Theorizing the Colorblind State: Race, Public Ignorance, and the Strategic Use of the First Chicago School in French Sociology

Abstract Despite recent criticism of the Chicago School of Sociology on its mixed legacy in US-based sociological circles, an increasing number of French sociologists have turned to Louis Wirth, Ernest Burgess, and Robert Ezra Park to understand racism and migratory processes in contemporary France since the 1990s. They have actively engaged with the writings of the first Chicago School of Sociology to find empirical case studies that they can adapt to the French context. This article will show that the recourse to American sociological classics can be analyzed as a legitimizing strategy for French sociologists working on uncovering structural racial inequalities and racism in France. This renewal of interest was a direct response both to the increasing backlash faced by French sociologists studying race in the wake of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s pivotal election results in 2002 and the rise of an increasingly outspoken far right in France, and to a French model of integration that wholly overlooked race, then the doxa within the social sciences in France. Sociologists of race and ethnicity in France looked for new ways to tackle colorblindness and the structuring of public ignorance on race, considered both as an analytical tool and an identification category.