The French school system has historically been the spearhead of republican policy and is the primary venue for implementing French-style secularism. In priority education areas, where students who are both poor, racialized, and predominantly perceived as Muslims are concentrated, the evolution of legislation concerning secularism has led to a renewal of teachers’ roles and a reconfiguration of their professional activities. We will show that this evolution is indeed based on legal norms, but it is also overdetermined by race and gender relations, and it regularly contradicts the professional ethos of teachers, who find themselves contributing to a policy they describe as Islamophobic.