The LGBTI association of Tour does not want racial diversity at their march. “This space is ours,” the LGBTI centre of Tours tweeted.
The French website Fdesouche, circulated a screenshot of the overt anti-white racism, and a controversy quickly ensued on social networks.
The LGBTI Centre of Tours then issued an explanatory statement on its social networks in an attempt to stem the controversy and “clearly” explain its positions, according to regional French broadcaster France3. “We immediately received a lot of messages,” said Johan Yagger. “Some were threatening, others wondered. That is why we wanted to clarify the situation.”
“We shared a story of a partner anti-racist collective that we support and who will be with us on May 15,” says Johan Yagger, co-president of the LGBTI Centre in Tours. “We realized that the message was not necessarily adapted to what we are and immediately deleted it.”
Yet the Green EELV mayor of Tours concluded that “some people of colour do not feel comfortable in mixed race processions and have requested a non-white zone in which they will feel more comfortable. We have put it in place”. He defended this choice as an “inclusive” and “open” one.
Screenshots were taken of the message indicating that a “non-white procession is planned for LGBT + people of colour” on May 15. And then the message continued: “[Racial] non-mixing is in no way negotiable and any white person who will try to take part in this procession will be cordially (or not) expelled.”
“We advocate non-violence so no one will be ‘expelled’ the co-president of the LGBTI Centre in Tours said. He evoked a “false connection” in communication. “There will of course be no control based on skin colour, it was not at all the spirit of this procession,” he said.
After the controversy over “non-white meetings” at the UNEF, the subject is a sensitive one in France. The left-wing student union is at the centre of a political controversy linked to the organization of meetings from which whites in particular were excluded.
At the time, Laurence Cohen from the CRCE group, defended UNEF, explaining that the student union simply wanted to organize “support groups”. The CRCE, or Communist, Republican, Citizen and Ecologist group [Groupe communiste, républicain, citoyen et ecologiste] is a parliamentary group in the French Senate, the indirectly elected upper house of the French Parliament. Unlike most other parliamentary groups in the Senate, it counts mostly only the Senators of one party, the French Communist Party, among its members.
“At certain times, there is a need to meet with people who are going through the same things, to build a common thought, a collective thought that is far from racist behaviour,” Cohen argued. She repeated the often-heard justifications of Anglophone Black Pride leaders.
The LGBT demonstration scheduled for May 15 reinforces an already strong divide in Tours because last January, the city centre was the site of opposition between pro and anti-MAP marches. On the occasion of the presentation of the bioethics law to the National Assembly, activists from both sides gathered in Place Anatole France. Supervised by dozens of police and gendarmes, the marches did not degenerate but they have remained the symbol of a wide gap between two opposite fringes of the population.
Medically assisted procreation (MAP) must not be open to all women, singles and lesbians included, say anti-MAP supporters because, according to them, “children are deprived of identity if they do not have a mum and dad”.