« On est bien obligé de le dire à un moment donné » Affrontements méta-lexicaux sur les catégorisations ethno-raciales

Several recent studies on racist speech observe that, in an effort to save face and avoid blame, actors today employ discursive strategies of dissimulation. In France in particular, where ethno-racial categories are said to be taboo, actors supposedly prefer to use colourblind formulations, especially in public, so as not to appear racist. However, ethnographic fieldwork in the town of Béziers, in the south of France, has revealed interactional situations in which participants may reproach themselves both for employing ethno-racial categories (such as “Gypsy”, “North African (Maghrébin)” or “Arab”) and for replacing them with colourblind categories. These debates cannot be reduced to individual blame-avoidance efforts: rather, the actors remind one another to be reflexive by paying attention not only to the harmful effects of resorting to these categories, but also to what is lost by avoiding them