France/États-Unis : deux visions de la statistique des origines et des minorités ethniques

France’s position in the area of statistics on the ethnicity and origins of immigrants has been seriously misunderstood. In fact, the French public statistics organization is fully capable of collecting and analyzing data on the former nationality of naturalized French citizens or on the national origins of the second generation immigrants and which provide a good equivalent of the ethnic categories used in some foreign countries. Based on the case of the United States, the author examines a series of questions. What does the notion of ethnic group mean? And what kind of meaning can this notion take in France? What is the respective share of free choice and constraint in the self-identification of origins? What practical and theoretical problems does the statistician encounter in deciding on the existence of discrimination? And, more generally, can France consider learning from foreign experiences to make up for lost time in its fight against discrimination?