Yet this does not necessarily mean that al French citizens do have equal legal and political status,
Huh?
It's actually badly phrased in the textbook. I take it to mean that treating everybody the same ie exactly the same laws to cover all groups with no differentiating or expression of rights to safeguard from inequality - is in itself not ensuring equality for these groups. Ad astra per aspera
What further analysis of real equality should follow, is another matter and could apply to all countries.
Very true - and it certainly applies to the British system. No matter how high profile equality and diversity issues are, and no matter what legislative improvements and other interventions are made, the fact remains that inequality is rife and hasn't been tackled effectively. Ad astra per aspera
As a not particularly rich person there are places I can't go, food I can't eat, educational opportunities I can't afford, access to media and information which are closed to me, access to wealth creation which are also forbidden, and some transport systems still include segregated travel which discriminates between low, middle and high caste travellers. As a middle class person I'm allowed more autonomy than someone who works full time and whose working hours and caste hierarchy relationships are rigidly regimented to an almost totalitarian degree.
Since most people aren't particularly rich in real terms, none of this is unusual. Worse, it's not considered that it might be unusual in any way.
We don't quite have separate benches for rich and poor, but since the poor don't spend much time in rich enclaves, except as workers, we don't really need them.
If the same economic discriminatory practices we have today were defined by race or gender, we would be shocked and outraged. But because they're so deeply acculturated they're considered not just inevitable but even something that might be a good thing.
While this is happening, the question of rights becomes at least slightly academic. In practice there's a bare minimum of citizen's rights, which may rescinded in times of real and imagined threat without notice, and a certain amount of window dressing about equality and opportunity which is encouraged only to the extent that it doesn't affect the basic dynamics.
For example there's equal opportunity employment legislation, but the question of whether traditional employment is really the most fulfilling and socially productive use of time isn't raised. Women are 'encouraged into work', but questioning whether their work - and work by men - is truly productive socially, financially and ecologically, is an almost absolute taboo.
So although there's a veneer of rights policy, practical rights - the right to contribute in a different way, or to have access to education and resources, or in some cases to be entrepreunerial - are rationed vigorously.
Indeed. The dead elephant on the table is that all Western cultures practice vicious economic apartheid and discrimination. Segregation between economic castes is close to total - more so in the Anglo countries, less so but still overt and fundamental in Scandinavia, between these extremes in most of the rest of Europe - and affects life experience and opportunity in extreme ways.
I've no idea if my course will address any of this at some point, I hope it does because it is crucial in achieving equality for minority or oppressed groups, to address economic segregation - not least because in the main, minority groups proportionally will find themselves largely on the wrong side of the wealth divide - so superficial measures to provide equality of opportunity is thwarted by economic inequality. Ad astra per aspera
It's not that no one is aware of it - especially in the UK and US, where everyone knows exactly what class they are, and who's above and below them.
But practical economic apartheid simply isn't considered a form of discrimination.
In fact the whole point of the anglo economies is the promotion of earning differentials and economic discrimination.
That's always been the main aim of neo-liberal economic rhetoric - it's not about sharing, innovation or mutual support, it's about imagined personal sovereignty gauged entirely by how much cash you have, and how wastefully you can throw it around.
This is quite a telling proof to the fact that there is no such thing as "unlimited" freedom (or even tending there). And I say this from a more philosophical viewpoint, rather than the politically "progressive" sharing (in France, social "solidarity"). Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
