Vol. 19 · No. 3 · Summer 2001 · pp. 32-59 (28)

Robert Lieberman

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Abstract

France and the United States are commonly portrayed as proceeding from diametrically opposed presumptions in their approaches to race policy. But accounts of race policy in these two countries that emphasize cultural and ideological obscure crucial similarities between French and American race policy and thus fail to explain national differences convincingly. Despite similarly enshrining principles of color-blindness in antidiscrimination law, French and American race policy took very different directions in the 1960s and 1970s. France adhered closely to color-blindness in the face of persistent and even mounting discrimination while the United States moved toward an ambivalent embrace of race-conscious remedies for discrimination. The answer to this puzzle lies in the politics of minority incorporation, particularly the kind of state power that was created and mobilized to implement antidiscrimination policy and the structure of political opportunities available to proponents of race-conscious policy. Ironically, the "weak" American state, which produced a compromised vision of civil rights law, proved stronger at promoting the enforcement of antidiscrimination law, while the "stronger" French state has mounted a relatively anemic enforcement effort.