Paris Is Burning

[Lotesse]

Why is Paris burning? Why are the muslim kids burning everything, from Paris and Toulouse now on into Germany and Belgium, and it isn't slowing down? This is a heavy topic, rife with possibility for intense debate. How did it come to this, this surreal revolution/riot of the young minority underclass of France? What really has caused it, and how should (or can) it be amended? How can this sort of thing be prevented - better immigration control?

I'm open to answers and ideas from interested and informed mooters who are up on this craziness developing lately in France.


http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1781854.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4415574.stm

[The last sane person]

because, the little **** bunch that are these young muslims, rather then embracing the culture of the new country, want to change it to suit them and their rather ass backwards set of beliefs. Just my opinion though.

[Nurvingiel]

I think it's more complicated than you assert TLSP.

There are a number of factors involved, like France's immigration policy, racism towards people from the Middle-east and northern Africa, the terrible living conditions and poverty in the ghettos, and probably a lot of factors that I don't understand.

There's actually rioting in 300 French cities right now.

This series of events started when two young men who lived in a ghetto outside Paris were killed (they were electrocuted IIRC) when they thought the police were chasing them. They must have had a reason to believe this, and a reason to be scared, even though in this case the police were not actually involved. This tragedy set off the riots; people see the two young men as martyrs.

[Rían]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

There are a number of factors involved, like France's immigration policy, racism towards people from the Middle-east and northern Africa, the terrible living conditions and poverty in the ghettos, and probably a lot of factors that I don't understand.

unemployment rates are staggering in that group, too.

[Earniel]

Well, Paris has huge slums where young people have almost no future. Especially young people of foreign origin. But this is more like plain vandalism. I saw an interview with one with the rioters. Said he can't get a job because everyone discriminates against young immigrants, says everyone thinks they steal and aren't worth anything. Said he was bored.

While I can understand how frustrating that can be, I can't exactly say that burning other's people property, beating an old man to death and throwing molotov cocktails at the firemen who come to put out your fires, is going to work miracles on that image.

I think this article may give a better view of the situation although I don't agree entirely with it. The comments below are interesting too.

As for the youngsters who started burning cars in Belgium, I'm pretty sure all they were just inspired by what happened in Paris and decided to have some fun.

[Nurvingiel]

Whoops, double post... nothing to see here...

\/

[Nurvingiel]

Thanks guys.

Originally Posted by RÃ*an

unemployment rates are staggering in that group, too.

I was reading an article about this today, and some youth who lived in the ghettos were being interviewed. One commented that their parents came to France for jobs, ones that French people usually didn't want to do, but no one would hire the youths. The group of people being interviewed had nothing to do and, totally bored, just hung out smoking pot. It seems like a lot of young people have little or no opportunities, and rightly feel trapped in a boring, unproductive situation.

It seems, from these events, that racism is a big problem in French society. I had no idea that conditions for these riots even existed in France.

[Skip this meandering bit if you're pressed for time...]
If I couldn't work or go to school I'd probably read a variety of books. But I am lucky enough to get to study Forestry, so Ivan Illich's book "Deschooling Society" remains unread.
However, the reason I like reading so much is ever since I was old enough to sit up, my parents of read to me. Then, when I learned how to read at the age of five, they still read to me, and encouraged me to read on my own.
If my parents had been stuck in long hours in crappy jobs, they wouldn't have been able to afford the 5000+ books in our house, and they wouldn't have had as much time to spend with us kids.
Therefore, I would not have had reading to fill my days with endless pleasure. If I lived in a ghetto, the school (unlike the one I attended) would not have shown me the joys of rugby and art due to lack of funding. If no one would hire me due to racism and a lack of education, what would happen? Bored and jobless, I too would be smoking pot on the corner with my friends.
[/meandering]

The French government has expressed a desire to work towards a solution to these problems, and have condemned the violence. I applaud this attitude, but I sincerely hope this comes with a long term commitment to a solution. Short-term effort isn't going effect useful change.

If you want someone to be integrated in society, they have to feel welcome. Combating racism is difficult but workable. People are no longer horribly racist to First Nations people in Canadian society (though vestiges of this attitude still exist); it can be done. It takes long-term effort.

You can't expect a new-comer to society to shed his or her old culture and immediately and flawlessly assimilate into the new culture. France is not the Borg. France is made up of free-thinking individuals and if you want immigration to be a success, immigrants must be respected as individuals. If they practice a religion found in the minority in France? Take this as an opportunity to learn something new, and practice religious tolerance. Maybe they don't look like a typical French person, and you resent this because you want to keep France "pure". (Apparently this attitude actually exists in France. I don't know how widespread that is.) Well, what exactly does a "typical" French person look like? Racism is completely devoid of logic.

