“Tolerance is resisting.” It is resisting against the “discourses of mistrust and hate speech” targeting minorities that are spread in certain political and media spheres. It is holding firm in a political climate that often “places blame on immigrants for society’s problems.” And it is withstanding the “waning commitment” from public authorities to the fight against all forms of racism and discrimination, according to the annual report of the French National Consultative Commission on Human Rights (CNCDH) on combating racism, antisemitism and xenophobia, published Wednesday, June 18. Acceptance of people who are different by their origin, skin color or religion grew in 2024, the report finds, though prejudices have not disappeared. Stereotypes are deeply rooted, especially for those over the age of 60.
The main tool for measuring the decline of intolerance is the longitudinal tolerance index (ILT), which combines responses to 75 questions regularly asked in face-to-face interviews since 1990, from a sample of 1,210 people representative of the adult population living in mainland France. Almost a third of the respondents have at least one parent or grandparent born abroad. The index ranges from 0 to 100. In 2023, in the specific context following the Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel on October 7, the ILT dropped by three points in one year, from 65 to 62. This year, it rose by one point, confirming an overall upward trend over the past 35 years: The ILT has gone from a low of 46 in 1991 to a high of 65 in 2022.
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