The Senegalese media mainly saw the small fault of orthography. Elsewhere, it is the expression “black race” that challenges.
“Africa and the black race deserve respect,” the Senegalese president reacted in response to his American counterpart Donald Trump, who described some African countries as “shitty country”.
The tweet of Macky Sall joined the reaction of Botswana were rather well received by the African netizens. In Senegal, the small sprain to the conjugation will force “tirailleurs of the French language” to leave the wood.
The communication service of the palace will provide a learned explanation by endorsing the famous mistake. This false debate seems to have overshadowed the expression “black race” used by the Senegalese president.
In France, for having mentioned a “black individual” in 2016, the Ministry of Justice was faced with a big controversy.
For good reason, France has removed the word “race” from its Constitution since 2013 even if it still appears in the preamble of the Constitution of 1946, integrated with that of the Fifth Republic of 1958. “There is no place in the Republic for the race, “said Francois Hollande.
From the scientific point of view, work on the human genome had several times concluded a single human race (homo sapiens) since the 50 years.
Je suis choqué par les propos du Président Trump sur Haïti et sur l'Afrique. Je les rejette et les condamne vigoureusement. L'Afrique et la race noire mérite le respect et la considération de tous. MS
— Macky Sall (@Macky_Sall) January 12, 2018
Unlike France, the word “race” is included in the US Constitution since 1865, constituting the basis for the application of positive discrimination. Clearly, if the cultural use of the term is accepted, its biological basis, based on the theory of inequalities of French Gobineau, inspirer of Nazism, has been regularly rejected by science.
Political language has a hard time getting rid of it. The mitigating circumstances at the disposal of the Senegalese president certainly will not be worthwhile for Nadine Morano describing France as a “white country”, Jean-Marie Lepen considering the question of race a “historical evidence” or De Gaulle describing the France as “a white European people, of Greek and Latin culture and of Christian religion”.