I realize I'm mostly preaching to the choir here, but I hope other people who have some influence over Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy are saying the same things.

[Rían]

I think it goes two ways with the racism - from what I've heard, many if not most of the Muslims want to be in France, but fairly separate, and the French have allowed this to a large extent from what they thought were good motives, and this is one of the unintended repercussions. I'll see if I can find an article that expresses this better than I have.

[The Gaffer]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

It seems, from these events, that racism is a big problem in French society. I had no idea that conditions for these riots even existed in France.

The French are a bunch of racist bar stewards!

Just joking: couldn't resist it.

However, EVERY time I have been to France (5 or 6) I have witnessed quite extreme yet casual racism at first hand. It seems to be considered OK to express these ideas in a way that would be unacceptable this side of La Manche. Oh, and of course, the overtly racist Jean Marie Le Pen came second in the last Presidential election.

People often make the mistake of thinking that France is some sort of welfare heaven, where people doss about all day and the state looks after them. That is utter pish. France, like the rest of Europe, is capitalist where opportunities are reserved for select groups of people. So, class in other words. As you have all noted, apart from the ironically named "last sane person", the problem is about vast swathes of people having naff all to live for.

Finally, the French police, especially the CRS, are notorious for the alacrity with which they beat the skulls of scumbags.

If the French want to stop this sort of thing from happening they need to deal with the racism and deprivation.

[Linaewen]

This may be of interest. I haven't had time to read much about this other than that editorial, which does allude to our new anti-terror laws at the end.

[Edit] *Looks at Nurv's post and nods*

[Pytt]

I just read about it on sunday, I think, and then the rioting and car-burning had already lasted a week in Paris. I haven't read much more about it, but your article was very good Lin

[Tamuril Sirfalas]

Originally Posted by Pytt

I just read about it on sunday, I think, and then the rioting and car-burning had already lasted a week in Paris. I haven't read much more about it, but your article was very good Lin

i kinda just learned about it today and WOW it isn't good! i think it deals with racism and religious reasons but i cant be quite sure owning that i learned about it today but racism shouldn't be tolerated.. i think its wrong but you hafta listen to both sides of the story right? you can't just listen to one side and then be like ya you are right we dont hafta listen to the other side of the story..lets blow them up!!!does everything hafta resort to war and riots?oh and yes the french are casually racist and its un believeable i think if they want to stop all this they should listen to the muslims and get there input...they shouldn't hafta use violence against violence( i mean in the past it hasn't looked very well so why repeat?)

[Nurvingiel]

I agree that riots are definitely not the answer. But they are a symptom of aforementioned problems like racism in French society.

(I wasn't under the impression that France was a welfare haven or such like, but I sure was surprised when this happened. I have never been to France though.)

[Jonathan]

Originally Posted by The last sane person

because, the little **** bunch that are these young muslims, rather then embracing the culture of the new country, want to change it to suit them and their rather ass backwards set of beliefs. Just my opinion though.

Their reluctance to "embrace the culture" can and should also be blamed on the society they live in. If they are alienated, they can't fit in even if they wanted to.
As Nurvingiel said, there are probably lots of other factors behind this as well.

[Butterbeer]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

Why is Paris burning? Why are the muslim kids burning everything, from Paris and Toulouse now on into Germany and Belgium, and it isn't slowing down? This is a heavy topic, rife with possibility for intense debate. How did it come to this, this surreal revolution/riot of the young minority underclass of France? What really has caused it, and how should (or can) it be amended? How can this sort of thing be prevented - better immigration control?

I'm open to answers and ideas from interested and informed mooters who are up on this craziness developing lately in France.


http://www.indybay.org/news/2005/11/1781854.php

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4415574.stm

good ain't it?

course the french don't have a band as good as 'the clash' ... but the racist intolerance and heavy handed nazi style actions of the french sinister interior ministry ... ghettos, attacks on freedoms and culture - economic, cultural and practical alienation and they expect everyone to have a tea party?

bring on the belgians i say!

(although you should note Earniel that i only do as it is one of my all time favorite sayings - comes from stuart hall a tv (and now radio) commenator - does anyone remember 'it's a knock-out' or international 'it's a knock-out!' ?? there were teams from all over europe, in big inflatable costumes, trying to carry water buckets over ropes and avoid giant swinging inflatable balls etc etc ...

the classic phrase was ... 'and here come the belgians!"

and also the seminal almost legendary classic "bring on the belgians!"

don't know why but he had a thing about the belgians ..and it seemed to strike a chord with the nation ... though no one could explain why?

(forget why - is a very excitable bloke old stupot hall )

somethings rotten in the state of france ...

it needs fumigating!

[Butterbeer]

just seen your post there gaffer - you'r right!

