In case you missed it: France won the World Cup.
I’ve not really been in the World Cup spirit this year, but I still watched Pogba’s mother dab on the pitch afterwards with the kind of diasporan joy that can only be felt and not explained, and I noted with smug satisfaction how much of the French team come from sub-Saharan African heritage.
I enjoyed the digital celebrations and light-hearted banter, the solidarity between the “children of Wakanda” and the pan-African pride. Then came the social commentary highlighting the hypocrisy of French attitudes towards race, immigration and religion – Islam in particular.
I’m always here for an opportunity to drag whiteness and highlight it’s folly and backwardness, whether that be Macron’s trip to Nigeria or the irony of far-right troll Marie Le-Pen celebrating the triumph of a team mostly made up of the French-born children of immigrants. But the thing that started to irritate me were the naïve and earnest pleas for white France to finally see the humanity of its immigrant and Muslim population after the spectacular performance of its national football team.
Spoiler alert: it’s not going to happen.