[by Xavier-Laurent Salvador. We publish here the interview conducted by Alexandre Devecchio for Le Figaro November 8, 2022 and readable at: https://www.lefigaro.fr/vox/societe/parents-ne-vous-taisez-pas-face-aux-theories-woke-par-crainte-de-froisser-la-jeunesse-20221108]

LE FIGARO: Your book is written in the form of advice to parents of a woke teenager and arguments to help them engage in dialogue with him and convince him. Will wokeness cause a real generational divide?
Xavier-Laurent SALVADOR: What is generally called "wokism" is, to use Jean-François Braunstein's expression, a "religion" - I would say a sect - whose sacred book is the sum of the theories of gender and race. People who were born in Republican France, who were educated in free and secular schools, cannot understand that young adults can today glorify the notion of race, or demand that people be listed and classified according to their sexual gender. France has experienced a social fracture, which has continued to deepen. The next irreversible fracture line risks being generational. This is why the book seemed necessary to me.

Isn't wokeism a passing fad like leftism in 68?
You are right to make the connection with leftism, such as Maoism for example, of the 60s: these different ideologies are based on the same rhetoric which aims to erase the individual in favor of a fantasized collective body. The people, the popular commune of Mao yesterday; the identity communities today. But we can fear that this is not ephemeral because if in 68 we were dealing with a youth movement in revolt against the established order. Today this movement is structured by organizations (such as the University, European Research) which finance it, structure it and arm it against the rhetoric of the old democracies. Institutionalization makes the difference.

You explain that teachings are at the center of a "vast process of economic control." What do you mean by that?
The proliferation of identity delusions opens the way for companies to many promising and, it must be admitted, previously inaccessible market sectors. Today, the proliferation of minority affirmations allows, for example, a toy company to offer a "trans" doll; or an entertainment company to rewrite historical events by giving pride of place to "representatives of minorities" at the risk of anachronism; or a sports company to offer clothing that is no longer unisex, but "transgender". The fact that the word has become a marketing element is enough to underline the gentle convergence between wokeness, in search of fashion, and capitalism in search of new market sectors. One feeds the other.

You think that wokeism is starting to take root in school curricula. Do you have any examples?
The observatory of decolonialism and identity ideologies has amply documented this phenomenon and the list would be long of the training courses offered to teachers, on the Canopé network of National Education for example, to fight against "heterosexual hegemony", or praising "the pre-colonial Algerian school tradition", proposing to deconstruct - with supporting documentation - "kinship", still proposing turnkey activities for middle school in civic education where the student identifies documentary stereotypes such as "heterosexual couples", or seeking to "propose arrangements or actions that would allow a less binary approach to people in middle school".
The issue of race, like that of gender, is also breaking into the institutional framework: under the pretext of "anti-discrimination pedagogy", we are seeing the emergence of frameworks of thought inherited from American racialist theories and inviting us to identify "white privilege". When our Minister speaks in the United States about school racism, he borrows his elements from the worst opponents of the French Republic, such as certain daily newspapers such as the New York Times. These themes, which aim to repeat that France is racist, that secularism is racist, that the 2005 riots are proof of the country's systemic racism, we also hear them in the media when, for example, Norman Adjari, invited by Frédéric Taddeï, exclaims that "there were racial laws (in South Africa) exactly as there are Islamophobic laws in France." It's a little tune that is becoming heady, don't you think? But this little tune can be heard everywhere, on social networks, on streaming media: our fellow citizens must therefore listen.

Will woke sociology be taught in schools tomorrow like French?
I fear that you are making a mistake in considering that there would be a discipline called "woke sociology": the specificity of critical race theories - which are taught in the United States - like gender theories, is to propose an explanatory reading grid for all other disciplines. In literature, we now speak of the "fluidity" of the saints of the Middle Ages; we want to organize research projects or conferences to "decolonize physics", "decolonize medicine", "decolonize humanitarian aid". Critical race theories present themselves, in all disciplines, as an essential cultural foundation for commenting on biology or mathematics. The method is insidious: we will never see a school teaching of woke sociology emerge; but there is a major risk of seeing critical race theories or gender theories taught as a precursor to traditional disciplines such as French, history or philosophy.

You reveal that the law is also affected by wokeness. How?
In a call for contributions carried by the journal of the Magistrates' Union, Délibéré, lawyers were called upon to contribute to the question of "decolonizing the law" by explaining that "theoretical perspectives are open, and post-colonial, decolonial, or intersectional approaches may prove relevant for grasping contemporary forms of colonialism or its legacies in justice."
When you vote in a democracy like ours, you act according to your representation of the general interest. In a State composed of an aggregate of communities, you vote according to the interests of your community. There is no longer a national representation that embodies the State, but an aggregate of small delegates to an administration responsible for translating their complaints into public policies. This is a radical change of civilization that is being prepared.

If you had only three pieces of advice to give to parents of a woke child or teenager?
My first piece of advice would be to read my little manual, and to subscribe to the Observatory of Decolonialism website: it is a wealth of resources. More seriously, I would only say this: dare to confront! No one has anything to gain by remaining silent for fear of offending. Talk, discuss, dialogue and do not abandon the future to those who have not yet built it. It is up to you, parents, to be responsible for accompanying young people on the path to true freedom.