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Lotesse

Why is Paris burning? Why are the muslim kids burning everything, from Paris and Toulouse now on into Germany and Belgium, and it isn't slowing down? This is a heavy topic, rife with possibility for intense debate. How did it come to this, this surreal revolution/riot of the young minority underclass of France? What really has caused it, and how should (or can) it be amended? How can this sort of thing be prevented - better immigration control?

I'm open to answers and ideas from interested and informed mooters who are up on this craziness developing lately in France.

I talked with the teacher of my French Language class about this. She loves Paris, and expressed her views to me. She says that it goes back far into the history of the country. Europe has experienced many wars, and this, in addition to the class structure of society, tends to unify the people of specific European nations. Immigrants from Africa and the Middle East have come in in droves, however, and they bring their own culture with them. This causes a great deal of difficulty, because, according to my French teacher, no effort is made to mingle the two cultures.

Furthermore, France has been an extremely secular state for many years. This clashes with the views of the many Muslim immigrants, who are used to Shariah law. To many French, religion is all right so long as it is in your own home, behind closed doors. For the Muslims, religion has always been part of state and society. Coming into an extremely secular environment is a very difficult switch, and when little effort to adjust to customary French ways is made, the religious barrier becomes even sharper.

Another issue is, of course, poverty. Many of the immigrants came to France, hoping for a better future. They have been sadly disappointed. Few jobs are available to them, little future awaits them, and society shuts their way of thinking out. My French teacher claims that unemployment was a big problem in France before the immigrants began to pour in. Thus, my teacher claims that the French have not been treating the Africans and Middle Eastern folk in a racist or intolerant way, but a problem that already existed in France is massively expanded. Within . . . I believe the last twenty years, 8 million or so immigrants moved to France. That's 8 million out of the total population of France, which is 60 million. Needless to say, the population shift is enormous.

France also is a very cramped country. It has limiting, close boundaries, trapping and confining the expanding population. It has none of the history of acceptance of diversity, and none of the culture blending that America has always experienced.

I think that these explanations my teacher made about the history of the difficulties make a lot of sense. As regards the racism argument, I really couldn't comment. I know there is an opposing side to the story as well; there always is. Anyway . . . just thought I'd post some of the dimensions to the conflict that I've heard from a native Parisian.

[Jonathan]

Good post Lief. Intergration is a big problem in France. Not only are there many immigrants from former French colonies who haven't really blended with the French community, but their kids and grandkids have troubles blending in as well. When a country have 2nd and 3rd generations of immigrants who haven't become integrated, the country is bound to see problems arise.

[trolls' bane]

Gosh. I wish I had time to read that. Saving to Word...

[Nurvingiel]

Very thoughtful post Lief. I'm glad to see you around. I don't think your Parisian friend's insight rules out racism and other problems from the "other side of the coin", but they definitely add another layer. There aren't bad guys and good guys in this situation (as your post served to outline).

From the Globe and Mail, Saturday, November 12:

For Canadians smug in their mythology of inhabiting the planet's most successful multicultural society, the riots of France have been cause for national tsk-tsking and self-satisfaction. At least, goes the script, we've got social inclusiveness right.

At least — maybe more by luck than by design — we've avoided the creation of racial underclasses: no endless ugly suburbs of brown and black people imprisoned in poverty from which scant hope of escape exists.

At least we've embraced into our national culture the notion of postethnic identity, woven the values of anti-discrimination and equality into not only our laws but into our hearts and national idiom.

Well, hold the complacency, eh?

To be sure, a Canadian mirror held up to the car-BQs of France shows no violent mass unrest brewing in, say, Toronto's Jane-Finch or Jamestown neighbourhoods, Montreal's quartier St-Michel or patches of Greater Vancouver's Surrey and the Downtown Eastside.

But what recent research reveals is an alarming and disquieting analogue to the demographic portrait of the French suburban cités.

It shows an emerging population of Canadian-raised daughters and sons of visible-minority immigrants Ã* la France whose accents and cultural reference points are as Canadian as maple syrup, but who in many respects feel less welcome in the country than their parents.

"Their parents came to improve their lives," says University of Toronto sociologist Jeffrey Reitz, one of Canada's foremost academic experts on immigration and multiculturalism.

"They can make comparisons to where they were. They can [move] on. But for their children born in Canada, they don't have the option of going anywhere else. And they expect equality. Therefore their expectations are much higher."

The data show, in fact, a generation raised in the milieu of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and multiculturalism's rhetoric, who expect to be treated as equals in Canadian society and who angrily are discovering that they are not.

Their disaffection has gone largely unnoticed until now in polls and academic research because, unlike in France, the numbers of the visible-minority second generation are statistically small — less than a million.

France's wave of visible-minority immigration occurred in the fifties and sixties; Canada's began only in the seventies. Two-thirds of the Canadian visible-minority second generation are still under 16.

