Emmanuel Macron has warned of the dangers of the American “woke” culture and said the debate in France is increasingly divided by race.

The French president said racial and identity politics threaten to destroy the foundations of French society.

“I see that our society is becoming more and more racialised,” he told Elle magazine.

He focused in particular on “intersectionality”, a concept popular in American academia that looks at discrimination and poverty through social and political identities such as race and gender.

“The logic of intersectionality breaks everything down,” Macron said.

“I am for universality. I do not accept a fight that limits everyone to their identity or their particularity. Social difficulties can be explained not only by gender and skin colour but also by social inequalities.”

The 43-year-old centrist, who is likely to stand as a candidate in next year’s elections, added that he could think of white young people in his hometown of Amiens or in the neighbouring town of Saint-Quentin in northern France “who also have a very hard time finding work for different reasons”.

It is illegal to collect race statistics in France, which is scarred by ethnic profiling during the war and is officially “colour blind”. For many race researchers, however, it is part of a long history of denial discrimination.

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement, several demonstrations were held across the country last year to condemn racism, especially when linked to police brutality and the legacy of the colonial past.

But critics warn against adopting an Anglo-Saxon woke culture. They argue that an obsession with race and the past causes minorities and women to see themselves as victims of oppression and discrimination.

The Macron government’s new black minister for equality and diversity, Elisabeth Moreno, recently criticised the threat of “cancel culture” and censorship in the name of political correctness.

“Woke culture is a very dangerous thing, and we must not bring it to France,” she told Bloomberg.

“Everyone must fight against discrimination. You cannot forbid someone to speak about something because the person doesn’t feel legitimate. It makes no sense.” She added she does not want to be considered successful because of her gender or race, but because of her achievements.

“French universalism means that we want to recognise people per se, not because they are women or LGBT+ or because they have a different ethnicity or whatever,” she said.

This is not Macron’s first warning on the matter. In May, he warned against judging the past by contemporary values, after historical figures such as Napoléon Bonaparte were highlighted in the global fight against racism.

In June, he accused universities of supporting “the ethnicisation of the social question”, which would mean “splitting the Republic in two”.