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Lilian Thuram: “You are lucky”

This article is published in number 36 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 7 September 2021

Lilian Thuram – former world champion with France, defender and legend of Juventus and Barcelona – wrote his third book on the foundations of racism, on the definition of black identity and history, on the creeping consequences of the alleged historical and social superiority of whites. Little news and little Black Lives Matter. But, on the other hand, many straight-legged, decisive and very radical tackles: «White thought is a cultural imperialism that methodically demolishes every form of culture that preceded it: divinities, languages, customs, accents.

.. », he writes White thinking, to be released on 8 September (add publisher), a volume with twenty pages of bibliography written with hints as a historian, a philosopher, here and there even as an activist. Exalted, rich and privileged, either Lilian Thuram is completely crazy or the problems he raises have a carnal foundation. He named his eldest son Marcus, after the black Jamaican politician Garvey. And the second son, like the pharaoh who gave his face to the great sphinx of Giza: Khéphren. “Because many still think that African history begins with slavery,” he says in his Paris apartment, returning from a vacation in his native Guadeloupe, “forgetting that the Egyptian civilization, for one thing, was completely black and African “. Being white, he argues, means learning to think of oneself as dominant and never asking questions about this state of affairs: “White is not born: one becomes”. And then, in one of the most acute and decisive passages of the book, he offers his pacifist solution: “To escape my color, so that it is only an unimportant physical detail, white people must first of all learn to escape theirs” . If anyone ever challenges the ideological structure of these words, no one will be able to prevent this intellectual,
creator of an anti-racist foundation in his name, to remind everyone how much their deep origins are on their skin: “When we are in France or in the United States, I repeat to my children never to forget their color: you are seen as black, not like white. It’s very sad, I know, but sometimes it’s a matter of life or death. “

Don’t you ever think you have given them too much weight?
“It is the same observation that a friend made to me after reading the book: Lilian, you are exaggerating, it is not possible that you see the world like this.”

Despite everything, he didn’t persuade her to soften up.
“Indeed. I told him: but do you think, all those boys killed by the police, would they now be underground if they were white? And in France, who do you think is stopped most often by the gendarmerie? I have two sons, and as a father, I have a duty to explain reality to them. White thinking weighs on the life of black boys ».

Had they been females?
“I would have explained to them to be careful because in life they would certainly have found men willing to convince them that for them there is a very specific place in the world, and I would have urged them not to fall into the trap. There are many parallels between the condition of women and that of non-white people ».

What else did he say to Marcus and Khéphren?
“I had to warn them that growing up, for example, white thinking would diminish their intellectual qualities with the excuse of exalting their physical ones. I did it so that they would understand that it is all a great prejudice. Because otherwise the risk is too high: when a prejudice affects you, you may end up believing that it is true ».

So to say that blacks are athletically gifted …
“It means that whites are more intellectually gifted. If you create a refrain on blacks, you are actually doing it to talk about whites. ‘

Finding yourself doing certain speeches, how much does it hurt?
“Much. You would like to get angry, but you immediately understand that you do not have the right, because by doing so you would confirm the prejudice that follows you. You have to explain things quietly. See clearly to find the most intelligent answer ».

The first time, discrimination on you, when did you hear it?
“At nine, just arrived in France from Guadeloupe. In class some classmates called me “sale noir”, dirty nigger. The curious thing is that I had never thought of myself as a black kid, and I just didn’t understand that violence. I always say that at some point in my childhood, I became black. Those
kids who insulted me at what age did they turn white? ‘

And hasn’t her mother gone mad with grief?
“No, because when you are used to being discriminated against you become less fragile. Among other things, my mother gave me the wrong answers: she said that the world is like this, and things cannot change. But that’s not true: white thinking is a mechanism that wearers are often not even aware of. They are cultural habits. And they can be changed ».

His son Marcus, also a footballer, was one step away from Inter in Germany this summer. In an Italian stadium, would you have run more risks of racial humiliation than in a German stadium?
«Undoubtedly yes. Historically, the manifestations of racism in Italian stadiums are more numerous than in Germany. Movements and personalities that perpetuate certain behaviors, in Italy, struggle to disappear ».

What did you think of the Italian players who did not kneel during the European Championship?
«I already knew they wouldn’t do it, like so many teams. When you suffer racism on your skin it is normal to make certain gestures, because you denounce what you are experiencing, and that your friends and family are living. To get on your knees when discrimination is not suffered, however, it takes real courage. And if it is missing, in order not to do so, there are a thousand excuses, hyperbole and inventions. But in the end, it means that it doesn’t matter to you. For many whites, given that families and friends do not suffer from it, racism does not care. Yet racism is above all a problem of whites ».

Perhaps because the system, and I speak as a white man, benefits us.
“The truth is that you don’t even think about it. When I go to talk in schools I often take the example of the airport and business class tickets. Those traveling with the priority coupon will not notice the queue, the fatigue, the heat, and will arrive at their destination convinced that the airport was empty. For all the others instead, for the
majority, life remains a daily odyssey. If you point this out to business class folks, they feel accused and immediately get defensive. But nobody wants to accuse them of anything. Their status is simply all they know. And starting from it, they interpret the world. Whites don’t know how lucky they are not to be discriminated against because of the color of their skin. “

European anti-racist associations like Kick It Out never have active athletes in them. In the USA, on the contrary, Black Players for Change was born. How do you explain it?
«In general, I can tell you that those who suffer for centuries learn to be afraid in the long run. As for black Americans, I believe that having lived through segregation they understood better than Europeans that to change things we must fight together. But it’s not easy: here, as soon as two blacks get together, it immediately appears as a suspicious thing. In the book, I tell the story of a coach who approached me during a lunch to ask why we black athletes always ate together. At which I turned, glanced around the room full of white teammates, and asked him why he didn’t go around all the tables making the same remark. Obviously, since that day, he hasn’t dared to talk about it anymore ».

Its foundation has been trying to organize an exhibition in Paris on the history of racism in France for years. Are they boycotting it?
“I don’t get to say much, but the ostracism I encounter certainly demonstrates the difficulty of institutions in looking their own history in the face: in France, when it comes to racism, people are very ready to denounce the American one but they hide if there is what concerns them to face. And we are talking about a country that had segregationist laws until yesterday: state racism existed in France since the Code noir of 1685 and spread until the last declarations of independence, at the end of the twentieth century “.

Does it bother you that someone might say that you are racist towards whites?
“Its part of the game. The work I do is annoying, I can understand that. Obligation to ask questions about white identity, and whites don’t have the habit of asking them, they get scared, they don’t understand what happens, the ground under their feet begins to shake. In the book I say that black and white identity are a construction, an invention of the capitalist world. We must know the history of the construction of the races to grow together ».

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