As Prof. Reitz observes, "It is striking that indications of lack of integration into Canadian society are so significant for the Canadian second-born generation, since it is this group which is regarded as the harbinger of the future ....."

Data collected by Statistics Canada for its 2002 Ethnic Diversity Survey and other studies and then analyzed by scholars such as Prof. Reitz and the Institute for Research on Public Policy show that, for the immigrant second generation in multicultural Canada, all visible minorities have less of a sense of belonging to the country than do whites.

The data show that on virtually all indicators used by sociologists and governments to measure integration into Canadian life, visible minorities rate themselves as less integrated than whites.

Add their perceptions of non-belonging to their socioeconomic rankings — among all ethnocultural groups in Canada, racial minorities clearly have the lowest relative household income and the highest poverty rates — and the outlines of underclass loom menacingly from the mist.

Indeed, Princeton sociologist Douglas Massey, considered the leading scholar on race and economic underclass in the United States, recently told a University of Toronto audience that some of the indicators of racial underclass are appearing in Canadian cities.

It is not, however, just a matter of economics.

As Prof. Reitz points out, "Although visible-minority immigrants have lower earnings than whites, at an individual level, low earnings contribute little to trends in social integration.

"Rather, the negative trends in integration reflect their more pronounced experiences of [broad] discrimination and vulnerability, which become or remain pronounced for the second generation" — experiences felt with more acuity and resulting anger by the second generation.

Listen to the voice of 22-year-old Rahel Appiagyei, a third-year student in international relations attending Toronto's elite bilingual Glendon College at York University.

"No, I don't feel accepted," she says. "The one thing I don't understand — me, personally, and for blacks in general — is why we're still seen as immigrants."

In the Canada of her experience, she says, "the word 'immigrant' is used to mean coloured and the word 'Canadian' is a code word for Caucasian." Her parents emigrated from Ghana in 1988, when she was 5. Immigrants from Ghana — along with those from Ethiopia, Somalia and Afghanistan — have the highest rates of poverty in Canada, between 50 and 80 per cent. She, her parents and five siblings live crowded into a three-bedroom apartment.

Ms. Appiagyei, whose idiom and accent with trademark raised ou diphthong are flawlessly Canadian, says with pride that her family has never needed a penny of welfare, that her father has steadily worked since he arrived, and that she is the first in the family to be accomplishing what her mother and father brought their children to Canada to do.

She cites the Toronto school board's policy of zero tolerance for violence and points out its targets are overwhelmingly black students. Something can't be right with a policy that winds up being aimed at a single racial group, she says. "It gives me a lot of messages."

Ms. Appiagyei tells the story of living one summer in Quebec with a family to learn French. The father made clear that he associated blacks with poverty and one day commented that he had never thought blacks attractive until he met her. "It was a compliment and insult at the same time."

The Ethnic Diversity Study found 37 per cent of Canada's visible minorities report discrimination, and for blacks alone the figure is 50 per cent.

Ms. Appiagyei says the more engaged and involved in Canadian life she becomes, the more she encounters gaps between her expectations of what Canadian society should be and the reality she encounters.

She tells of being often asked: ".'You're from Africa, how come you know English so well?' I feel I'm always being assessed with lions and tigers, with remoteness. Why is it we're not allowed to feel we belong here?"

On her sense of remoteness, one of Prof. Reitz's findings from the data carries special weight: "Although most Canadians deny harbouring racist views," he says, "they express 'social distance' from minorities — that is, preferences not to act with members of other racial groups."

And so, Prof. Reitz says, the alienation of today's visible-minority second generation is a harbinger of the future.

"Perspectives on racial discrimination divide racial groups, and such racial divisions do matter for the broader cohesion of Canadian society."

Canada's visible-minority population is rapidly growing and, by 2017, will be 20 per cent of the population, with the percentages significantly higher in Canada's largest cities.

The research data show that about 30 per cent fewer visible minorities than whites have voted in federal elections (although only 20 per cent fewer visible minorities than whites are citizens). The same 30-per-cent gap exists between visible minorities and whites in identifying as Canadian. A smaller percentage of visible minorities than whites report satisfaction with life and trust in others; a smaller percentage engage in volunteer work in their communities.

And, of course, the data show clearly that as second-generation white immigrants nestle comfortably into Canadian life, their visible-minority counterparts lag behind.

What the data also show is that white Canadians tend to discount the claims of discrimination reported by their non-white fellow countrymen and countrywomen. It's not the mythology of multicultural inclusiveness. And yet discounting those claims, Prof. Reitz warns, may make matters worse.

"Lack of [racial] conflict in the present may not be a good predictor of the future."

Maybe now is a good time to ask if conditions for a similar situation to France's exist in our own countries, and if they do, what can we do about them?