Noëlle Lenoir, former minister and honorary member of the Constitutional Council.

Jean-Claude Magendie Former First President of the Court of Appeal

Jean-Eric Schoettl former Secretary General of the Constitutional Council

The "Law and Public Debate" circle is chaired by Noëlle Lenoir, and includes as members Dominique Schnapper, Jean-Claude Magendie (former First President of the Paris Court of Appeal), Denis Jeambar, Dominique de la Garanderie (former president from Paris)

In its electronic version of November 21, 2017, The World Education was titrating, with a humor perhaps involuntary: "The workshops in non-mixed race of the union South education 93 create a controversy".

The term "controversy" is euphemistic when one learns that this union had planned to organize, as part of an internship entitled "At the crossroads of oppressions. Where is anti-racism at school? "Two" non-mixed "workshops for teachers. The documentation stated: "Teachers are white-he-s. To question our representations and our dominant postures ". Behind this convoluted phraseology, the organizers intended, more or less, to exclude the "whites" from access to these workshops, to which only "racialized" people would be admitted.

The LICRA was the first to react by condemning the forbidden workshops to the "whites". The Minister of Education considered, for its part, that this course was contrary to the values ​​of the Republic. The union issued a statement condemning "the joint and defamatory offenses of the far right, Licra and Blanquer (sic)" ... "We will not give in". The internship did not finally take place, but the risk remains that this kind of initiative, which is not without precedent, is repeated in the future.

What does the law tell us about initiatives of this nature?

At the international level, in the extension Charter of the United Nations (which proclaims "faith in the dignity of the human person"), many texts condemn racial discrimination. The United Nations Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, the European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union .

In domestic law, racial discrimination is punishable by law. The importance that the legislator attaches to the fight against racism was notably reflected in the law of 3 February 2003, which instituted an aggravating circumstance of racism for certain attacks on property and persons.

Two provisions of the Penal Code deserve to be recalled here, so much do they seem to correspond to the situation created by the SOUTH education union: Article L 225-2 punishes the person who, by racism, refuses the supply of a service or subordinates it supply on a race-related basis (the notion of service being largely understood in case law) and Article L 225-5, which punishes racial discrimination committed by a person entrusted with a public service mission, in the exercise of his duties or his mission or on their occasion, when it manifests itself in the denial of the benefit of a right recognized by law.

Do not teachers, regardless of their "race", have the right to access training organized by their unions and financed by the State, which constitutes a service within the meaning of the provisions mentioned above? Do their organizers not intervene as part of a public service mission? Is participation in such training not a right recognized by law? These provisions therefore apply to the organization of "racialized" workshops.

To leave such facts without a penal answer would be to yield to those who are employed, at the price of a "great diversion" (to use the title of the work of Fatiha Agag-Boudjhlat), to turn against the Republic the words of the Republic.

Beyond defamation against the state and the practice of racial "non-mixed", we regret to see here teachers of public education profess exactly the opposite of what they are supposed to teach their students: the culture of resentment, the denunciation of a fantasy "state racism" and penitential history, instead of the sense of common belonging, overcoming of differences of origin, citizenship and national narrative with its beaches of shadow and light. Do these bad shepherds have their place in teaching?

In return, let us look forward to standing ovation in the National Assembly when Jean-Michel Blanquer, in a magnificent response to an oral question, informs the deputies that he condemns the SUD education initiative in the name of the values ​​of the Republic and that he will bring the matter into justice.