that a funding campaign for the family of the police officer accused of shooting Nahel already topped €1 million (US$1.09 million).

The frustration and violence in many communities come from other issues as well, including the rising cost of living and policing in general. In 2021, Amnesty International and five other rights groups filed a class-action lawsuit against the French state alleging ethnic profiling by police during ID checks.

Police officers reject accusations that some single out people because of their color. Officer Walid Hrar, who is of Moroccan descent and Muslim, said that if it sometimes seems that people of color are stopped more than others, it’s a reflection of the mixed-race density of populations in disadvantaged urban neighborhoods.

In rural France, with fewer people with immigrant backgrounds, police also stop people but “they are called François, Paul and Pierre and Jacques,” Hrar said.

But Mariam Lambert, a 39-year-old who said Nahel was a friend of her son, stressed the pressure of feeling that she and others, including fellow Muslims, had to muffle their identity.

“If I put a scarf on my head … they would see me as from another world, and everything would change for me,” said Lambert, who thinks she would be insulted in the streets. She spoke on the margins of a gathering at Nanterre city hall as events were held there and across France on Monday in support of authorities and a return to calm.

Lambert mused about moving to Morocco if France doesn’t change. “There are plenty of people leaving,” she said. “Because who protects us from the police?”