Guillaume Herblot wrote that 25 years ago, in high school, students did not question the religion or skin color of their classmates and considered themselves primarily as individuals and citizens. He believed that this indifference was part of the normal functioning of society, rather than a lack of clarity. He attributed the evolution he described to a segment of the left, which, according to him, after losing the support of the working classes, sought new electorates by focusing on identities rather than on socio-economic interests. He cited among voters' concerns security, purchasing power, downward social mobility, and the feeling that the rules of the game were being unilaterally changed. In his view, certain political currents had transformed individuals into electoral groups and instrumentalized anti-racist and anti-discrimination discourses for this purpose. Herblot also stated that this approach had not fostered emancipation or republican integration and mentioned, in certain neighborhoods, educational failure, unemployment, and delinquency. He associated this process with Aristotle's analyses of the division of the city into factions and Thucydides on stasis, or internal civil war. He believed that polarization fueled mistrust and resentment, making the debate on integration and secularism more difficult. He concluded that this evolution was the result of a political choice rather than a inevitability. #citoyenneté #intégration #république (translated)
